Collection of essays on trends and institutional goals in urban sociology, with particular reference to social planning in the USA - examines the social implications of technological change, and covers government, the Church, education, politics, work, cultural factors, environmental problems, etc. References.
Why have so many central and inner cities in Europe, North America and Australia been so radically revamped in the last three decades, converting urban decay into new chic? Will the process continue in the twenty-first century or has it ended? What does this mean for the people who live there? Can they do anything about it? This book challenges conventional wisdom, which holds gentrification to be the simple outcome of new middle-class tastes and a demand for urban living. It reveals gentrification as part of a much larger shift in the political economy and culture of the late twentieth century. Documenting in gritty detail the conflicts that gentrification brings to the new urban 'frontiers', the author explores the interconnections of urban policy, patterns of investment, eviction, and homelessness. The failure of liberal urban policy and the end of the 1980s financial boom have made the end-of-the-century city a darker and more dangerous place. Public policy and the private market are conspiring against minorities, working people, the poor, and the homeless as never before. In the emerging revanchist city, gentrification has become part of this policy of revenge.
American civilization has been shaped by four decisive forces: the frontier, migration, sectionalism and federalism. The frontier has offered abundance to those who would/could take advantage of its opportunities, stimulated technological innovation, and been the source of continuous change in social structure and economic organization; migration has been responsible for relocating cultures from the Old world to the New: various sections of geographic territories have adjusted to the overall American culture without losing their individual distinctiveness; and federalism has shaped the United States' political and social organization., The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics was begun in the late 1950s under the auspices of the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs as a study of the eight "lesser" metropolitan areas in Illinois. What started out as a design for "community maps" of each area, with the intent to outline their particular political systems, led to a major study of metropolitan cities of the prairie-the "heartland" area between the Great Lakes and the Continental Divide-with an examination of the processes that have shaped American politics. The distinctive features of the geographic areas that Elazar discovered can best be understood as reflections of the differences in cultural backgrounds of their respective settlers. Proper understanding of these communities therefore requires an examination of their place in the federal system, the impact of frontier and section upon them, and a study of the cultures that inform them as civil communities. The volume is consequently divided into three parts: "Cities, Frontiers, and Sections," "Streams of Migration and Political Culture," and "Cities, States, and Nation," each of which explores Elazar's concerns in discovering the interrelationship between the cities of the frontier and American politics., A prequel to The Closing of the Metropolitan Frontier, The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics will be of great interest to students of politics, American history and ethnography.
Michigan's foremost lumbertowns, flourishing urban industrial centers in the late 19th century, faced economic calamity with the depletion of timber supplies by the end of the century. Turning to their own resources and reflecting individual cultural identities, Saginaw, Bay City, and Muskegon developed dissimilar strategies to sustain their urban industrial status. This study is a comprehensive history of these lumbertowns from their inception as frontier settlements to their emergence as reshaped industrial centers. Primarily an examination of the role of the entrepreneur in urban economic development, Michigan Lumbertowns considers the extent to which the entrepreneurial approach was influenced by each city's cultural-ethnic construct and its social history. More than a narrative history, it is a study of violence, business, and social change.
Spectacular modern aerial photographs of twenty-three of the towns dramatically illustrate changes to the urban scene and demonstrate the lasting influence of the initial city patterns on subsequent growth.
The period from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s signaled the end of the prosperity of the postwar years enjoyed by the cities of the prairie-those cities located immediately within or adjacent to the Mississippi River drainage system, or what is usually called the American Heartland. During this period, the bottom dropped out of local economies and all collapsed except those upheld by massive state institutions. With this collapse, optimism for new opportunities ended, signaling the close of the American frontier. The Closing of the Metropolitan Frontier looks at mid-sized cities Champaign-Urbana, Decatur, Joliet, Moline, Peoria, Rockford, Rock Island, and Springfield, Illinois; Davenport, Iowa; Duluth, Minnesota; and Pueblo, Colorado. Elazar examines how they adapted to change during the period immediately after World War II, through the Vietnam War, and the Nixon years. He considers the roles of federal and state governments as instruments of change including their efforts to impose new standards and ways of doing business. The Closing of the Metropolitan Frontier analyzes the struggle between federalism and managerialism in the local political arena. In his new introduction, Daniel J. Elazar discusses this volume's place as part of a forty-year study of the cities of the prairie as well as the changes and developments in that region over that forty-year span. This volume will be of great interest to economists, political scientists, and sociologists interested in the Great Society and the New Federalism and their aftermath.
