In his insightful history of the post–World War II city, Destin Jenkins invites readers to place the municipal bond industry at the center of inquiries about urban development and racial inequality. The postwar municipal credit regime emerged out of New Deal banking reforms, a 1941 federal tax exemption on income from state and local bonds, and an urban infrastructure badly in need of fixing after the Great Depression and the war. In the decades that followed, cities became increasingly dependent on debt financing to build, maintain, and repair their physical and social services infrastructure. Central to this book's contribution is Jenkins's attention to how the application of these financial tools built an urban political economy that was deeply invested in racial inequality, or what Jenkins perceptively labels the “infrastructural investment in whiteness” (15, 195).
The selection of San Francisco for this study is apt. This city is the site for...
