Journal of Urban History recent issues

The Answer to Suburbia: Playboy's Urban Lifestyle

Fraterrigo, E. — 2008-06-04

This article examines images of urban and domestic space that appeared in Playboy magazine in the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that in crafting the bachelor's ideal habitat, Playboy engaged in a popular discourse on changing roles for men and women, transformations in the urban landscape, and a consolidating ethos of consumption. Readers encountered a vision of urban life and domesticity that served as a gendered response to the perceived "feminization" of society and widespread suburbanization while also countering images of urban decline. Playboy's representations of the bachelor pad and the city provide insight into the meanings attached to the evolution of the metropolitan landscape in the postwar period and reveal the cultural foundations for the construction of a masculine identity based on leisure and consumption.

Civic Communication in Britain: A Study of the Municipal Journal c. 1893-1910

Griffiths, J. R. — 2008-06-04

This article examines a journal initially known as London and subsequently the Municipal Journal which was first published in the 1890s. It is argued that this publication deserves closer scrutiny by historians interested in urban progressivism over the approximate period 1890-1910. As the foremost journal for diffusing ideas about the management of cities in this era it offers important insights regarding the successes and failures of the Progressive project in both the British capital and the provincial centers. It is argued that the journal played two important roles in this period. The first was to defend the Progressive agenda from Conservative (Moderate) attack, and the second was to play the role as the "Hansard of local government." The impression left to the historian is that Progressivism as a movement contained internal contradictions which contributed to its demise by 1914.

Reinventing Memories: The Origin and Development of Barcelona's Barri Gotic, 1880-1950

Ganau, J. — 2008-06-04

The heritage and the historical centers of many towns are increasingly presented, and sometimes massively consumed, as theme parks with a historical content. This paper analyzes the long term process involved in the creation of Barcelona's Gothic quarter (Barri Gòtic). This quarter came into being due to the combination of two parallel processes: the conclusion of the cathedral and the redevelopment of the city center. The Barri Gòtic was a conscious creation that was meant to provide the cathedral with a gothic environment and was created by gathering together fragments left over following the demolition of the historic city. It was conceived as a type of avant la lettre historic theme park and was essentially a creation of the mid-twentieth century.

John Merriman: "Cities and Politics in Nineteenth Century France"

Vidal, L., Beriet, G., Haynes, C. — 2008-06-04

Review Essay: Budapest, Past and Present: GABOR GYANI, Identity and the Urban Experience: Fin-de-Siecle Budapest. Translated by Thomas J. DeKornfeld. Boulder, Colorado: Social Science Monographs; Wayne, NJ: Center for Hungarian Studies and Publications; Budapest: Institute of Habsburg History, 2004, ix, pp. 271, notes, index, $40.00 cloth. JUDIT BODNAR, Fin de Millenaire Budapest: Metamorphoses of Urban Life. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001, vii, pp. 222, notes, bibliography, index, $35.00 cloth

Vermes, G. — 2008-06-04

Review Essay: Airport History: JANET R. DALY BEDNAREK, America's Airports: Airfield Development, 1918-1947. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2001, pp. viii, 226, index, bibliography, notes, illustrations, $39.95 cloth. DAVID T. COURTWRIGHT, Sky as Frontier: Adventure, Aviation, and Empire. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2005, x, 284, illustrations, notes, references, index, $60 cloth, $24.95 paper

Breihan, J. R. — 2008-06-04

Review Essay: INTEGRATING EDUCATION HISTORY AND URBAN HISTORY The Politics of Schools and Cities: JACK DOUGHERTY, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004, pp. xiii, 253, illustrations, maps, charts, table, notes, bibliography, index, $49.94 cloth, $19.95 paper. ADAM R. NELSON, The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston's Public Schools, 1950-1985. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005, xvii, 332, notes, index, $70.00 cloth, $27.50 paper. DORIS HINSON PIEROTH, Seattle's Women Teachers of the Interwar Years: Shapers of a Livable City. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004, ix, 283, illustrations, bibliography, notes, index, $30.00 cloth. KATE ROUSMANIERE, Citizen Teacher: The Life and Leadership of Margaret Haley. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005, xi. 271, illustrations, notes, bibliographic essay, bibliography, index, $81.50 cloth, $25.95 paper

