By Alison Isenberg
Downtown America cuts underneath the archetypal tale of downtown's upward thrust and fall and gives a dynamic new tale of city improvement within the usa. relocating past traditional narratives, Alison Isenberg exhibits that downtown's trajectory was once no longer dictated by way of inevitable loose industry forces or traditional life-and-death cycles. as an alternative, it was once the made of human actors—the contested construction of outlets, builders, govt leaders, architects, and planners, in addition to political activists, shoppers, civic golf equipment, genuine property appraisers, even postcard artists. in the course of the 20th century, conflicts over downtown's mundane conditions—what it may appear like and who may still stroll its streets—pointed to primary disagreements over American values.
Isenberg finds how the cutting edge efforts of those individuals infused major road with its resonant symbolism, whereas nonetheless accounting for pervasive uncertainty and fears of decline. Readers of this paintings will locate something yet a narrative of inevitability. Even many of the downtown's darkest moments—the nice Depression's cave in in land values, the rioting and looting of the Sixties, or abandonment and emptiness throughout the 1970s—illuminate how center cultural values have lively and intertwined with financial funding to reinvent the actual shape and social studies of city trade. Downtown America—its empty shops, revitalized marketplaces, and romanticized past—will by no means glance really an analogous again.
A ebook that does away with our such a lot clichéd ways to city stories, Downtown America will entice readers drawn to the background of the USA and the mythology surrounding its such a lot adored institutions.
A Choice Oustanding educational Title.
Winner of the 2005 Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the association of yankee Historians.
Winner of the 2005 Lewis Mumford Prize for most sensible e-book in American
Planning History.
Winner of the 2005 old upkeep booklet expense from the college of Mary Washington middle for historical Preservation.
Named 2005 Honor e-book from the recent Jersey Council for the Humanities.
Read Online or Download Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Historical Studies of Urban America) PDF
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Extra info for Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Historical Studies of Urban America)
Example text
In particular, when we shift the focus from monumental plans to local beautification battles, we learn how gendered debates over standards of downtown beauty (and the influence of women in setting those standards) marked the birth of the modern city planning profession. By 1910 voluntary civic groups, mainly women’s organizations, had carved themselves a housekeeping domain in downtown aesthetics. Women’s clubs cleaned up the business streets and established new practices of downtown management, using the commercial streetscape to teach moral lessons about responsibility for public property.
52 Lurking behind this kind of women’s civic activism was the question of how it related to suffrage. Was this training in citizenship a preparation for responsible suffrage, or a substitution for it? Speakers on municipal housekeeping, aware of how their agitation for reform might be read, were often quick to distinguish their civic improvement campaigns from their position for or against women’s rights or suffrage. Zona Gale (then chair of GFWC’s Civic Department) viewed with cynicism the cooperative relationship that voluntary women’s clubs cultivated with city officials precisely because of women’s nonvoting status.
14 In small town and big city, the beautification movement swept through women’s clubs. 15 Small towns that lacked businessmen’s clubs often had well-organized women’s clubs lobbying for local upgrades. By 1910 most large cities had a full spectrum of all types of clubs. 17 As the movement gained force, women did not (and could not) exclude men, who were, after all, both the “city fathers” and business proprietors on Main Street. One hallmark of the downtown housekeepers was their focus on cooperative, reciprocal relationships.