Urban Injustice : How Ghettos Happen

Rating:
Summary: worth reading
Review: It is written by a doctor who has been working with innner city patients for over two decades. He understands their medical and psychosocial issues very well but he was puzzled by many things. Including, how is it that there is such sharp geographical clustering of poverty, how is this cycle perpetuated from one generation to the next, how does 'govt. assistance' work and how is it designed?

He tried to find the answers by surveying the sociological, economic, and public policy literature. He describes his book as the type of resource he wished he had access to in medical school. The book itself is only about 130 pages (not including endnotes which were quite interesting). Anyway, I found it to be very interesting and it is totally readable in one sitting so busy people might like it.

Because my understanding of what he was trying to explain is very unsophisitcated, I couldn't read the book with a critical eye (except one type where I'm quite sure he meant "integration" instead of "segregation" but that was just one word.)

I do warn you that it isn't a cozy book (although it wasn't a screamin' shockin', bleedin' liberal tryst either, thank goodness). Just so you're prepared.