"We take it for granted that good neighborhoods-with good schools and good housing-are inaccessible to all but the very wealthy. But, in America, this wasn't always the case. In Stuck, Yoni Appelbaum introduces us to the reformers who destroyed American mobility with discriminatory zoning laws, federal policies, and community gatekeeping. From the first zoning laws enacted to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California, to the toxic blend of private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in mid-century Flint, Michigan, Appelbaum shows us how Americans lost the freedom to move. Even Jane Jacobs's well-intentioned fight against development in Greenwich Village choked off opportunity for strivers-and started a trend that would put desirable neighborhoods out of reach for most of us"--

A nation of migrants -- The death of great American cities -- The freedom to move -- A migratory people -- Dirty laundry -- Tenementophobia -- Auto emancipation -- The housing trap -- A plague of localists -- Building a way out