Rogers, B. L. — 2008-06-04

Review Essay: MODERNITY AND THE MIDDLE EAST Cities and Their Citizens: JENS HANSSEN, Fin De Siecle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, pp. vi, 307, illustrations, graph, tables, bibliography, index, $95.00 cloth. KEITH DAVID WATENPAUGH, Being Modern in the Middle East : Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. vii, 325, illustrations, tables, maps, $35.00 cloth. CHRISTA SALAMANDRA, A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004, pp. ix, 199, illustrations, map, bibliography, index, $49.95 cloth, $21.95 paper

Katz, K. — 2008-06-04

Review Essay: Shaping Southern Urban Development and Social Relations: CHARLES E. CONNERLY, "The Most Segregated City in America": City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2005, xvi, 360, illustrations, notes, index, $45.00 cloth. CHRISTINA GREENE, Our Separate Ways: Women and Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005, xviii, 366, illustration, notes, bibliography, index, $59.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. DAVID FORT GODSHALK, Veiled Visions: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the Reshaping of American Race Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005, xvi, 365, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $59.95 cloth, $22.50 paper. CHRISTOPHER MACGREGOR SCRIBNER, Renewing Birmingham:Federal Funding and the Promise of Change 1929-1979. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002, pp. xii, 188, notes, bibliography, index, $40.00 cloth

Mantri, S. — 2008-06-04

Review Essay: NEW IN OUR EYES Race, Class, and Progress in New South Atlanta: ANDY AMBROSE, Atlanta: An Illustrated History. Foreword by John Lewis. Athens, GA: Hill Street, 2003, illustrations, maps, resources and suggested reading, index, $18.95 paper. KAREN FERGUSON, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002, pp. xvi, 366, illustrations, maps, appendix, tables, notes, works cited, index, $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. GREGORY MIXON, The Atlanta Riot: Race, Class, and Violence in a New South City. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005, xv, 197, maps, index, notes, bibliography, $59.95 cloth

Chambliss, J. C. — 2008-06-04

Review Essay: EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED Black-Jewish History in Twentieth-Century America: V. P. FRANKLIN, NANCY L. GRANT, HAROLD M. KLETNICK, AND GENNA RAE MCNEIL, eds., African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999, vii, pp. 366, footnotes, index, $34.95. ERIC J. SUNDQUIST, Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005, pp. 645, notes, $35.00 paper

Adams, L. — 2008-06-04

Redefining the Axis of Beijing: Revolution and Nostalgia in the Planning of the PRC Capital

Shuishan Yu, — 2008-04-10

This article analyzes the urban planning controversies that led to the fast expansion of Chang'an Avenue and the irreversible alteration of Beijing's urban fabric, focusing on the issue of Beijing city's dominant axis in the Liang-Chen Scheme and Zhu-Zhao Scheme around the year 1950. My argument is that the failure of Liang's vision for Beijing was mainly due to the nostalgic nature of his proposal and its close affiliation with the imperial model, which did not meet the expectation of the revolutionary spirit of the time. Politics did play a central role in the urban transformation of Beijing in the People's Republic of China. However, instead of treating architects' debate as a footnote to Mao's casual comments, this article integrates the Chinese Communist Party's political agenda as part of the architectural discourse.

Civil Rights Versus "Civic Progress": The St. Louis NAACP and the City Charter Fight, 1956--1957

Lang, C. — 2008-04-10

This article discusses the campaign that the St. Louis, Missouri, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People led against a proposed new municipal charter in 1956 and 1957. Many black activists viewed the charter as an attempt to exclude African Americans from city government and policy. They also feared it would facilitate the displacement of black working-class communities in the elite interests of urban redevelopment and "civic progress." This article argues that the charter fight stimulated a civil rights struggle locally, and brought to the fore class conflict among the city's black leadership that would become more pronounced in later decades. This project illustrates that black civil rights agendas encompassed complex issues of urban policy and planning, and structures of municipal governance. Furthermore, it highlights the role black urban working-class movements played in challenging unequal patterns of postwar metropolitan development.

Combating NEED: Urban Conflict and the Transformations of the War on Poverty and the African American Freedom Struggle in Rocky Mount, North Carolina

Hazirjian, L. G. — 2008-04-10

This article examines the struggle for control over Rocky Mount's Community Action Program (CAP)— Nash-Edgecombe Economic Development (NEED)—as a turning point in a longstanding urban conflict. For decades, white businessmen and government officials had repeatedly blocked African Americans from using federal policy innovations to promote racial equality and black economic advancement. Implementation of the city's War on Poverty initially followed these well-established patterns. But by the summer of 1967, working-class African American neighborhood organizations, supported by federal and state agencies, loosened the white political establishment's grip on NEED, secured improvements in rental housing regulation, and increased their role within the city's evolving black freedom movement. In exploring these transformations, this essay argues that the CAP should be reevaluated from the perspective of how it altered the course of local economic and political struggles, and how local contests over implementation of the CAP reshaped the War on Poverty.

