Cities: The Bonfire of Discontent

Men have been city dwellers for 50 centuries, but barely two centuries have sufficed to bring U.S. cities to a desperate crisis. With seven out of ten Americans now living in cities, the U.S. is the world's largest urban society. The growth of the cities has been so swift that it has spawned some of the nation's deepest and most pressing problems. Throughout the U.S., the big cities are scarred by slums, hobbled by inadequate mass transportation, starved for sufficient finances, torn by racial strife, half-choked by polluted air. The nation's urban...

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