In the article, “The Enclave, the Citadel, and the Ghetto: What has Changed in the Post-Fordist US City”, Peter Marcuse accurately describes an “enclave”, a “citadel” and “the ghetto”. Marcuse provides an extremely engaging in depth analysis of the various characteristics of each of these “social spaces” or “spatial clustering” that define and distinguish them from one another. For example, the article draws a very clear line between immigrant enclaves and the black ghettos. I cannot say much about the black ghettos of New York City but as an immigrant, I can confirm the article’s claim that most immigrant communities are established voluntarily to provide support to one another so that everyone can achieve upward mobility in the American society is very on point. Marcuse makes another interesting observation that that the residents of Black ghettos rarely ventured out to participate in mainstream economic activity. Meanwhile, immigrant entrepreneurs used their business as a means of communication with the non-immigrant world. Although this observation about the “black ghettos” might be relevant in economic terms, I think that not all black neighborhoods are secluded from society. In fact, they are an integral part of the mainstream society and do exert a major influence on culture. For example, rap music is indeed a very popular music genre and has had a significant impact on our mainstream music industry. Therefore, I learned that while this article reports some very interesting facts, not all points discussed apply to all urban black ghettos.

Also, instead of just merely reporting facts such as high crime and unemployment rates, this highly informative article further explains why these “outcast black ghettos” are in their current state. These new ghettos, which emerged in the Post-Fordist cities, were subject to social and economic segregation. According to the article, the residents of the “citadel” (the upper wealthy class) labeled the black ghettos as “a leper society” mainly because they provide little or no benefit to the economy. Instead, it is assumed that they drain the public and private resources. This labeling could be a reason why residents rarely established businesses outside their ghettos. But once again, this observation may be flawed because such characteristics are not shared by every black neighborhood, especially in such a diverse city like New York.