A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
Chicago: Metropolis of the Mid-Continent provides a comprehensive portrayal of the growth and development of Chicago from the mudhole of the prairie to today’s world-class city. This completely revised fourth edition skillfully weaves together the geography, history, economy, and culture of the city and its suburbs with a special emphasis on the role of the many ethnic and racial groups that comprise the “real Chicago” of its neighborhoods. Cutler demonstrates how the geography of “Chicagoland” and the influx of a diverse population spurred transportation, industrial technology, the economy, and sporadic planning to foster rapid urban growth, which brought both great progress and severe problems.
Through insightful analysis, Cutler also traces the demographic and societal changes to Chicago, critically examining such problems as the environment, education, racial tension, crime, welfare, housing, employment, and transportation. Richly illustrated with nearly three hundred drawings, photos, maps, and tables, the volume includes six appendices with sections dedicated to Chicago facts, population growth and income data, weather and climate, significant dates, and historic sites.
This fascinating book examines the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), a loosely organized association of ambitious and influential planners who hoped to guide the new urban and industrial developments of the early twentieth century and thereby design a radically improved America. After discussing the roots of this effort in the Progressive and World War I periods, Edward K. Spann traces the development of the RPAA from its formation in 1923 through the decades of its greatest effort (which ended in 1934) to its decline and ultimate demise in the late 1930s. Taking a biographical approach and drawing on both published works and private correspondence, the book focuses on the richly varied thoughts and activities of the leading members of the RPAA regarding significant aspects of urban and regional planning.
The members of the RPAA discussed here include Charles Harris Whitaker, Frederick L. Ackerman, Robert D. Kohn, Benton MacKaye, Clarence Stein, Lewis Mumford, Henry Wright, Robert Bruere, Stuart Chase, Edith Elmer Wood, and Catherine Bauer. Spann threads together the philosophies and work of these individuals by focusing on important points in the movement's history, such as the emergence of a community housing movement in World War I, the development of Benton MacKaye's seminal idea of the Appalachian Trail as an instrument for rural reconstruction, and Lewis Mumford's efforts to foster the idealism he thought necessary for successful planning. Spann also looks at Clarence Stein's work with regional planning in New York State during the governorship of Alfred E. Smith; the birth of the RPAA and its early publicity efforts, which culminated in the famous regional planning issue of Survey Graphic; the RPAA's differences with the Regional Plan of New York; the relationship between the RPAA and Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression; and the early years of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
This work should appeal not only to students of city and regional planning, of architecture, and of environmentalism, but to all those interested in the intellectual developments of the period between 1914 and 1938, especially as they relate to an important phase of modernization in the United States.
Historian Gerald D. Nash has written the first account of the epic growth of the economy of the American West during the twentieth century, showing how national interests shaped the West over the course of the past hundred years. In a book written for a broad readership, he tells the story of how America’s hinterland became the most dynamic and rapidly growing part of the country.
The Federal Landscape relates how in the nineteenth century the West was largely developed by individual enterprise but how in the twentieth Washington, D.C., became the central player in shaping the region. Nash traces the development of this process during the Progressive Era, World War I, the New Deal, World War II, the affluent postwar years, and the cold-war economy of the 1950s. He analyzes the growth of western cities and the emergence of environmental issues in the 1960s, the growth of a vibrant Mexican-U.S. border economy, and the impact of large-scale immigration from Latin America and Asia at century’s end.
Although specialists have studied many particular facets of western growth, Nash has written the only book to provide a much-needed overview of the subject. By addressing subjects as diverse as public policy, economic development, environmental and urban issues, and questions of race, class, and gender, he puts the entire federal landscape in perspective and shows how the West was really won.
“Community and regional planning involve thinking ahead and formally envisioning the future for ourselves and others,” according to Frederick R. Steiner. “Improved plans can lead to healthier, safer, and more beautiful places to live for us and other species. We can also plan for places that are more just and more profitable. Plans can help us not only to sustain what we value but also to transcend sustainability by creating truly regenerative communities, that is, places with the capacity to restore, renew, and revitalize their own sources of energy and materials.”
In Making Plans, Steiner offers a primer on the planning process through a lively, firsthand account of developing plans for the city of Austin and the University of Texas campus. As dean of the UT School of Architecture, Steiner served on planning committees that addressed the future growth of the city and the university, growth that inevitably overlapped because of UT’s central location in Austin. As he walks readers through the planning processes, Steiner illustrates how large-scale planning requires setting goals and objectives, reading landscapes, determining best uses, designing options, selecting courses for moving forward, taking actions, and adjusting to changes. He also demonstrates that planning is an inherently political, sometimes messy, act, requiring the intelligence and ownership of the affected communities. Both wise and frank, Making Plans is an important philosophical and practical statement on planning by a leader in the field.
