The Baltimore Ghetto: an Urban History of Housing and Politics, 1920-1968

2015. Research/Publication

ETH Zurich. Doctoral Dissertation

Advisor: Marc Angélil, ETH Zurich

Advisor: Camillo Boano, UCL Bartlett

This research sets out to investigate one of the main causes behind the uproars and riots that affected cities throughout the United States during the 1960s: the ‘ghetto.’ The American ghetto, a segregated space inhabited almost exclusively by blacks, has facilitated the dissemination of racial discrimination and the expansion of urban inequality. 

Looking at the case of Baltimore between 1920 and 1968, this investigation unfolds as an urban history of the Baltimore ghetto and an autopsy of its parts that seeks to identify covert as well as explicit schemes responsible for the production and maintenance of a quintessential American ghetto.