Invincible Cities

Since the 1970s, sociologist Camilo José Vergara has been photographing the built environment of America's post-industrial cities, especially places associated with economically disadvantaged minority communities.  Drawing on disciplines such as anthropology, architectural history, history, photography, and urban planning, Vergara has discovered seven distinctive characteristics of ghetto neighborhoods:  fortification; ruins; empty lots; social containers; a visual language of art and advertisements; public service billboards; and bringing suburbanization to inner cities.  To read more about these features, visit the MacArthur Fellow's Visual Encyclopedia of the American Ghetto, sponsored by Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers University here.

Image above:  Camilo José Vergara, from the Visual Encyclopedia of the American Ghetto.  url:  http://invinciblecities.camden.rutgers.edu/intro.html  Viewed 06 March 2009.