An American Urban Residential Landscape, 1890-1920


Book Description

In this first full-length study of improvement and National Improvement Associations (NIAs), Craig Turnbull explores the ideas and behavior of key improvement ideologues and practitioners. The book outlines the rural origins of improvement, and examines why Chicago became a focal point of grassroots improvement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book also offers the first systematic description and analysis of NIA objectives, activities, membership, politics, and organizational structures. It analyses the role of improvement in advancing the new professional agenda of real estate businessmen, and explains how and why they and NIAs became accomplices in adapting the ideology of improvement to develop and legitimatize the practices and discourse of legalized housing discrimination. The book concludes by explaining how the fine balance between reform and illiberalism underpinning grassroots improvement was upset by various structural and social changes, focusing on the increasing professionalism of reform leaders; the conflict between ascendant professional real estate businessmen and independent operators; the Great Migration of African Americans to Chicago; and the economic strictures imposed by World War I. This important book will appeal to urban scholars in a range of disciplines and to a more general audience interested in the history of cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book would make an important addition to courses on urban history and urban studies, especially those that focus on the culture and politics of urban growth. The insights into the contradictions of progressivism offered by the book will be of particular interest to scholars and students seeking to extend their understanding of the changing dynamics of reform activity during the Progressive Era.




Urban Development and the Panama Canal Zone


Book Description

The construction of the Panama Canal at the beginning of the twentieth century created an enclave that ran parallel to the interoceanic waterway, controlled by the US government: the Canal Zone. This book aims to understand the implications that Panama Canal Zone urban planning had on human health, natural resources, and biodiversity through the study case of Fort Clayton, highlighting how the sanitary concerns shaped building regulations and the urban landscape of towns. This book highlights the role of North American entomologists and health workers in developing control strategies for diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and how mosquito’s ecology determined building regulations that shaped the image of the Canal Zone towns. On the other hand, the book determines the environmental assessment of Fort Clayton, determined by the two fundamental aspects that set on the environmental impact of an urban settlement. The first one is the suitability of the site's location. The second is the urban structure of the adopted city model and its impact on the connectivity of the surrounding forests during the twentieth century. This text is aimed at both undergraduate and postgraduate students, architects, urban planners, historians, and environmental science professionals.




The Politics of Street Trees


Book Description

This book focuses on the politics of street trees and the institutions, actors and processes that govern their planning, planting and maintenance. This is an innovative approach which is particularly important in the context of mounting environmental and societal challenges and reveals a huge amount about the nature of modern life, social change and political conflict. The work first provides different historical perspectives on street trees and politics, celebrating diversity in different cultures. A second section discusses street tree values, policy and management, addressing more contemporary issues of their significance and contribution to our environment, both physically and philosophically. It explores cultural idiosyncrasies and those from the point of view of political economy, particularly challenging the neo-liberal perspectives that continue to dominate political narratives. The final section provides case studies of community engagement, civil action and governance. International case studies bring together contrasting approaches in areas with diverging political directions or intentions, the constraints of laws and the importance of people power. By pursuing an interdisciplinary approach this book produces an information base for academics, practitioners, politicians and activists alike, thus contributing to a fairer political debate that helps to promote more democratic environments that are sustainable, equitable, comfortable and healthier.




Weeds


Book Description

As long as humans have existed, they've worked and competed with plants to shape their surroundings. As cities developed and expanded, their diverse spaces were covered with and colored by weeds. In Weeds, Zachary J. S. Falck presents a comprehensive history of "happenstance plants" in American urban environments. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing to the present, he examines the proliferation, perception, and treatment of weeds in metropolitan centers from Boston to Los Angeles. In dynamic city ecosystems, population movements and economic cycles establish and transform habitats where vegetation continuously changes. Americans came to associate weeds with infectious diseases and allergies, illegal dumping, vagrants, drug dealers, and decreased property values. Local governments and citizens' groups attempted to eliminate unwanted plants to better their urban environments and improve the health and safety of inhabitants. Over time, a growing understanding of the natural environment made "happenstance plants" more tolerable and even desirable. In the twenty-first century, scientists have warned that the effects of global warming and the heat-trapping properties of cities are producing more robust strains of weeds. Falck shows that nature continues to flourish where humans have struggled: in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in the abandoned homes of the California housing bust, and alongside crumbling infrastructure. Weeds are here to stay.




