Small, Gritty, and Green
Small, Gritty, and Green

Author: Catherine Tumber

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0262525313

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How small-to-midsize Rust Belt cities can play a crucial role in a low-carbon, sustainable, and relocalized future. America's once-vibrant small-to-midsize cities—Syracuse, Worcester, Akron, Flint, Rockford, and others—increasingly resemble urban wastelands. Gutted by deindustrialization, outsourcing, and middle-class flight, disproportionately devastated by metro freeway systems that laid waste to the urban fabric and displaced the working poor, small industrial cities seem to be part of America's past, not its future. And yet, Catherine Tumber argues in this provocative book, America's gritty Rust Belt cities could play a central role in a greener, low-carbon, relocalized future. As we wean ourselves from fossil fuels and realize the environmental costs of suburban sprawl, we will see that small cities offer many assets for sustainable living not shared by their big city or small town counterparts, including population density and nearby, fertile farmland available for new environmentally friendly uses. Tumber traveled to twenty-five cities in the Northeast and Midwest—from Buffalo to Peoria to Detroit to Rochester—interviewing planners, city officials, and activists, and weaving their stories into this exploration of small-scale urbanism. Smaller cities can be a critical part of a sustainable future and a productive green economy. Small, Gritty, and Green will help us develop the moral and political imagination we need to realize this.

John Nolen and the Metropolitan Landscape
John Nolen and the Metropolitan Landscape

Author: Jody Beck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0415664845

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An in-depth look at a prolific US landscape architect, who was engaged in nearly 400 projects throughout the United States between 1905 and 1936, including estate gardens, State Parks and new towns.

New Ideals in the Planning of Cities, Towns and Villages
New Ideals in the Planning of Cities, Towns and Villages

Author: John Nolen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-08-07

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1317620372

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John Nolen’s New Ideals in the Planning of Cities, Towns, and Villages is the most thorough assessment of city planning written by an American practitioner before 1920. It records the interplay of urban reform in Europe and the United States, the rise of the planning expert, the design of new towns, and the technique for directing urban expansion on systematic lines. Most important, it documents the blueprint for investing the "peace dividend" of the Great War to make urban life "more fit for democracy". Written for men fighting to make the world safe for democracy, New Ideals revealed how the domestic part of the peace program could justify their sacrifice. The wartime housing initiative had improved the living conditions of industrial workers and the same public regulation and control of the layout and character of residential neighbourhoods could provide what "men of service expect to find on their return, a new and better type of workman’s home." While New Ideals strained towards the utopian, experience tempered Nolen’s expectations and the high aims of the book were not immediately realised in a post-war society seeking a return to pre-war normalcy. However in the last decade, Nolen’s planned communities have been closely studied as the demand for pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods set on sustainable lines has moved from novelty to policy. New Ideals is an important text not only for its design template, but also its aspirations. Nolen’s call to "make cites that will serve the needs--physical, economic, and spiritual-- of all people" lays at the heart of the city planning profession and the lessons Nolen imparted inform a new generation planning cities to be both resilient and just.