Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 - Hardcover

Fogelson, Robert M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300090625 ISBN 13: 9780300090628

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Written by one of this country’s foremost urban historians, Downtown is the first history of what was once viewed as the heart of the American city. It tells the fascinating story of how downtown?and the way Americans thought about downtown?changed over time. By showing how businessmen and property owners worked to promote the well-being of downtown, even at the expense of other parts of the city, it also gives a riveting account of spatial politics in urban America.
Drawing on a wide array of contemporary sources, Robert M. Fogelson brings downtown to life, first as the business district, then as the central business district, and finally as just another business district. His book vividly recreates the long-forgotten battles over subways and skyscrapers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And it provides a fresh, often startling perspective on elevated highways, parking bans, urban redevelopment, and other controversial issues. This groundbreaking book will be a revelation to scholars, city planners, policymakers, and general readers interested in American cities and American history.

About this title

About the Author

"A superb book that offers an insightful, engaging, and informative account." (Richard Longstreth, George Washington University)

Reviews

One of the nation's leading urban historians, Fogelson (urban studies, MIT; The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930) examines the history of the American city center, from a position of business and commercial dominance in 1880 to one of obsolescence in the mid-20th century. Drawing on his comprehensive research, Fogelson presents a detailed portrayal of downtown's fragmented reaction to residential dispersal, the decentralization of business, traffic congestion, the Depression, and want of vision by downtown's leaders and advocates. He tracks controversial and conflicting public policy debates over rapid transit systems, limited building heights, zoning, traffic regulations, and public parking, which highlight uncoordinated and shortsighted attempts to reshape a once-dominant central city. Fogelson concludes with the perceptive and perhaps rueful observation that downtown's decline in the first half of the 20th century was mostly the result of an American vision of "bourgeois utopia," a nation of suburbs, which brought the beginning of urban sprawl. A superbly thorough analysis of the causes of inner-city blight, congestion, and economic decline in mid-20th century urban America, this is essential reading for American historians and an excellent addition to academic and urban libraries. John E. Hodgkins, Yarmouth, ME
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Most U.S. cities have a downtown, historically the business, commercial, and entertainment hub of a city, to which many flock each day to work, shop, and play. In the words of the pop song, "the lights are much brighter there," where "you can forget all your troubles, forget all your care." Recently, downtown has been forgotten, but is the decline of downtown areas really a recent phenomenon? Fogelson--long interested in how downtowns have been shaped and have attracted people, businesses, traffic, and crime--argues that they have been doomed from the beginning of their existence. The American phenomenon of suburban sprawl has been occurring since American cities were founded. The decline of downtown areas was actually completed in the 1950s, though they have begun to reemerge once again as centers of activity. Projecting his enthusiasm for the subject in this very well researched history of America's downtown experience, Fogelson creates extremely engaging reading for those interested in the history of cities and urban experience. Michael Spinella
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300090625
• ISBN 13: 9780300090628
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 544