Description
Discuss real estate with any young family and the subject of schools is certain to come up—in fact, it will likely be a crucial factor in determining where that family lives. Not merely institutions of learning, schools have increasingly become a sign of a neighborhood’s vitality, and city planners have ever more explicitly promoted “good schools” as a means of attracting more affluent families to urban areas, a dynamic process that Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara critically examines in Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities.
Focusing on Philadelphia’s Center City Schools Initiative, she shows how education policy makes overt attempts to prevent, or at least slow, middle-class flight to the suburbs. Navigating complex ethical terrain, she balances the successes of such policies in strengthening urban schools and communities against the inherent social injustices they propagate—the further marginalization and disempowerment of lowerclass families. By asking what happens when affluent parents become “valued customers,” Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities uncovers a problematic relationship between public institutions and private markets, where the former are used to leverage the latter to effect urban transformations.
Chapter
Chapter 2. From “Philthadelphia” to the “Next Great City”: Revitalization in a Postindustrial City
Chapter 3. Institutions of Last Resort: Crisis, Markets, and Stratification in Philadelphia’s Schools
Chapter 4. Revitalizing Schools: The Center City Schools Initiative
Chapter 5. “ This Is Not an Inner-City School!” Marketing Grant Elementary
Chapter 6. “ This School Can Be Way Better!” Transforming Grant Elementary
Chapter 7. The “Segregated Schools Initiative?” Lasting Consequences of a Short-Lived Project
Chapter 8. Citizens, Customers, and City Schools
Appendix A. Research Methodology
Appendix B. Parents’ Activities at Grant Elementary
Appendix C. List of Formal Interviews by Category or Title
Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities
：Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities
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