Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA

Patty Heyda

Book cover for Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA
Book cover for Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA

Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA

Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA

Patty Heyda

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Description

Ferguson, Missouri, became the epicenter of America's racial tensions after the 2014 murder of Michael Brown and the protests that followed in its wake.

Though this suburb just outside St. Louis might have seemed like an average midwestern town, the activism that exploded there after Brown's killing laid bare how longstanding municipal planning policies had led to racial segregation, fragmentation, poverty, and police targeting.

In over one hundred maps, Patty Heyda charts the systemic forces that have defined Ferguson, and the first-ring suburb in America more broadly. Through an in-depth look at the contradictions undergirding city planning and design, it illuminates how tax incentives, housing codes, urban design, policing, philanthropy, and even landscaping often work against the betterment of residents' lives. At its heart lies a key question: Just who are our cities being built for?

A profound rethinking of what maps can be, Radical Atlas of Ferguson USA will challenge city planners, designers, and everyday citizens to change their perspective of public space.

Foreword by Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman.

About the Author

Patty Heyda is professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the coauthor of Rebuilding the American City and Rebuilding the American Town.

Critical Reviews

A substantial contribution to cartography . . . This visually appealing compendium is useful for anyone interested in mapping for social justice, or in exploring the role of visual and spatial analysis enabled by new research tools that support grassroots, critical, and collective cartography.

--Shriya Malhotra, Cartographic Perspectives


I can't think of a more wide-ranging, rigorous, and artfully produced portrait of how decades of discriminatory policy, planning, and real estate practices played out on a particular stage. I will hold Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA up as a gold standard for spatial analysis, critical mapping, and visual storytelling.

-Daniel D'Oca, Principal of Interboro Partners, Associate Professor in Practice, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and coauthor of The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion


This singular book makes it possible to see St. Louis and the Ferguson Uprising in a new way. Map by map, it both extends and deepens our account of the deep structures and emergent histories that framed both the murder of Michael Brown and the revolt that followed.

-Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States


Patty Heyda brings Ferguson into sharper focus in Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA. In dozens of richly annotated maps, she makes a convincing case that first-ring suburbs are increasingly where tensions over space, capital, and justice come to a head.

-Amanda Kolson Hurley, author of Radical Suburbs: Experimental Living on the Fringes of the American City


A brilliantly comprehensive spatial forensics of class and racial injustice in the contemporary neoliberal American city. It will inspire scholars, cartographers, citizens, and activists to imagine--and to pursue--alternative forms of urbanism in which public institutions actively support, protect, and sustain the conditions for social and spatial justice for all.

-Neil Brenner, Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of Chicago, and author of New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question


This thought-provoking and visually arresting atlas encourages urban planners and architects to challenge the system.

-- Lindsay Harmon, Booklist

Publishing Information

Publisher: Belt Publishing
Pub date: 2024-08-06
Length: 312 pages

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