Writing Watts: Budd Schulberg, Black Poetry, and the Cultural War on Poverty

Widener, D. — 2008-04-10

The Watts Writers Workshop was among the most visible community arts projects to develop in Southern California after the 1965 Watts riot. The brainchild of author, screenwriter, and Hollywood personality Budd Schulberg, the workshop sought to develop creative writing talent as an antidote for black social alienation. As an effort in interracial urban reform through artistic expression, the workshop found strong initial support among liberal celebrities, government officials, and private foundations. The increasing salience of the black power movement, however, raised serious internal questions regarding the workshop's avowedly integrationist mission. The Watts Writers Workshop thus offers an important window into the 1960s-era conflict between liberal and radical forces.

Review Essay: Down but Not Out: The Politics of the East End Poor and Those Who Investigated Their Lives. MARC BRODIE, The Politics of the Poor: The East End of London 1885-1914. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2004, pp. xii + 240, illustrations, notes, index, {pound}55 cloth. SETH KOVEN, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. xvii + 399, illustrations, notes, index, {pound}18.95 cloth

Bressey, C. — 2008-04-10

Review Essay: Producing the North American Metropolitan Landscape: ROBERT D. BULLARD, GLENN S. JOHNSON, AND ANGEL O. TORRES, eds., Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning in Atlanta. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000, pp. xiii, 236, tables, notes, index, $30.00 paper. CATHERINE GUDIS, Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape. New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. viii, 333, illustrations, bibliography, notes, index, $22.00 paper. OWEN D. GUTFREUND, Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. xv, 297, illustrations, maps, bibliography, notes, index, $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. RICHARD HARRIS, Creeping Conformity: How Canada Became Suburban, 1900-1960. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. x, 204, illustrations, figures, maps, bibliography, notes, index, $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. AMY MARIA KENYON, Dreaming Suburbia: Detroit and the Production of Postwar Space and Culture. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004, pp. vii, 214, bibliography, notes, index, $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. DOUGLAS KNERR, Suburban Steel: The Magnificent Failure of the Lustron Corporation, 1945-1951. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004, pp. x, 248, illustrations, notes, index, $44.45 cloth. ROBERT LEWIS, ed., Manufacturing Suburbs: Building Work and Home on the Metropolitan Fringe. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004, pp. x, 204, illustrations, tables, maps, notes, index, $68.50 cloth, $24.95 paper

Seligman, A. I. — 2008-04-10

Review Essay: Will the Poor Be With Us Always?: MARK ROBERT RANK, One Nation Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. v, 356, preface, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 cloth, $16.95 paper. JEFFREY D. SACHS, End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. New York: Penguin Press, 2005, pp. vii, 397, acknowledgments, foreword by Bono, introduction, works cited, further reading, notes, index, credits. $27.95 cloth, $16.00 paper. DAVID K. SHIPLER, The Working Poor: Invisible in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, pp. vii, 319, preface, introduction, notes, index. $25.00 cloth, $14.00 paper. STEPHEN C. SMITH, Ending Global Poverty: A Guide to What Works. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005, pp. ix, 260, preface and acknowledgments, introduction, notes and references, index. $26.95 cloth

Goddard, T. D. — 2008-04-10

Review Essay: The Business of Business in The Middle Ages: Bruges and Montpellier. JAMES M. MURRAY, Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280-1390. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. xi, 409, illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index, $100.00 cloth. KATHRYN L. REYERSON, The Art of the Deal: Intermediaries of Trade in Medieval Montpellier. The Medieval Mediterranean, Vol. 37. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2002, pp. 257, maps, charts, tables, notes, bibliography, index, $128.00 cloth

Sortor, M. — 2008-04-10

Review Essay: Violence, Memory, and Politics: Recent Work on Memorials in Berlin and Beyond. KAREN E. TILL, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, pp. xii, 279, illustrations, maps, notes, index, $25 paper. DANIEL J. WALKOWITZ AND LISA MAYA KNAUER, eds., Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004, pp. viii, 326, illustrations, notes, bibliography, discography, index, $23.95 paper

