Rethinking Urban Poverty

Rethinking Urban Poverty for the 21st Century: Institutional and Organizational Perspectives As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, the prospects for U.S. cities remain uncertain. The promised reinvention of many former manufacturing centers has been halted in its tracks, as record budget deficits, limited growth prospects, and stubbornly high unemployment rates undermine urban recovery. The urban poor continue to bear most heavily the burden of a continuing housing crisis, chronically underperforming schools at a time of increasing returns to education, persistently high births to unmarried mothers, unprecedented rates of obesity and other health problems, and an expansion of the criminal justice system that insists on breaking imprisonment records. Understanding these conditions calls for scholarly perspectives the focus not only on individuals or neighborhoods but also on the institutions and organizations that structure their daily lives, mediate their relation to the state, and facilitate or constrain their ability to acquire resources. The papers either adopt or examine the role of institutional and organizational perspectives to the study of housing, health, criminal justice, education, and immigration in urban contexts.