Taubman College faculty member Matthew Lassiter was awarded the 2024 Kenneth Jackson Award by the Urban History Association (UHA) for his book The Suburban Crisis: White America and the War on Drugs (Princeton University Press, 2023).

Lassiter’s book was honored for bringing together scholarship on race, public policy, and urban and suburban studies. Lassiter, professor of urban and regional planning and professor of history in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, studies the intersection of suburban studies, carceral studies, and political history in the 20th century.

In his book, Lassiter explores the narratives around the war on drugs since the 1950s with a focus on deconstructing existing myths around the subject. This includes the interrelationship between the suburbs and cities, the bipartisan support for the War on Drugs, and the creation of what the book calls a “suburban crisis” by government and non-government actors. While the book explores cities across the country, particular focus is put on Los Angeles, a center of the war on drugs, where Lassiter discusses anti-urban sentiments in the suburbs and how they impacted urban policy. 

The UHA works to stimulate interest, research, and study into the history of cities. It gives out the Kenneth Jackson Award annually to a book that advances new knowledge and study into the urban history of North America.