Jordan, J. A. — 2008-04-10

Review Essay: Collaboration and Conflict: Immigrant Life in Urban America. JACK GLAZIER, Dispersing the Ghetto: The Relocation of Jewish Immigrants across America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998, pp. x + 245, appendix, notes, index, $39.95 cloth. DAVID C. HAMMACK, DIANE L. GRABOWSKI, AND JOHN J. GRABOWSKI, eds. Identity, Conflict, and Cooperation: Central Europeans in Cleveland, 1850-1930. Cleveland, OH: Western Reserve Historical Society, 2002, pp. ix + 364, illustrations, tables, notes, index, contributors, $15.95 paper. RUSSELL A. KAZAL, Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. xvii + 383, illustrations, maps, tables, index, notes, $35.00 cloth. ELI LEDERHENDLER, New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950-1970. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001, pp. xix + 275, illustrations, tables, notes, works cited, index, $29.95 cloth

Vecchio, D. C. — 2008-04-10

Review Essay: Latinos as Protagonists in American Urban History and Planning Practice: ARLENE DAVILA, Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, pp. xi, 260, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $19.95 paperback. MARIO LUIS SMALL, Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. xx, 226, footnotes, bibliography, index, tables, $50 cloth, $20 paper. ANDREW GRANT WOOD, ed. On the Border: Society and Culture between the United States and Mexico. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, pp. xi, 303, notes, index, illustrations, $70.00 cloth, $24.95 paper

Dinzey-Flores, Z. Z. — 2008-04-10

Machine Building and City Building: Urban Planning and Industrial Restructuring in Philadelphia, 1894-1928

Vitiello, D. — 2008-02-11

The deindustrialization of North American cities is generally told as a post-World War II narrative, featuring factory closings, highways to the suburbs, and urban renewal programs responding to the loss of jobs and population. Yet, as recent scholarship on industrial suburbanization has shown, the decentralization of manufacturing manifested itself throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some scholars of twentieth-century planning have observed that urban renewal programs hurt cities as much as they helped. This essay argues that some late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century redevelopment programs played a greater causal role in deindustrialization and the shift in Americans' conceptions of cities from places of production to places of consumption. Surveying the complex relationships between urban and industrial restructuring in Philadelphia during the pre-Depression decades, it examines the prehistory of federal urban renewal at the state and local level.

Avoiding "Jim Crow": Negotiating Separate and Equal on Florida's Railroads and Streetcars and the Progressive Era Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement

Cassanello, R. — 2008-02-11

The fight against discrimination on public transportation in Florida at the turn of the twentieth century helped to transform black leaders from nineteenth century activists into modern civil rights protesters. Although the movements at the turn of the century and the ones that dominated the South after World War II were not directly connected through a continuum of leadership and institutions, activists in the early twentieth century laid the intellectual and philosophical foundations of the modern civil rights movements. These important protests coincided with increased migration and urbanization of blacks and poor whites in Florida, but also provided that space where the merging of disparate groups of black leaders could communicate and subordinate gender and class demands to race.

The Commercial Sector in an Early-Twentieth Century Spanish City, La Coruna 1914-1935

Miras Araujo, J. — 2008-02-11

The aim of this study is to examine the weight and evolution of commercial distribution in a medium-sized Spanish city. The paper is divided into four main parts, the first of which analyzes retail studies within a historical context. The second looks at the basic structure and the evolution of the commercial sector in La Coruña from an aggregate perspective, and subsequently distinguishes between retail and wholesale activities. Finally, details are given as to the composition of the sector, according to subgroups of activity. Although the paper has a local focus, an attempt has been made to situate the city's commercial activity within the wider context of the Spanish urban system, and in particular, of medium-sized Spanish cities. The discussion continues to reach some general conclusions about this sector as a whole.

Australian Public Housing and the Diverse Histories of Social Mix

Arthurson, K. — 2008-02-11

In Australia, the concept of social mix has strong currency in contemporary public housing estate regeneration policy, where balancing social mix is attached to addressing social and behavioral issues on the postwar public housing estates. However, contemporary debates about social mix tend to ignore the finding that interest in social mix is by no means new. Attention to social mix has informed Australian new town planning and housing policy since the post—World War II years, although the origins of the concept can be seen earlier in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. The focus of this article is on examining the relevance of the concept of social mix through history by drawing on South Australian housing policy and the Salisbury North housing estate as a specific case study of social mix in practice. The aim is to show how the concept of social mix is constructed differently over time and how it has been adapted to the present situation of dealing with concentrations of impoverished residents on public housing estates. The article draws on context, practice, and texts as important variables that help to constitute the meaning of social mix.

