City: Urbanism and Its End

How did neighborhood groceries, parish halls, factories, and even saloons contribute more to urban vitality than did the fiscal might of postwar urban renewal? With a novelist’s eye for telling detail, Douglas Rae depicts the features that contributed most to city life in the early “urbanist” decades of the twentieth century. Rae’s subject is New Haven, Connecticut, but the lessons he draws apply to many American cities.

City: Urbanism and Its End begins with a richly textured portrait of New Haven in the early twentieth century, a period of centralized manufacturing, civic vitality, and mixed-use neighborhoods. As social and economic conditions changed, the city confronted its end of urbanism first during the Depression, and then very aggressively during the mayoral reign of Richard C. Lee (1954–70), when New Haven led the nation in urban renewal spending. But government spending has repeatedly failed to restore urban vitality. Rae argues that strategies for the urban future should focus on nurturing the unplanned civic engagements that make mixed-use city life so appealing and so civilized. Cities need not reach their old peaks of population, or look like thriving suburbs, to be once again splendid places for human beings to live and work.

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City: Urbanism and Its End

How did neighborhood groceries, parish halls, factories, and even saloons contribute more to urban vitality than did the fiscal might of postwar urban renewal? With a novelist’s eye for telling detail, Douglas Rae depicts the features that contributed most to city life in the early “urbanist” decades of the twentieth century. Rae’s subject is New Haven, Connecticut, but the lessons he draws apply to many American cities.

City: Urbanism and Its End begins with a richly textured portrait of New Haven in the early twentieth century, a period of centralized manufacturing, civic vitality, and mixed-use neighborhoods. As social and economic conditions changed, the city confronted its end of urbanism first during the Depression, and then very aggressively during the mayoral reign of Richard C. Lee (1954–70), when New Haven led the nation in urban renewal spending. But government spending has repeatedly failed to restore urban vitality. Rae argues that strategies for the urban future should focus on nurturing the unplanned civic engagements that make mixed-use city life so appealing and so civilized. Cities need not reach their old peaks of population, or look like thriving suburbs, to be once again splendid places for human beings to live and work.

18.49 In Stock
City: Urbanism and Its End

City: Urbanism and Its End

by Douglas W. Rae
City: Urbanism and Its End

City: Urbanism and Its End

by Douglas W. Rae

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Overview

How did neighborhood groceries, parish halls, factories, and even saloons contribute more to urban vitality than did the fiscal might of postwar urban renewal? With a novelist’s eye for telling detail, Douglas Rae depicts the features that contributed most to city life in the early “urbanist” decades of the twentieth century. Rae’s subject is New Haven, Connecticut, but the lessons he draws apply to many American cities.

City: Urbanism and Its End begins with a richly textured portrait of New Haven in the early twentieth century, a period of centralized manufacturing, civic vitality, and mixed-use neighborhoods. As social and economic conditions changed, the city confronted its end of urbanism first during the Depression, and then very aggressively during the mayoral reign of Richard C. Lee (1954–70), when New Haven led the nation in urban renewal spending. But government spending has repeatedly failed to restore urban vitality. Rae argues that strategies for the urban future should focus on nurturing the unplanned civic engagements that make mixed-use city life so appealing and so civilized. Cities need not reach their old peaks of population, or look like thriving suburbs, to be once again splendid places for human beings to live and work.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780300134759
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication date: 10/01/2008
Series: The Institution for Social and Policy St
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Sales rank: 332,550
File size: 12 MB
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About the Author

Douglas W. Rae is Richard Ely Professor of Management and professor of political science at Yale University. In 1990–91 he served as chief administrative officer of the city of New Haven under John Daniels, the city’s first African-American mayor.

Table of Contents

Prefaceix
1Creative Destruction and the Age of Urbanism1
Part 1Urbanism
2Industrial Convergence on a New England Town35
3Fabric of Enterprise73
4Living Local113
5Civic Density141
6A Sidewalk Republic183
Part 2End of Urbanism
7Business and Civic Erosion, 1917-1950215
8Race, Place, and the Emergence of Spatial Hierarchy254
9Inventing Dick Lee287
10Extraordinary Politics: Dick Lee, Urban Renewal, and the End of Urbanism312
11The End of Urbanism361
12A City After Urbanism393
Notes433
Bibliography477
Acknowledgments499
Index503
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