Exam #2 Flashcards

Question

Give a brief profile of urban expansion in the New Nation (1776-1860)

Answer 1

- 1 in 20 were town or cities dwellers in the infant nation - By the American Revolution (1775-1783) the colonial population was approx. 2.5 million - Even by 1830, only 9% of the population lived in places of 5,000 or more - Coastal cities were the largest but they were all competing for new hinterlands west of the Appalachians - By 1840 the American urban system had become independent - By 1860 there were 100 cities with an urban population of 6 million, making the percent of urban people 19.8%

Answer 2

City dwellers and supported city growth While only 5% of all Americans lived in cities: 20 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were city dwellers And 20 more had extensive urban contacts (i.e. they were lawyers or merchants) When it came to supporting the Constitution at state ratifying conventions – city interests lined up on the side of adoption while areas dominated by small farms chose delegates who opposed it

Answer 3

- It was both practical and necessary for economic links to be forged between towns/cities - A greater proportion of investment was financed by American capital – less money leaked back to the European system - A proliferation of government functions (county courthouses to town halls to state capitals to a new seat for the federal government [Washington, D.C. ]) - Westward expansion also stimulated Eastern cities to attempt to consolidate their control (creation of corridors of trade) - Westward/Southward expansion required frontier towns

Answer 4

1. coastal locations, primarily in the northeast 2. ports and entrepot cities that nurtured important trade functions such as wholesaling and finance. ” 3. inland to a series of river cities

Answer 5

Nearly every major city in New York can be found along the trade route established by the Erie Canal: it links Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and Albany with New York City. Schenectady had prospered as a principal port of the lower Mohawk River but the completion of the Erie Canal meant that boats could go all the way.

Answer 6

Of the American canals preceding it only three were more than two miles long and the longest of these, the Middlesex, was hardly 28 miles in length Question: How long is the Erie Canal Answer: 363 miles Construction began in 1817 and was completed in 1825 Built largely through unsettled territory Its justification lay not in current traffic but in the expected development [an act of faith, “if you build it they will come”]

Answer 7

IT WAS A BOLD BID FOR WESTERN TRADE Inevitably, the Erie Canal sparked a national canal craze The Canal's success vitally affected the rivalry of the major eastern seaboard cities - It reduced shipping costs for a ton of goods from $100 to $10 - It dramatically shifted the rural to urban ratio in New York State

Answer 8

Ohio-Erie Canal (completed 1833) and Miami-Erie (completed early 1840s)

Answer 9

The canal challenged the supremacy of the turnpikes - Up to the 1820's, New York's competitors to the south relied on turnpikes to control western trade. - The shortest route to the west led across Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia and the two principal east-west roads favored Philadelphia and Baltimore. - The Pittsburgh Pike and the National Road made Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Wheeling important commercial centers at a time when Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit were mere frontier settlements. - In this respect, New York City was at a disadvantage during the turn-pike era.

Answer 10

The first private turnpike in the United States was chartered by Pennsylvania in 1792 and opened two years later. - Spanning 62 miles between Philadelphia and Lancaster, it quickly attracted the attention of merchants in other states, who recognized its potential to direct commerce away from their regions. - Soon lawmakers from those states began chartering turnpikes. - By 1800, 69 turnpike companies had been chartered throughout the country, especially in Connecticut (23) and New York (13). -Over the next decade nearly six times as many turnpikes were incorporated (398). - Turnpikes promised little in the way of direct dividends and profits, but they offered potentially large indirect benefits (aka: you were not going to earn money by buying stock in a particular turnpike company). Because turnpikes facilitated movement and trade, nearby merchants, farmers, land owners, and ordinary residents would benefit from a turnpike: Improved value of lands, Serving the community (a public service ethos), and Turnpikes became symbols of civic pride For example, the Pittsburgh Pike (completed in 1820) greatly improved freighting over the rugged Allegheny Mountains. Freight rates between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were cut in half because wagons increased their capacity, speed, and certainty (Reiser 1951, 76-77).

Answer 11

The turnpikes’ were severely limited though. - Issue of free-ridership - Some manufactured goods were shipped westward, but bulky agricultural produce of the west continued to use the Mississippi route to New Orleans. - The increased use of the steamboat for up-river carriage on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers threatened to deprive the turnpikes of even their westward trade. - Basically New Orleans was a rival to East Coast dominance (and remember New Orleans was not an American city until 1803) This situation was transformed by the construction of the Erie Canal. -The Canal created a direct two-way trade

Answer 12

-A failure to achieve a line to the west, therefore, meant stagnation, even decline; this was the view of the advocates of internal improvement in all the rival cities. HOW DO YOU COMPETE IF YOU ARE BOSTON, BALTIMORE OR PHILLY? The question was do you IMITATE OR INNOVATE? In other words: Should New York’s rivals use the tried and tested method of canals in a geographical situation that was unsuited to that method or should they choose an untried method? Or should they postpone and risk obsolescence?

