In an obscure footnote to his groundbreaking study of deindustrialization in Detroit, Thomas J. Sugrue notes that “the history of industrial renewal in postwar American cities is still largely unwritten.” A review of the historiography of the postwar city confirms this statement. Historians have carefully explored the problems of low-income housing provision, red lining, and urban racial conflict, as well as the destructive consequences of federally subsidized highway construction, urban renewal, and suburbanization. With only limited exceptions, however, few scholars have examined the history of local policy strategies that addressed the disappearance of urban manufacturing jobs.