Choice


Book Description




City of Vice


Book Description

San Francisco’s reputation for accommodating progressive and unconventional identities can find its roots in the waves of transients and migrants that flocked to San Francisco between the gold rush and World War I. In the era of yellow journalism, San Francisco’s popular presses broadcast shocking stories about the waterfront, Chinatown, Barbary Coast, hobo Main Stem, Uptown Tenderloin, and Outside Lands. The women and men who lived in these districts did not passively internalize the shaming of their bodies or neighborhoods. Rather, many urbanites intentionally sought out San Francisco’s “vice” and transient lodging districts. They came to identify themselves in ways opposed to hegemonic notions of whiteness, respectability, and middle-class heterosexual domesticity. With the destabilizing 1906 earthquake marking its halfway point, James Mallery’s City of Vice explores the imagined, cognitive mapping of the cityscape and the social history of the women and men who occupied its so-called transient and vice districts between the late nineteenth century and World War I.




Planning the Twentieth-century American City


Book Description

Arguing that planning in practice is far more complicated than historians usually depict, the authors examine closely the everyday social, political, economic, ideological, bureaucratic, and environmental contexts in which planning has occurred. In so doing, they redefine the nature of planning practice, expanding the range of actors and actions that we understand to have shaped urban development.




North American Odyssey


Book Description

This groundbreaking volume offers a fresh approach to conceptualizing the historical geography of North America by taking a thematic rather than a traditional regional perspective. Leading geographers, building on current scholarship in the field, explore five central themes. Part I explores the settling and resettling of the continent through the experiences of Native Americans, early European arrivals, and Africans. Part II examines nineteenth-century European immigrants, the reconfiguration of Native society, and the internal migration of African Americans. Part III considers human transformations of the natural landscape in carving out a transportation network, replumbing waterways, extracting timber and minerals, preserving wilderness, and protecting wildlife. Part IV focuses on human landscapes, blending discussions of the visible imprint of society and distinctive approaches to interpreting these features. The authors discuss survey systems, regional landscapes, and tourist and mythic landscapes as well as the role of race, gender, and photographic representation in shaping our understanding of past landscapes. Part V follows the urban impulse in an analysis of the development of the mercantile city, nineteenth- and twentieth-century planning, and environmental justice. With its focus on human-environment interactions, the mobility of people, and growing urbanization, this thoughtful text will give students a uniquely geographical way to understand North American history. Contributions by: Derek H. Alderman, Timothy G. Anderson, Kevin Blake, Christopher G. Boone, Geoffrey L. Buckley, Craig E. Colten, Michael P. Conzen, Lary M. Dilsaver, Mona Domosh, William E. Doolittle, Joshua Inwood, Ines M. Miyares, E. Arnold Modlin, Jr., Edward K. Muller, Michael D. Myers, Karl Raitz, Jasper Rubin, Joan M. Schwartz, Steven Silvern, Andrew Sluyter, Jeffrey S. Smith, Robert Wilson, William Wyckoff, and Yolonda Youngs




Guide to U.S. Environmental Policy


Book Description

Guide to U.S. Environmental Policy provides the analytical connections showing readers how issues and actions are translated into public policies and persistent institutions for resolving or managing environmental conflict in the U.S. The guide highlights a complex decision-making cycle that requires the cooperation of government, business, and an informed citizenry to achieve a comprehensive approach to environmental protection. The book’s topical, operational, and relational essays address development of U.S. environmental policies, the federal agencies and public and private organizations that frame and administer environmental policies, and the challenges of balancing conservation and preservation against economic development, the ongoing debates related to turning environmental concerns into environmental management, and the role of the U.S. in international organizations that facilitate global environmental governance. Key Features: 30 essays by leading conservationists and scholars in the field investigate the fundamental political, social, and economic processes and forces driving policy decisions about the protection and future of the environment. Essential themes traced through the chapters include natural resource allocation and preservation, human health, rights of indigenous peoples, benefits of recycling, economic and other policy areas impacted by responses to green concerns, international cooperation, and immediate and long-term costs associated with environmental policy. The essays explore the impact made by key environmental policymakers, presidents, and politicians, as well as the topical issues that have influenced U.S. environmental public policy from the colonial period to the present day. A summary of regulatory agencies for environmental policy, a selected bibliography, and a thorough index are included. This must-have reference for political science and public policy students who seek to understand the forces that U.S. environmental policy is suitable for academic, public, high school, government, and professional libraries.