Review Essay: Complex Histories and Local Identities: JOHN J. CZAPLICKA AND BLAIR A. RUBLE, eds., Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, pp. xiv, 430, illustrations, tables, notes, index, $59.95 cloth. MARTIN V. MELOSI AND PHILIP SCARPINO, eds., Public History and the Environment. Malabar, FL: Krieger, 2004, pp. xiv, 291, illustration, notes, index, $38.50 cloth. MAX PAGE AND RANDALL MASON, eds., Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States. New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. vii, 344, illustrations, notes, index, $24.95 cloth

Ryberg, S. — 2008-02-11

Review Essay: At a Crossroads? Diverging Paths in the History of Crime: ANDREW WENDER COHEN, The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900-1940. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. xviii, 333, illustrations, index, notes, bibliography, $60.00 cloth. ERIC H. MONKKONEN, Crime, Justice, History. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002, pp. xi, 293, tables, illustrations, notes, references, index, $49.95 cloth. EDUARDO OBREGON PAGAN, Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race and Riot in Wartime Los Angeles. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, pp. 312, illustrations, tables, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper

Wolcott, D. B. — 2008-02-11

Review Essay: The American Downtown: Sagas of Race, Place, and Space ROBERT M. FOGELSON, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 492, illustrations, notes, index, $50 cloth, $22 paper. ANASTASIA LOUKAITOU-SIDERIS and TRIDIB BANERJEE, Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, pp. xxix, 350, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $40.00 cloth. ALISON ISENBERG, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. xvii, 441, illustrations, index, notes, $32.50 cloth

Bauman, J. F. — 2008-02-11

Review Essay: The Machine in Society: BRIAN J. CUDAHY, Rails Under the Mighty Hudson: The Story of the Hudson Tubes and the Pennsy Tunnels and Manhattan Tunnels. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2002, pp. 112, illustrations, appendixes, bibliography, $20 paperback. JANET F. DAVIDSON AND MICHAEL S. SWEENEY, On The Move: Transportation and the American Story. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2003, pp. 319, illustrations, $35.00 cloth. CLIFTON HOOD, 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, 2004, pp. 336, illustrations, notes, index, $18.95 paper. GENE SANSONE, New York Subways: An Illustrated History of New York City's Transit Cars. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, pp. xiii, 508, illustrations, glossary, tables, diagrams, appendices, $49.95 hardcover

Sollohub, D. — 2008-02-11

Review Essay: Specters of the City: STEVEN CONN AND MAX PAGE, editors, Building the Nation: Americans Write About Their Architecture, Their Cities, and Their Landscape. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, pp. xi, 412, index, illustrations, $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. SAMUEL DELANEY, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. New York: New York University Press, 1999, pp. xviii, 203, $19 paper. CHRISTOPHE DEN TANDT, The Urban Sublime in American Literary Naturalism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998, pp. xiv, 288, notes, bibliography, index, $49.95 cloth, $18.95 paper. JAMES DONALD, Imagining the Modern City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. xiii, 216, illustrations, notes, index, $24.95 paper. MADHU DUBEY, Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. ix, 284, notes, index, $19.80 paper. JAMES R. GILES, The Naturalistic Inner-City Novel in America: Encounters with the Fat Man. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995, pp. ix, 204, bibliography, index, $34.95 cloth. RICHARD LEHAN, The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, pp. xvi, 330, illustrations, tables, bibliography, index, $45 cloth, $17.95 paper. DAVID L. ULIN, editor, Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology. New York: The Library of America, 2002, pp. xix, 880, illustrations, $40.00 cloth

Eckstein, B. — 2008-02-11

Review Essay: In Search of Urban Livability: CARL ABBOTT, Greater Portland: Urban Life and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, pp. xi, 242, illustrations, maps, notes, index, $19.95 paper, $34.95 cloth. JAMES LYONS, Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America. London: Wallflower Press, 2004, pp. vii, 226, illustrations, notes, index, bibliography, $24.50 hardback. T. M. SELL, Wings of Power: Boeing and the Politics of Growth in the Northwest. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001, pp. xxx, 162, notes, bibliography, index, cloth

