Why are so many Rust Belt cities struggling? In particular, why has there been so much flight of population and capital from these areas? To many political pundits, urban scholars, and economists, the problems of Rust Belt cities are inevitable, if tragic, outcomes of powerful economic forces in an era of postindustrialization. In Manufacturing Decline, Jason Hackworth provides a powerful and convincing rejoinder to these explanations. Hackworth argues that the decline of Rust Belt cities is not economic but political. It is the direct result of conservative organizing, much of which has involved stoking racial resentments and anxieties. Rust Belt cities are declining not because of the invisible hand of the market but because of systematic “organized deprivation” (p. 5).

Manufacturing Decline is a wonderful book. Those who read it will learn much about a wide range of topics, including urban politics, political economy, and race. The book’s contributions lie less in the introduction of new ideas or innovative empirical work than in the integration and synthesis of a number of ideas into a coherent and compelling whole.

The book’s main title has a double meaning, because decline is manufactured both literally and metaphorically: literally, in the sense that the flight of people and capital from Rust Belt cities results from policy choices rather than “natural” economic processes, and metaphorically, in that conservative elites deliberately deploy the imagery of pathological urban spaces to build popular support for these very policy choices. The literal and metaphorical senses of “manufacturing decline” sustain each other in a positive feedback loop: images of the derelict city become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the first half of the book, Hackworth places race front and center in his compelling story of how the decline of Rust Belt cities has been manufactured. White reaction to Black political gains in the 1960s and continued white fear and anger from then to the present day explain much of the flight of people and capital from Rust Belt cities. But unlike some previous scholarship on the topic, the book does not portray these white reactions to Black progress as natural or organic. Just the opposite: they were carefully cultivated by conservative elites. Conservatives with a neoliberal agenda of austerity and penality have long found it useful to stoke racial anxieties and resentments to convince the public to support their efforts.

In chapter 1, the book challenges the conventional narrative that urban decline is exclusively a product of such economic and political factors as deindustrialization. Although there is some truth to this narrative, it misses the important element of what Hackworth calls “racial threat,” in which blackness is portrayed as endangering whites’ safety, power, and property. This construction of racial threat has led to urban decline in the Rust Belt in a number of ways—through (1) the residual effects of past legal discrimination against Black people, (2) the continued refusal of many whites to live near Black people, (3) white backlash against Black elected officials, (4) the disproportionate policing and legal financial obligations of Black people, and (5) government tolerance of private companies’ discrimination against Black people.

Where chapter 1 focuses on practices leading to actual urban decline, the next chapter examines the ideological work of conservative elites in constructing imagined urban decline. Through a variety of issues—including crime, welfare, and housing— conservative elites have used urban spaces as a dog whistle, appealing to racially resentful and racially anxious whites without often talking about race directly. Such imagery has contributed to the racial realignment of the Rust Belt, in which Rust Belt counties trending Democratic in recent years tend to be more populated by African Americans while Rust Belt counties trending Republican tend to be more populated by white people.

Chapter 3 explores this theme further through the specific example of Detroit. In Hackworth’s view, Detroit’s pathologies, such as economic collapse and rampant crime, might easily have been used to make the case for substantial government intervention. In a remarkable turnabout, however, conservative elites have argued that it was government action that created Detroit’s problems. The city’s bankruptcy has been framed as the consequence of overspending and a paucity of entrepreneurial innovation, and crime has been attributed to government’s putative coddling of Black Detroiters. These narratives serve as the ideological framework for the organized government deprivation of Detroit and of other cities in the Rust Belt.

The four chapters in the second half of the book discuss ways in which state-level policies have limited the abilities of cities to take measures to stave off decline. Conservative legislators have used preemption laws and a variety of other tools to diminish the power of cities, preventing them from raising the minimum wage, acquiring land, enacting antidiscrimination ordinances, raising revenue through property taxes, and much more. In many cases the state has even imposed direct financial supervision on cities and counties to pursue the politics of austerity and deprivation further.

Much of the second half of the book focuses on abandoned land and housing. The two dominant responses encouraged by conservative forces to these issues have been privatization and demolition. As Hackworth shows, these responses tend to exacerbate rather than mitigate decline. Privatization facilitates the extraction of wealth from the city, whereas demolition, unaccompanied by investment, does not revitalize abandoned urban spaces.

For a book on urban politics, this one has relatively little to say about the decisions of city leaders. This, Hackworth would argue, is for good reason: a key argument in the book is to point out the ways in which external forces limit the options available to political leaders (and activist groups) at the city level. Moreover, many pundits and scholars alike overstate the capabilities of city leaders to affect what happens in the Rust Belt, and Hackworth believes that a correction is in order. I agree on both counts. However, city leaders do have a choice about whether to resist or assist the national- and state-level forces of organized deprivation. Consider again the case of Detroit, a city that receives much (deserved) attention in the book. In 2019, the city spent about $294 million on the Detroit Police Department and just over $9 million on the Health Department. Why?

The book does point out ways in which the ideas available to city leadership are shaped by the conservative movement and how state-level policies incentivize mayors and city councils to pursue the politics of punishment over a strong welfare state. But those in control of such large budgets certainly possess some agency. The book does not delve much into the decision-making processes of city leaders themselves: Who goes with the program, who pushes back against it, and why?

All in all, Manufacturing Decline is a tremendous achievement. The book somehow manages to achieve both breadth and depth, and it is likely to be accessible to undergraduate student audiences as well. It would serve nicely as the centerpiece of an urban politics course and would also fare well in introductory or advanced undergraduate courses on American politics, the politics of policy making, and race and ethnic politics. Most importantly, at a time when many continue to insist that urban outcomes are an inevitable consequence of market forces, the book highlights the centrality of racism and politics to the decline of the Rust Belt.