| Sumario: | "Asbury Park, New Jersey, an iconic beachfront city, was founded in 1871 as a resort community catering to residents of the urban Northeast seeking recreation and recovery from illness. By the 1970s, the city faced difficult times as the civil unrest plaguing cities across the nation damaged much of the tourist center in the city's downtown. Yet by 2019 Asbury Park's narrative had shifted again-named among the coolest small towns in America the city now boasts multimillion-dollar beachfront condos attracting the attention of Hollywood stars and national media attention as a travel destination. Summer days in Asbury once again mean tourists strolling the boardwalk and dining by the Atlantic Ocean. But just across the railroad tracks from the seasonal crowds, many of Asbury's long-time residents live below poverty and struggle for their share of this prosperity throughout all four seasons of the year. Sociologists Molly Vollman Makris and Mary Gatta engage in a rich ethnographic investigation of Asbury Park to better understand the connection between jobs and seasonal gentrification and the experiences of long time residents in this beach-community city. They demonstrate how the racial inequality in the founding of Asbury Park is reverberating a century later. This book tells an important and nuanced tale of gentrification using an intersectional lens to examine the history of race relations, the too often overlooked history of the post-industrial city, the role of the LGBTQ population, barriers to employment and access to amenities, and the role of developers as the city rapidly changes. Makris and Gatta draw on in-depth interviews, focus groups, ethnographic observation as well as data analysis to tell the reader a story of life on the West Side of Asbury Park as the East Side prospers and to point to a potential path forward. Asbury Park, New Jersey, an iconic beachfront city, was a dynamic resort community in the late 19th and early 20th century. As the century wore on Asbury Park became an illustration of some of the macro social and economic structural changes occurring in cities across the United States with its own beachfront twist"--
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