At some point in the middle of the 1960s, tucked between the Watts riots of 1965 and the Detroit riots of 1968, American society determined that cities were not only in decline but that they all were in the grips of an “urban crisis.” Experts, naysayers, policy makers, and prognosticators all outlined the depth of the urban crisis. ”One cannot be expected to rate as an expert on the city,” lamented the new Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes in 1968, “unless one foresees its doom.” And indeed, the declarations of an urban crisis did reflect some very real tensions and problems with race relations, capital disinvestment, crime, and environmental degradation. However, critics of American cities also created a sense of crisis which had its own language of decay, chaos and collapse. Furthermore, the language of the urban crisis not only shaped policies and governmental practices it also exacerbated the process of disinvestment. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the urban crisis signaled the impending death of many American cities. Such rhetoric of urban conditions and urban blight continue to resonate in the body politic, even as recently and unequivocally as Donald Trump’s inauguration speech in which he spoke of “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner-cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across

中文翻译：

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美国大屠杀与城市尸检艺术

在 1960 年代中期的某个时刻，夹在 1965 年瓦茨骚乱和 1968 年底特律骚乱之间，美国社会认定城市不仅在衰落，而且都处于“城市危机”的控制之中。专家、反对者、政策制定者和预言家都概述了城市危机的深度。1968 年，新任克利夫兰市长卡尔·斯托克斯 (Carl Stokes) 哀叹道：“除非有人预见到它的厄运，否则不能指望有人能成为这座城市的专家。” 事实上，城市危机的宣告确实反映了种族关系、资本撤资、犯罪和环境退化等一些非常真实的紧张局势和问题。然而，美国城市的批评者也制造了一种危机感，它有自己的衰败、混乱和崩溃的语言。此外，城市危机的语言不仅塑造了政策和政府做法，而且加剧了撤资过程。就像一个自我实现的预言，城市危机预示着许多美国城市即将死亡。这种关于城市状况和城市衰败的言论继续在政治体中产生共鸣，即使最近唐纳德特朗普的就职演说也毫不含糊，他在演讲中谈到“被困在我们市中心的贫困中的母亲和孩子，生锈的工厂像对面的墓碑