The fate of Cleveland, Ohio, rides on a web of interdependencies on a regional scale. People and communities throughout that area of Ohio are being forced to adjust to new civic roles. The city of Cleveland must understand how it fits into Greater Cleveland. And suburbs must understand their dependence on the historic central city and be drawn into the Cleveland community.
In this sweeping study by local and national experts, these and more specific issues are raised and examined in depth. The New American City Faces Its Regional Future captures the dynamic thinking concerned with Cleveland and its surrounding region. The authors address questions of importance not only to Cleveland and its region but also to communities across the country that are facing similar issues. How does the city want to grow in the future? How can it become a more livable community? As the population of the region moves farther and farther out from the established urban areas, consuming more and more land, and as it enters its third century, these questions will need to be addressed. This book takes some first, important steps toward providing the answers.
In tandem with an analysis of the basic purpose and rationale of urban planning, Peter Self discusses the achievements and failures of different types of planning authorities. Planning the Urban Region surveys in turn the planning of city governments, metro governments, and regional bodies as they attempt to guide the growth and character of large urban areas—within whose sprawl live roughly one-half of the populations of Western countries—with examples drawn from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and France.
Self argues that the urban region is at a political and organizational crossroads, as it must grapple with the problems of urban sprawl: the social effects of land use and housing, conflicts between local communities and the metro organizations, environmental issues, and the capacity of governmental systems to handle complex issues. Planning the Urban Region is a valuable contribution to the literature on the future of cities and urban regions and should materially inform the debate on the place of public planning in shaping that future.
In Practicing Utopia, Rosemary Wakeman gives us a sweeping view of the new town movement as a global phenomenon. From Tapiola in Finland to Islamabad in Pakistan, Cergy-Pontoise in France to Irvine in California, Wakeman unspools a masterly account of the golden age of new towns, exploring their utopian qualities and investigating what these towns can tell us about contemporary modernization and urban planning. She presents the new town movement as something truly global, defying a Cold War East-West dichotomy or the north-south polarization of rich and poor countries. Wherever these new towns were located, whatever their size, whether famous or forgotten, they shared a utopian lineage and conception that, in each case, reveals how residents and planners imagined their ideal urban future.
Regional Planning for a Sustainable America is the first book to represent the great variety of today’s effective regional planning programs, analyzing dozens of regional initiatives across North America.
The American landscape is being transformed by poorly designed, sprawling development. This sprawl—and its wasteful resource use, traffic, and pollution—does not respect arbitrary political boundaries like city limits and state borders. Yet for most of the nation, the patterns of development and conservation are shaped by fragmented, parochial local governments and property developers focused on short-term economic gain. Regional planning provides a solution, a means to manage human impacts on a large geographic scale that better matches the natural and economic forces at work. By bringing together the expertise of forty-two practitioners and academics, this book provides a practical guide to the key strategies that regional planners are using to achieve truly sustainable growth.
"A remarkable and timely book. . . . Must reading." William Julius Wilson
Offering a new vision of community-based regionalism, this book arrives just as "smart growth" measures and other attempts to link cities and suburbs are beginning to make their mark on the political and analytical scene. The authors make a powerful case for emphasizing equity, arguing that metropolitan areas must reduce poverty in order to grow and that low-income individuals must make regional connections in order to escape poverty.
A hard-hitting analysis of Los Angeles demonstrates that the roots of the unrest of 1992 lay in regional economic deterioration and that the recovery was slowed by insufficient attention to the poor. Regions That Work then provides a history and critique of community-development corporations, a statistical analysis of the poverty-growth relationship in seventy-four metro areas, a detailed study of three regions that have produced superior equity outcomes, and a provocative call for new policies and new politics.
Eisinger’s meticulous research uncovers state and local governments’ transition from supply-side to demand-side strategies of market creation. He shows that, instead of relying solely on the supply-side strategies of tax breaks and other incentives to encourage business relocation, some governments promoted innovation and the creation of new business approaches.
Analyzes and compares the rapid growth of medium-sized cities.
