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The recent riots in Los Angeles brought the urban crisis back to the center of public policy debates in Washington, D.C., and in urban areas throughout the United States. The contributors to this volume examine the major policy issues--race, housing, transportation, poverty, the changing environment, the effects of the global economy--confronting contemporary American cities. Raymond A. Mohl begins with an extended discussion of the origins, evolution, and current state of Federal involvement in urban centers. Michael B. Katz follows with an insightful look at poverty in turn-of-the-century New York and the attempts to ameliorate the desperate plight of the poor during this period of rapid economic growth. Arnold R. Hirsch, Mohl, and David R. Goldfield then pursue different facets of the racial dilemma confronting American cities. Hirsch discusses historical dimensions of residential segregation and public policy, while Mohl uses Overtown, Miami, as a case study of the social impact of the construction of interstate highways in urban communities. David Goldfield explores the political ramifications and incongruities of contemporary urban race relations. Finally, Carl Abbott and Sam Bass Warner, Jr., examine the impact of global economic developments and the environmental implications of past policy choices. Collectively, the authors show us where we have been, some of the needs that must be addressed, and the urban policy alternatives we face.
Offering some 30 essays, this volume concentrates on recent writings by historians of American architecture & urbanism. The essays are arranged chronologically from colonial to contemporary & accessible in thematic groupings.
This work springs from the idea that human aspirations for the city tend to overstate the role of rationality in public life. The author explores the part serendipity plays in urban experience.
Since the appearance of Urban America in the Modern Age in 1987, the study of American cities has flourished. In this long-awaited second edition, Carl Abbott draws on the recent works of historians who have explored issues of urban growth, municipal politics, immigration and ethnicity, “suburbanization,” and environmental change. The fascination with growth and change in the nation’s metropolitan areas spans a wide range of scholarly fields, and the new edition also benefits from scholarship in disciplines closely related to urban history, including geography, political science, sociology, and urban planning. Featuring an entirely new chapter covering the years since 1980 and a bank of interesting photographs, the second edition of Urban America in the Modern Age further explores and fine-tunes the themes and topics central to its predecessor—the physical form of metropolitan areas, their sources of growth and mix of ethnic and racial groups, the shaping of and responses to public policy, and ideas of community planning. Regionally balanced—with examples from New York, Boston, and Chicago, as well as Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, San Antonio, Miami, Charlotte, Washington, Detroit, and Cleveland—the second edition of Urban America in the Modern Age makes ideal supplementary reading for courses in Urban History, twentieth-century America, as well as the second half of the U.S. survey.
"Around Detroit, suburbanization was led by Henry Ford, who not only located a massive factory over the city's border in Dearborn, but also was the first industrialist to make the automobile a mass consumer item. So, suburbanization in the 1920s was spurred simultaneously by the migration of the automobile industry and the mobility of automobile users. A welfare capitalist, Ford was a leader on many fronts--he raised wages, increased leisure time, and transformed workers into consumers, and he was the most effective at making suburbs an intrinsic part of American life. The decade was dominated by this new political economy--also known as "Fordism"--Linking mass production and consumption. The rise of Dearborn demonstrated that Fordism was connected to mass suburbanization as well. Ultimately, Dearborn proved to be a model that was repeated throughout the nation, as people of all classes relocated to suburbs, shifting away from central cities. Mass suburbanization was a national phenomenon. Yet the example of Detroit is an important baseline since the trend was more discernable there than elsewhere. Suburbanization, however, was never a simple matter of outlying communities growing in parallel with cities. Instead, resources were diverted from central cities as they were transferred to the suburbs. The example of the Detroit metropolis asks whether the mass suburbanization which originated there represented the "American dream," and if so, by whom and at what cost. This book will appeal to those interested in cities and suburbs, American studies, technology and society, political economy, working-class culture, welfare state systems, transportation, race relations, and business management"--
An updated edition of the essential text from “a respected urban historian” (Annals of Iowa). Throughout the twentieth century, the city was deemed a problematic space, one that Americans urgently needed to improve. Although cities from New York to Los Angeles served as grand monuments to wealth and enterprise, they also reflected the social and economic fragmentation of the nation. Race, ethnicity, and class splintered the metropolis both literally and figuratively, thwarting efforts to create a harmonious whole. The urban landscape revealed what was right—and wrong—with both the country and its citizens’ way of life. In this thoroughly revised edition of his highly acclaimed book, Jon C. Teaford updates the story of urban America by expanding his discussion to cover the end of the twentieth century and the first years of the next millennium. A new chapter on urban revival initiatives at the close of the century focuses on the fight over suburban sprawl as well as the mixed success of reimagining historic urban cores as hip new residential and cultural hubs. The book also explores the effects of the late-century immigration boom from Latin America and Asia, which has complicated the metropolitan ethnic portrait. Drawing on wide-ranging primary and secondary sources, Teaford describes the complex social, political, economic, and physical development of US urban areas over the course of the long twentieth century. Touching on aging central cities, technoburbs, and the ongoing conflict between inner-city poverty and urban boosterism, The Twentieth-Century American City offers a broad, accessible overview of America’s persistent struggle for a better city.
It is a paradox of American life that we are a highly urbanized nation filled with people deeply ambivalent about urban life. An aversion to urban density and all that it contributes to urban life, and a perception that the city was the place where "big government" first took root in America fostered what historian Steven Conn terms the "anti-urban impulse." In response, anti-urbanists called for the decentralization of the city, and rejected the role of government in American life in favor of a return to the pioneer virtues of independence and self-sufficiency. In this provocative and sweeping book, Conn explores the anti-urban impulse across the 20th century, examining how the ideas born of it have shaped both the places in which Americans live and work, and the anti-government politics so strong today. Beginning in the booming industrial cities of the Progressive era at the turn of the 20th century, where debate surrounding these questions first arose, Conn examines the progression of anti-urban movements. : He describes the decentralist movement of the 1930s, the attempt to revive the American small town in the mid-century, the anti-urban basis of urban renewal in the 1950s and '60s, and the Nixon administration's program of building new towns as a response to the urban crisis, illustrating how, by the middle of the 20th century, anti-urbanism was at the center of the politics of the New Right. Concluding with an exploration of the New Urbanist experiments at the turn of the 21st century, Conn demonstrates the full breadth of the anti-urban impulse, from its inception to the present day. Engagingly written, thoroughly researched, and forcefully argued, Americans Against the City is important reading for anyone who cares not just about the history of our cities, but about their future as well.