The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City

"Cities require infrastructure as they grow and persist; infrastructure requires funding, typically from the bond market. But the bond market is not a neutral player. In this groundbreaking book, Destin Jenkins suggests that questions of urban infrastructure are inherently also questions of justice because infrastructure requires financial mechanisms to come into being. Moreover, these mechanisms abstract cities into investments controlled from afar, which exacerbates local inequalities of race, wealth, and power. Ultimately, Jenkins opens up far larger questions, such as why it is that American social welfare is predicated on the demands of finance capitalism in the first place"-- "Indebtedness, like inequality, has become a ubiquitous condition in the United States.