Dubofsky's careful historical treatment does not support or deny the ideology of the "Wobblies", but rather he attempts to understand the leadership and motivation of the early twentieth-century labor movement.
During the last decade, the South American continent has seen a strong push for transnational integration, initiated by the former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who (with the endorsement of eleven other nations) spearheaded the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), a comprehensive energy, transport, and communications network. The most aggressive transcontinental integration project ever planned for South America, the initiative systematically deploys ten east-west infrastructural corridors, enhancing economic development but raising important questions about the polarizing effect of pitting regional needs against the colossal processes of resource extraction. Providing much-needed historical contextualization to IIRSA’s agenda, Beyond the City ties together a series of spatial models and offers a survey of regional strategies in five case studies of often overlooked sites built outside the traditional South American urban constructs. Implementing the term “resource extraction urbanism,” the architect and urbanist Felipe Correa takes us from Brazil’s nineteenth-century regional capital city of Belo Horizonte to the experimental, circular, “temporary” city of Vila Piloto in Três Lagoas. In Chile, he surveys the mining town of María Elena. In Venezuela, he explores petrochemical encampments at Judibana and El Tablazo, as well as new industrial frontiers at Ciudad Guayana. The result is both a cautionary tale, bringing to light a history of societies that were “inscribed” and administered, and a perceptive examination of the agency of architecture and urban planning in shaping South American lives.
Every city has an environmental story, perhaps none so dramatic as Pittsburgh's. Founded in a river valley blessed with enormous resources-three strong waterways, abundant forests, rich seams of coal-the city experienced a century of exploitation and industrialization that degraded and obscured the natural environment to a horrific degree. Pittsburgh came to be known as "the Smoky City," or, as James Parton famously declared in 1866, "hell with the lid taken off."Then came the storied Renaissance in the years following World War II, when the city's public and private elites, abetted by technological advances, came together to improve the air and renew the built environment. Equally dramatic was the sweeping deindustrialization of Pittsburgh in the 1980s, when the collapse of the steel industry brought down the smokestacks, leaving vast tracks of brownfields and riverfront. Today Pittsburgh faces unprecedented opportunities to reverse the environmental degradation of its history. In Devastation and Renewal, scholars of the urban environment post questions that both complicate and enrich this story. Working from deep archival research, they ask not only what happened to Pittsburgh's environment, but why. What forces-economic, political, and cultural-were at work? In exploring the disturbing history of pollution in Pittsburgh, they consider not only the sooty skies, but also the poisoned rivers and creeks, the mined hills, and scarred land. Who profited and who paid for such "progress"? How did the environment Pittsburghers live in come to be, and how it can be managed for the future?In a provocative concluding essay, Samuel P. Hays explores Pittsburgh's "environmental culture," the attitudes and institutions that interpret a city's story and work to create change. Comparing Pittsburgh to other cities and regions, he exposes exaggerations of Pittsburgh's environmental achievement and challenges the community to make real progress for the future. A landmark contribution to the emerging field of urban environmental history, Devastation and Renewal will be important to all students of cities, of cultures, and of the natural world.
The Opening of the Cybernetic Frontier is the third in-J. stallment in the Cities of the Prairie project. It completes an ongoing multi-generational, comparative study of ten medium-sized communities located in five Prairie and Plains states - Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Colorado. This long-term study was initiated by Daniel J. Elazar in 1959 to develop a comprehensive theory explaining and forecasting the development of the civil community based upon the changing relationship between internal developments and external factors.In this new volume, Elazar and his colleagues trace developments in these communities during the 1980s and 1990s. The study examines how local communities function politically, socially, and economically, and then analyzes the impact that regional, national, and international trends and patterns have on local political systems in general and the cities of the prairie in particular. It revisits these communities at the dawning of a new frontier, the city-cybernetic frontier, which is characterized by a knowledge-intensive economic base made possible by computer and communication technologies. Changing technology has accelerated the settlement patterns that emerged after World War II. Ongoing population sprawl means that individuals are leaving the suburbs to live in the exurbs and beyond, creating a citybelt phenomenon that relies upon new technologies.