Over the past thirty years, transnational investment, trade, and government policies have encouraged the decentralization of national economies, disrupting traditional patterns of urban and regional growth. Many smaller cities-such as Seattle, Washington; Campinas, Brazil; Oita, Japan; and Kumi, Korea-have grown markedly faster than the largest metropolitan regions. These “second tier cities” are home to specialized industrial complexes that have taken root, provided significant job growth, and attracted mobile capital and labor.
The culmination of an ambitious five-year, fourteen-city research project conducted by an international team of economists and geographers, Second Tier Cities examines the potential of these new regions to balance uneven regional development, create good, stable jobs, and moderate hyper-urbanization. Comparing across national borders, the contributors describe four types of second tier cities: Marshallian industrial districts, hub-and-spoke cities, satellite platforms, and government-anchored complexes. They find that both industrial and regional policies have been important contributors to the rise of second tier cities, though the former often trump the latter. Lessons for local, national, and international policymakers are drawn. The authors are critical of devolution and argue that it must be accompanied by strong labor and environmental standards and mechanisms to overcome differential regional resource endowments.Contributors: Clelio Campolina Diniz, U Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil; Masatomi Funaba, Kobe U of Commerce, Japan; Elyse Golob, NYC Economic Development Goup; Mia Gray, Cambridge U; Jun Ho Jeong, Oxford U; Sam Ock Park, Seoul National U; Mohammad Razavi; Fabiana Borges T. Santos, U Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil; and Masayuki Sasaki, Kanzawa U, Japan.
“Economic and political forces no longer combat poverty—they generate poverty!" exclaim William Goldsmith and Edward Blakely in their report on the plight of American's urban poor. In this revised and updated edition of their 1992 book Separate Societies,the authors present a compelling examination of the damaging divisions that isolate poor city minority residents from the middle-class suburban majority. They pay special attention to how the needs of the permanently poor have been unmet through the alternating years of promises and neglect, and propose a progressive turn away from 30 years of conservative policies.
Separate Societies vividly documents how the urban working class has been pushed out of industrial jobs through global economic restructuring, and how the Wall Street meltdown has aggravated underemployment, depleted public services, and sharpened racial and class inequalities.
The authors insist that the current U.S. approach puts Americans out of work and lowers the standard of living for all. As such, Goldsmith and Blakely urge the Obama administration to create better urban policy and foster better metropolitan management to effectively and efficiently promote equality.
In this compelling volume, leading experts in land use and urban planning, in cooperation with other scholars and community partners, envision various possible futures and begin the work of developing statewide plans to guide Oregon through the decades ahead. Building on the state’s policy innovation and planning legacy, contributors to Toward Oregon 2050 address current challenges such as housing scarcity, income inequality, the rural-urban divide, and climate change. They offer recommendations on a range of issues, from culture to incarceration, transportation to voting rights, all with the goal of imagining what a fair and equitable Oregon might look like.
Some of the imagined futures—with worsening effects of climate change, environmental harms, and social inequities—are not bright for many Oregonians. Other futures include enhanced resiliency to forest fires and flooding, more Oregonians in high-paying jobs and in secure housing, and more children walking and biking to school. But those positive futures are not guaranteed, and getting there won’t be easy. They’ll require all stakeholders—state and local government, members of all political parties, private businesses, non-profit organizations, and individual residents—to play a role in ensuring a better future for the next generation of Oregonians.
Intended for all Oregonians who care about their state’s future, Toward Oregon 2050 will also appeal to scholars and planners who have long looked to Oregon for inspiration and lessons learned. The book invites readers to envision the future of Oregon and to contribute their part toward a better future for the state.
Across the country from Camden to Oakland, the contributors engaged with community partners--hospitals, churches, community development corporations, community foundations, and other rooted institutions--to help restore old cities to life. Their collaborative thesis project engaged them with one another and university staff; it may offer a new paradigm for graduate education.
Divided into three sections, this edition of Urban Land Use Planning deftly balances an authoritative, up-to-date discussion of current practices with a vision of what land use planning should become. It explores the societal context of land use planning and proposes a model for understanding and reconciling the divergent priorities among competing stakeholders; it explains how to build planning support systems to assess future conditions, evaluate policy choices, create visions, and compare scenarios; and it sets forth a methodology for creating plans that will influence future land use change.
Discussions new to the fifth edition include how to incorporate the three Es of sustainable development (economy, environment, and equity) into sustainable communities, methods for including livability objectives and techniques, the integration of transportation and land use, the use of digital media in planning support systems, and collective urban design based on analysis and public participation.
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