Politics and Growth in Twentieth-century Tampa
Politics and Growth in Twentieth-century Tampa

Author: Robert J. Kerstein

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 9780813020839

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"Kerstein tells the story of one of Florida's greatest cities. It is a story filled with drama, corruption, heroism, and hard-won success. This book will forever change the way you look at the Tampa Bay region."-- Lance deHaven Smith, Reubin Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University Robert Kerstein's history of politics and growth in Tampa covers the period from the coming of the railroads and cigar industry through the mid-1990s. Where most other studies of Sunbelt cities have found continuous development controlled by a commercial elite, Kerstein shows that Tampa's development was erratic and--more like that of its northern and midwestern counterparts--was characterized by violence and corruption. He employs a number of theories of urban politics to understand how Tampa emerged from its turbulent past into a modern city, where business, neighborhood, and racial and ethnic interests struggled to influence its politics and development. With Tampa's last century as the case study, Kerstein challenges previous notions of Sunbelt city growth. Drawing upon regime theory to propose an alternative approach, he argues that Sunbelt cities grew and changed over the last hundred years in ways more similar to Snowbelt cities than previously believed. By exploring how city regimes evolve, and the factors most likely to affect that evolution, Kerstein opens up a dimension of urban political theory to important practical implications for city leaders, urban planners, and others interested in positive urban development. Robert Kerstein is professor of government and world affairs at the University of Tampa and author of articles in Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Affairs Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and elsewhere.

American Higher Education in the Postwar Era, 1945-1970
American Higher Education in the Postwar Era, 1945-1970

Author: Roger L. Geiger

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1351597728

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After World War II, returning veterans with GI Bill benefits ushered in an era of unprecedented growth that fundamentally altered the meaning, purpose, and structure of higher education. This volume explores the multifaceted and tumultuous transformation of American higher education that occurred between 1945 and 1970, while examining the changes in institutional forms, curricula, clientele, faculty, and governance. A wide range of well-known contributors cover topics such as the first public university to explicitly serve an urban population, the creation of modern day honors programs, how teachers’ colleges were repurposed as state colleges, the origins of faculty unionism and collective bargaining, and the dramatic student protests that forever changed higher education. This engaging text explores a critical moment in the history of higher education, signaling a shift in the meaning of a college education, the concept of who should and who could obtain access to college, and what should be taught.

The Politics of Trust
The Politics of Trust

Author: Gordon E. Harvey

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2015-11

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0817318828

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"Examines the political career of Reubin Askew, whose election as governor in 1970 marked the beginning of a golden age in Florida's politics"--

Ybor City
Ybor City

Author: Sarah McNamara

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2023-02-16

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1469668173

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Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries who sought refuge against the shifting tides of international political turmoil during the early half of the twentieth century. Historian Sarah McNamara tells the story of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinas/os who organized strikes, marched against fascism, and criticized U.S. foreign policy. While many members of the immigrant generation maintained their dedication to progressive ideals for years to come, those who came of age in the wake of World War II distanced themselves from leftist politics amidst the Red Scare and the wrecking ball of urban renewal. This portrait of the political shifts that defined Ybor City highlights the underexplored role of women's leadership within movements for social and economic justice as it illustrates how people, places, and politics become who and what they are.

Castles in the Sand
Castles in the Sand

Author: MARK S. FOSTER

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2023-05-09

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0813070554

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The definitive biography of the famous developer of Miami Beach  "The definitive biography of one of the most energetic, versatile entrepreneurs of the early 20th century. In masterminding the development of the Indianapolis Speedway and Miami Beach, Fisher played a major role in teaching adult Americans how to play."--James Crooks, University of North Florida In the booming early years of the 20th century, few entrepreneurs rivaled Carl Fisher (1874-1939) for sheer energy and imagination. Born in Indiana, he began as a bicycle racer and salesman, made his first fortune perfecting and marketing the automobile headlight, helped build the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and headed promotion of the Indy 500, and was a moving force behind the development of the Lincoln and Dixie highways, America’s first improved transcontinental roads. But all of these accomplishments were only prologue to his grandest adventure, as primary developer and promoter of Miami Beach. This definitive biography of Fisher, abundantly illustrated and written in an engaging style, captures the headiness of the period. Mark Foster traces Fisher’s transformation of the South Florida landscape into a tourist’s dream of golf, polo, deep sea fishing, and luxury hotels and his animation of that dream with bronzed lifeguards, bathing beauties flashing new swimsuit styles, and visiting dignitaries who generated a stream of tantalizing headlines. Foster also treats Fisher’s troubles with labor and with Miami businessmen, his attempted development of Montauk on Long Island, New York, and the collapse of the entire Fisher enterprise in the wake of the 1926 hurricane and the great stock market crash of 1929. Throughout, he sets Fisher’s insights, triumphs, loves, and shortcomings into the context of the early 20th century. This biography of a great corporate builder reveals the emergence of a new American way of life. The man whose genius for promotion turned a swampy spit of land into a luxurious urban locale also framed aspirations of leisure and entertainment for generations of Americans.

For the Common Good
For the Common Good

Author: Charles Dorn

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2017-06-06

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1501712608

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Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? Are the humanities coming to an end? What, exactly, is higher education good for? In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university—in states from California to Maine—Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, Dorn illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. For the Common Good demonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities—including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions—and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.

Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams
Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams

Author: Gary R Mormino

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2008-09-01

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 0813047048

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Florida is a story of astonishing growth, a state swelling from 500,000 residents at the outset of the 20th century to some 16 million at the end. As recently as mid-century, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, Florida was the smallest state in the South. At the dawn of the millennium, it is the fourth largest in the country, a megastate that was among those introducing new words into the American vernacular: space coast, climate control, growth management, retirement community, theme park, edge cities, shopping mall, boomburbs, beach renourishment, Interstate, and Internet. Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams attempts to understand the firestorm of change that erupted into modern Florida by examining the great social, cultural, and economic forces driving its transformation. Gary Mormino ranges far and wide across the landscape and boundaries of a place that is at once America's southernmost state and the northernmost outpost of the Caribbean. From the capital, Tallahassee--a day's walk from the Georgia border--to Miami--a city distant but tantalizingly close to Cuba and Haiti--Mormino traces the themes of Florida's transformation: the echoes of old Dixie and a vanishing Florida; land booms and tourist empires; revolutions in agriculture, technology, and demographics; the seductions of the beach and the dynamics of a graying population; and the enduring but changing meanings of a dreamstate. Beneath the iconography of popular culture is revealed a complex and complicated social framework that reflects a dizzying passage from New Spain to Old South, New South to Sunbelt.

Ditch of Dreams
Ditch of Dreams

Author: Steven Noll

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2009-11-22

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 0813037549

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For centuries, men dreamed of cutting a canal across the Florida peninsula. Intended to reduce shipping times, it was championed in the early twentieth century as a way to make the mostly rural state a center of national commerce and trade. Rejected by the Army Corps of Engineers as "not worthy," the project received continued support from Florida legislators. Federal funding was eventually allocated and work began in the 1930s, but the canal quickly became a lightning rod for controversy. Steven Noll and David Tegeder trace the twists and turns of the project through the years, drawing on a wealth of archival and primary sources. Far from being a simplistic morality tale of good environmentalists versus evil canal developers, the story of the Cross Florida Barge Canal is a complex one of competing interests amid the changing political landscape of modern Florida. Thanks to the unprecedented success of environmental citizen activists, construction was halted in 1971, though it took another twenty years for the project to be canceled. Though the land intended for the canal was deeded to the state and converted into the Cross Florida Greenway, certain aspects of the dispute--including the fate of Rodman Reservoir--have yet to be resolved.

Losing It All to Sprawl
Losing It All to Sprawl

Author: Bill Belleville

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2006-03-27

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 081304796X

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Losing It All to Sprawl is the poignant chronicle of award-winning nature writer Bill Belleville and how he came to understand and love his historic Cracker farmhouse and "relic" neighborhood in central Florida, even as it was all wiped out from under him. Belleville's narrative is eloquent, informed, and impassioned, a saga in which tractors and backhoes trample through the woods next to his home in order to build the backbone of Florida sprawl--the mall. As heavy machinery encircles Belleville and his community--the noise growing louder and closer, displacing everything Belleville has called home for the past fifteen years--he tells a story that is much older, 10,000 years older. The story stretches back to the Timucua and the Mayaca living in harmony with Florida's environment; the conquistadors who expected much from, but also feared, this "land of flowers"; the turn-of-the-century tourists "modernizing" and "climatizing" the state; the original Cracker families who lived in Belleville's farmhouse. In stark contrast to this millennia-long transformation is the whiplash of unbridled growth and development that threatens the nearby wilderness of the Wekiva River system, consuming Belleville's home and, ultimately, his very sense of place. In Florida, one of the nation's fastest growing states (and where local and state governments encourage growth), balancing use with preservation is an uphill battle. Sprawl spreads into the countryside, consuming not just natural lands but Old Florida neighborhoods and their unique history. In Losing It All to Sprawl, Belleville accounts for the impacts--social, political, natural, personal--that a community in the crosshairs of unsustainable growth ultimately must bear, but he also offers Floridians, and anyone facing the blight of urban confusion, the hope that can be found in the rediscovery and appreciation of the natural landscape.

The Metropolitan Revolution
The Metropolitan Revolution

Author: Jon C. Teaford

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2006-05-16

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0231510934

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In this absorbing history, Jon C. Teaford traces the dramatic evolution of American metropolitan life. At the end of World War II, the cities of the Northeast and the Midwest were bustling, racially and economically integrated areas frequented by suburban and urban dwellers alike. Yet since 1945, these cities have become peripheral to the lives of most Americans. "Edge cities" are now the dominant centers of production and consumption in post-suburban America. Characterized by sprawling freeways, corporate parks, and homogeneous malls and shopping centers, edge cities have transformed the urban landscape of the United States. Teaford surveys metropolitan areas from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt and the way in which postwar social, racial, and cultural shifts contributed to the decline of the central city as a hub of work, shopping, transportation, and entertainment. He analyzes the effects of urban flight in the 1950s and 1960s, the subsequent growth of the suburbs, and the impact of financial crises and racial tensions. He then brings the discussion into the present by showing how the recent wave of immigration from Latin America and Asia has further altered metropolitan life and complicated the black-white divide. Engaging in original research and interpretation, Teaford tells the story of this fascinating metamorphosis.