Empire City: The Making And Meaning Of (Critical Perspectives On The P) - Softcover

David M. Scobey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592132359 ISBN 13: 9781592132355

Publisher: Temple University Press, 2003

Synopsis

A look at the dreams that inspired the changes in the landscape of New York, and the problems that eluded solution. A mosaic of grand improvements and environmental disorder, this work covers landmarks such as Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge.

About this title

From the Publisher:

How did New York City come to represent the best and worst of urban life?

From the Inside Flap:

"Exhaustively researched, beautifully written, and powerfully argued.... Empire City will influence the theories and histories of urban geographers, historians, sociologists, and cultural theorists alike."
—George Chauncey, University of Chicago, author of Gay New York

"Lucidly written, deeply researched and thought through, Empire City zooms to the front rank of books about nineteenth century New York. Scobey examines the way real estate boosters, visionary reformers, business elites and Tammany politicos reshaped Gotham's cityscape, for good and ill. His analytical approach both illuminates a particular era, and provides a powerful general model for examining other times, other places."
—Mike Wallace, co-author of Pulitzer-Prize winning Gotham: A History of New York

"What made New York? In David Scobey's deft and deeply meditated account, it is not the blind forces of modernization nor the overarching will of an Haussman, but the complex interplay of interests, values and ideas—and above all the grandiose city—and nation-building aspirations of the 'bourgeois urbanists' of the 1860s and 70s. Scobey's New York is both a supremely self-conscious project—a 'mission civilatrice,' as he writes—and the battleground for the conflicting political, economic and social ambitions of an emergent world-city. This is a book for anyone who cares about cities—their future as well as their past."
—James Traub, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and author of City On A Hill: Testing The America Dream At City College

About this edition

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1592132359
• ISBN 13: 9781592132355
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352