Hovey, B. — 2008-02-11

Review Essay: Buildings in the Making of Cities: Three Chicago Case Studies RICHARD LONGSTRETH, ed., The Charnley House: Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Making of Chicago's Gold Coast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. xxi, 249, illustrations, notes, index, $55.00 hardback. JOSEPH M. SIRY, The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. xv, 550, illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, index, $55.00 cloth. KATHERINE SOLOMONSON, The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. xiii, 370, illustrations, bibliography, index, $80.00 cloth [University of Chicago Press, 2003, $27.00 paper]

Desmond, M. — 2008-02-11

Why Don't American Cities Burn Very Often?

Katz, M. B. — 2008-01-09

Prompted by the 2005 urban riots in France, this article asks why, with very few exceptions, American cities have not experienced widespread civil disorders since the late 1970s, especially when many of the conditions underlying the earlier disorders persist or have worsened. The answer lies in three factors: the changing ecology of power, techniques for managing marginalization, and distinctive U.S. approaches to the incorporation and control of immigrants.

Introduction: Politics and the American City, 1940 1990

Pritchett, W. E., Rose, M. H. — 2008-01-09

Authors of articles in this issue identify two themes in American urban history. First, between 1950 and 1980, politicians including St. Louis mayors as well as New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and Robert A. Weaver (Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development), fostered an upward shift in the locus of authority for directing the urban-political economy. By the 1980s, however, small-city mayors around San Francisco as well as President Richard M. Nixon joined with policy activists including Jane Jacobs and Irving Kristol to affect a downward shift of authority. Unlikely allies, Jacobs, Kristol, and Nixon sought to return power to the hands of local leaders. Second, authors show that political elites shaped the conceptual, legal, and institutional frameworks within which they worked to foster economic growth, reduce crime, structure the economic and social geography of cities and regions, and deal with the challenges of race and class at a moment of social upheaval.

The City Quietly Remade: National Programs and Local Agendas in the Movement to Clear the Slums, 1942 1952

Heathcott, J. — 2008-01-09

The case of St. Louis in the 1940s demonstrates the central importance of this decade in American urban history. To understand how planners and elected officials made such extensive use of federal funds in the 1950s and 1960s for public housing and urban renewal, we have to recast the 1940s as a critical period in the formation both of a new urban vision and of a political coalition emboldened to carry it out. Frustrated in their attempts to rebuild in brick and mortar, slum clearance advocates in St. Louis set about redefining the terms of debate over the future of the city itself. They mobilized behind a vision of the city at a crossroads, poised between progress and decay. Yet despite such stark rhetoric, slum clearance was not so much a technological or economic imperative, but a carefully assembled political agenda to remake the urban landscape.

Shades of Black and Green: The Making of Racial and Environmental Liberalism in Nelson Rockefeller's New York

Siskind, P. — 2008-01-09

Over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s, the nature and public perception of racial and environmental crises in American metropolitan areas shifted dramatically. In response to emboldened and expanding numbers of activists, urban politicians both re-doubled old efforts and adopted new approaches. But how and to what extent did policymaking change? This article focuses on a New York powerfully shaped by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, a pragmatic and ambitious man who forthrightly embodied a liberal approach to governing that placed confidence in the state's ability to solve social problems. The complex storm of 1960s era activism and the Rockefeller administration's attempts to adapt to the times revealed important contours of postwar American liberalism—its internal tensions and evolutions and its potential and limitations.

Which Urban Crisis?: Regionalism, Race, and Urban Policy, 1960 1974

Pritchett, W. E. — 2008-01-09

During the 1960s and 1970s, Congress and policymakers engaged in a heated debate over the proper role of the federal government in urban America enacted several initiatives to deal with the problems facing older cities, including creating the Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, throughout these years, federal officials, members of Congress, and other interested parties remained divided over the extent and nature of the "urban crisis." During the early 1960s, much of the debate about urban areas focused on the problems of "metropolitan growth," but in late 1960s, urban problems became increasingly identified with issues of racial conflict. By the early 1970s, policymakers had concluded that federal programs had generally failed to improve the state of urban America, and they oversaw a devolution of power back to local governments.

