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6 books match the query 'Bloom, Nicholas Dagen'

cover of How States Shaped Postwar America: State Government and Urban Power

How States Shaped Postwar America

State Government and Urban Power

Nicholas Dagen Bloom

University of Chicago Press, 2019

The history of public policy in postwar America tends to fixate on developments at the national level, overlooking the crucial work done by individual states in the 1960s and ’70s. In this book, Nicholas Dagen Bloom demonstrates the significant and enduring impact of activist states in five areas: urban planning and redevelopment, mass transit and highways, higher education, subsidized housing, and the environment. Bloom centers his story on the example set by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, whose aggressive initiatives on the pressing issues in that period inspired others and led to the establishment of long-lived state polices in an age of decreasing federal power. Metropolitan areas, for both better and worse, changed and operated differently because of sustained state action—How States Shaped Postwar America uncovers the scope of this largely untold story.
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cover of How States Shaped Postwar America: State Government and Urban Power

How States Shaped Postwar America

State Government and Urban Power

Nicholas Dagen Bloom

University of Chicago Press, 2019

This is an auto-narrated audiobook edition of this book.

The history of public policy in postwar America tends to fixate on developments at the national level, overlooking the crucial work done by individual states in the 1960s and ’70s. In this book, Nicholas Dagen Bloom demonstrates the significant and enduring impact of activist states in five areas: urban planning and redevelopment, mass transit and highways, higher education, subsidized housing, and the environment. Bloom centers his story on the example set by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, whose aggressive initiatives on the pressing issues in that period inspired others and led to the establishment of long-lived state polices in an age of decreasing federal power. Metropolitan areas, for both better and worse, changed and operated differently because of sustained state action—How States Shaped Postwar America uncovers the scope of this largely untold story.
[more]
cover of MERCHANT OF ILLUSION: James Rouse, America’s Salesman of the Businessman’s Utopia

MERCHANT OF ILLUSION

James Rouse, America’s Salesman of the Businessman’s Utopia

Nicholas Dagen Bloom

The Ohio State University Press, 2004

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cover of SUBURBAN ALCHEMY: 1960S NEW TOWNS AND THE TRANSFORMATION O

SUBURBAN ALCHEMY

1960S NEW TOWNS AND THE TRANSFORMATION O

NICHOLAS DAGEN BLOOM

The Ohio State University Press, 2001

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cover of The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight

The Great American Transit Disaster

A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight

Nicholas Dagen Bloom

University of Chicago Press, 2023

A potent re-examination of America’s history of public disinvestment in mass transit.
 
Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster, our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way.
 
Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco, Bloom provides overwhelming evidence that transit disinvestment was a choice rather than destiny. He pinpoints three major factors that led to the decline of public transit in the United States: municipal austerity policies that denied most transit agencies the funding to sustain high-quality service; the encouragement of auto-centric planning; and white flight from dense city centers to far-flung suburbs. As Bloom makes clear, these local public policy decisions were not the product of a nefarious auto industry or any other grand conspiracy—all were widely supported by voters, who effectively shut out options for transit-friendly futures. With this book, Bloom seeks not only to dispel our accepted transit myths but hopefully to lay new tracks for today’s conversations about public transportation funding.
[more]
cover of The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight

The Great American Transit Disaster

A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight

Nicholas Dagen Bloom

University of Chicago Press, 2023

This is an auto-narrated audiobook edition of this book.

A potent re-examination of America’s history of public disinvestment in mass transit.
 
Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster, our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way.
 
Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco, Bloom provides overwhelming evidence that transit disinvestment was a choice rather than destiny. He pinpoints three major factors that led to the decline of public transit in the United States: municipal austerity policies that denied most transit agencies the funding to sustain high-quality service; the encouragement of auto-centric planning; and white flight from dense city centers to far-flung suburbs. As Bloom makes clear, these local public policy decisions were not the product of a nefarious auto industry or any other grand conspiracy—all were widely supported by voters, who effectively shut out options for transit-friendly futures. With this book, Bloom seeks not only to dispel our accepted transit myths but hopefully to lay new tracks for today’s conversations about public transportation funding.
[more]