This is a clear, concise history of housing development, focused mainly on the early 1900s to 1960s, that emphasizes all the parts of a machine created to segregate people of color from white people in the US. Some of the factors are blatantly obvious, some more subtle, but this book illustrates just how much segregation was programmed into our environments and how it still perpetuates today. I would like to say this would be a good book for the people who say things like, "it's not that deep," or "it just happened that way on its own," "that's ancient history," "it's not actually racist" to get a proper view of it all, but I don't think they'd be the type that is open to this book either, sadly. 

A large part is focused on sub-urbanization, and specifically mentions Levittown NY and as someone who grew up on Long Island, makes this a local history for me as well. I did learn some of the basic facts about Levittown in high school, but only to highlight is place in history as a post war solution, the original ticky tacky houses, etc. but never about the blatant segregation there and towns like it. I did learn some of those details a little later on, on my own, but still never just how clearly worded in the law that the refusal to sell to Black families was.

The saddest thing about this whole book, is that every step of the way, when civil rights movements finally force the laws to change, it is always too late, and the damage has already been done. It highlights just how much of privilege is gained in such short bursts of time, that can't be evened out just by making things "equal" later on.