The Defeat of the Golden Gate Authority: A Special District, a Council of Governments, and the Fate of Regional Planning in the San Francisco Bay Area

Dyble, L. N. — 2008-01-09

In 1958, John F. McCarthy and Edgar F. Kaiser proposed the Golden Gate Authority to coordinate, plan for, and develop regional transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area. This agency would have incorporated all Bay Area bridges, seaports, and airports and would have provided the foundation for general regional planning and metropolitan area government, with capacity to expand its jurisdiction and functions. As such, the proposal threatened the autonomy of local governments, whose officials rallied against it, evoking the principle of federalism under the rubric of "home rule." In accounting for the defeat of the authority, this article describes local government officials as an independent interest group engaged in the decision-making process. It also considers some of the long-term implications of the defeat, including the reinforcement of a fragmented, federalist governmental structure at the local level.

From Political Outsider To Power Broker in Two "Great American Cities": Jane Jacobs and the Fall of the Urban Renewal Order in New York and Toronto

Klemek, C. — 2008-01-09

Beyond her well-known writings against urban renewal, Jane Jacobs guided the design and implementation of a pair of housing projects while she was a resident of New York in the 1960s and then Toronto in the 1970s. These two firsthand attempts to apply Jacobs's influential ideas on urbanism not only demonstrate her skills as a political activist but also illustrate how some Canadians forged powerful new urban coalitions just as U.S. city politics was becoming increasingly fragmented and incapacitated.

The Privatized City: The Manhattan Institute, the Urban Crisis, and the Conservative Counterrevolution in New York

O'Connor, A. — 2008-01-09

This article discusses the founding of the Manhattan Institute as part of a wider mobilization of conservative ideology and activism in 1970s New York. Important to the success of this mobilization was the concerted effort to reframe the "urban crisis" as a problem of values and culture and to construct a narrative of moral decline—and ultimately of conservative redemption—based in liberal New York.

Review Essay: Art Museums, Patronage, and the Transformation of Culture in the Nineteenth Century: WENDY JEAN KATZ, Regionalism and Reform: Art and Class Formationin Antebellum Cincinnati. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2002, pp. xx, 264, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $47.95 cloth. NICK PRIOR, Museums & Modernity: Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture. Oxford: Berg [distributed by NYU Press], 2002, pp. xii, 258, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $68.00 cloth, $22.00 paper.

Klein, R. N. — 2008-01-09

Review Essay: Why Saving Souls Won't Save Children: Religion and the Pre-History of the American Welfare State: DAVID T. BEITO, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societiesand Social Services, 1890_1967. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000, pp. xiv, 320, illustrations, tables, bibliographic essay, notes, index, $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paperback. DOROTHY M. BROWN AND ELIZABETH MCKEOWN, The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000, pp. 284, bibliography, notes, index, $18.95 paperback. MATTHEW A. CRENSON, Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Welfare System. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. xii, 383, illustrations, notes, index, $55.00 cloth, $22.95 paperback. SUGAR TURNER AND TRACY BACHRACH EHLERS, Sugar_s Life in the Hood: The Story of a Former Welfare Mother. Foreword by Molly Ivins. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002, pp. xi, 243, $29.95 cloth.

Brown, M. K. — 2008-01-09

Review Essay: "Civic Culture" in Later Medieval and Early Modern London: ANNE LANCASHIRE, London Civic Theatre: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman Times to 1558. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. xix + 355, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $65 cloth. TRACEY HILL, Anthony Munday and Civic Culture: Theatre, History and Power in Early Modern London 1580-1633. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. viii + 216, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $75 cloth. JANETTE DILLON, Theatre, Court and City 1595-1610: Drama and Social Space in London. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. x + 187, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $85 cloth

Archer, I. W. — 2008-01-09

Review Essay: Two Cheers for Public Housing: the Tenants' View: J. S. FUERST, When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005, xvi, 228, illustrations, notes, index, $20 paper. RHONDA Y. WILLIAMS, The Politics of Public History: Black Women's Struggles Against Inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, xiii, 306, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $29.95 hardcover

Fairbanks, R. B. — 2008-01-09

Review Essay: The Shaping of Catholic Thought and Action in the United States: PETER R. D'AGOSTINO, Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004, pp. xi, 393, maps, notes, bibliography, index, $59.95 cloth, $22.50 paper. EVELYN SAVIDGE STERNE, Ballots and Bibles: Ethnic Politics and the Catholic Church in Providence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004, pp. xv, 294, illustrations, notes, index, $34.95 cloth

Sexauer, C. F. — 2008-01-09