Answer 13

- Chose to build a canal to Pittsburgh - The height/grade of the mountains forced them into the construction of a ‘mongrel line’ (a road and rail mix) with three transshipment points - A series of depots and agents, located at Philadelphia, Columbia, Hollidaysburg, Johnstown, and Pittsburgh

Answer 14

- Transshipments caused delays, damaged and lost goods - Delays and high tolls convinced shippers and millers in western Pennsylvania that it was cheaper to send flour down the Mississippi to New Orleans, then by ship to Philadelphia - The turnpikes remained central for more valuable goods - Good for west bound traffic but the Ohio and Mississippi rivers remained central for bulk commodities - “... .the chain that was to bind Philadelphia with the west was . . . severed, disjointed, fragmentary. It was an amphibious connection of land and water, consisting of two railways separated by a canal, and of two canals separated by a railway, happily elucidating the defects peculiar to both methods of transit, with the advantages of neither.” But it is not simply about through-traffic: - The mainline received large quantities of coal and raw iron from the Union Canal, from the canals along the north and west branches of the Susquehanna, from the valley of the Juniata, and from the huge bituminous coal fields west of Hollidaysburg. - To the Pittsburgh iron interests, the mainline was a lifesaver. - Money spent on the mainline however delayed construction of a full railway across Pennsylvania Overall Pennsylvania made a poor choice: - Couldn’t compete with the Erie - Loss of merchants to New York - Delayed the construction of rail lines - -The Pennsylvania Railroad was completed in 1852 (too late to divert a good portion of the trade that had centered on New York for a quarter of a century) - -Also the Erie Railroad (New York Central), and the Hudson River Railroad were all in operation

Answer 15

- Experiencing “gradual deterioration” - this was their term for a slowing down of the rate of growth - Private construction of a trans-Appalachian line, the Baltimoreans decided to risk their own capital in a private venture. - Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company

Answer 16

- Was in a very difficult position - While the city could hope to participate in the trade of the west – it couldn’t possibly hope to replace New York - If it built a canal it would have to cross the Berkshires and even then it would simply be linking itself to the Hudson - So it delayed.

Answer 17

Between 1820 and 1870: - Success of the Mexican war of Independence (1821) - Gold Rush (1840) – a motivating force for the American conquest of California - California becomes a state in 1850 - Continental rail links to San Francisco by 1870 and to Los Angeles by 1876 - Northern California's population and economy virtually exploded during the Gold Rush, but Southern California remained relatively unpopulated and undeveloped until much later in the century -"By effectively exploiting their physical isolation, the Californians had created a sufficient if not affluent economy. The ranchos were nevertheless grossly inefficient. Compared with farms in the United States, they produced extremely little per acre and per person. That they survived anyway was due to the sparse population, mild environment, and proliferating stock. That they also prospered was due to the absence of taxes on land and the availability of involuntary labor."

Answer 18

- When the US took control, a new system was implemented (property taxes, proof of land ownership, litigation fees, natives became 'free' = salaries - the result was a shift from self-sufficient agriculture to market agriculture (from immediate consumption to specialized production for distant consumers) - 1848 = gold boom in Northern California but there was also a shift in Southern California as well. The rancheros got rich feeding the miners but they also became infatuated with luxury and the pursuit of please distracted them from the fact that their monopoly of the beef trade was temporary. - Soon the supply of cattle far exceeded the demand and few Californians survived this crisis with their ranchos intact. Trained as soldiers and dedicated to the ideal of the Spanish grande, they did not understand the complexities of the market economy. Instead of fortifying their position during the boom of the early 1850s, the expanded their holdings and squandered their profits. - Possession of Southern California's ranches passed to a few prominent Los Angeles and San Francisco capitalists who experimented with crops/ products. (The shift from ranchos to ranches was complete and the selling of land was the result - The repercussions profoundly affected Los Angeles. So long as self-sufficient ranchos covered the country side, it remained an agricultural village with no unique function in the region's economy or society. The failure of the ranchos, however, generated opportunities for urban enterprises and associations which transformed the Mexican pueblo into an American town.

Answer 19

- a nondescript agricultural village with 1,610 people - no railroads, few streets or other public improvements. - It was isolated, geographically and economically, from the large population centers of the United States and western Europe. - lacked the natural harbor and surface resources that attracted commerce and generated industry elsewhere in the country.

Answer 20

- It grew into a city of 1.2 million and a metropolitan district of 2.3 million persons - It built a vast network of railways and highways - It tapped northern Sierra sources for its water supply, and subdivided the vast southern California countryside. - It developed into a flourishing commercial entrepôt, an impressive industrial producer, and the economic center of the great Southwest. - By 1930, it stood fifth in population, second in territory, and ninth in manufacturing among American metropolises

Answer 21

- Prior to the 1880s it was believed that San Diego was the only southern Californian settlement that could compete with San Francisco - Los Angeles was "too far inland and had no reliable harbor. We must be content to be the political and social capital of south California; we must be satisfied with out genial climate, our fruitful soul, our generous wines, our golden fruit, our productive mines, out cattle upon a thousand hills" Until the 1870s “all eyes were riveted on San Diego” - San Francisco’s Southern Pacific created a stranglehold - San Diego’s supreme asset, the bay, was also its fatal liability - In 1885, the first transcontinental train arrived in San Diego, years after Los Angles was connected to San Francisco by the Southern Pacific

Answer 22

railroad construction settlement

Answer 23

The Texas and Pacific company, with San Diego designated as the western terminus of a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific was held back near El Paso, Texas, while the Southern Pacific (controlled by the Central Pacific) built eastward from the California border to control the southeast entrance at Yuma. A new challenger appears (the Santa Fe). The route designed for the Atlantic and Pacific was from Springfield, Missouri to Albuquerque, and thence "along the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude as near as may be found most suitable for a railroad route, to the Colorado river, at such a point as may be selected by said company for crossing; thence by the most practicable and eligible route to the Pacific.

Answer 24

Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. "These four men controlled a far-flung network of railroad enterprises which gave them enormous wealth and political power. Admired and detested as the West's first "railroad kings" they left a legacy of railroad development which still influences transportation and politics in California."

Answer 25

For Los Angeles It wasn’t enough to cut San Diego off from trade The goal was to become the population center of note in Southern California But they couldn’t simply rely on natural increase or farm to city movement (there were simply too few people) It was reasoned that immigration was "the one great desideratum" and that "every practicable means should be used to secure it as rapidly as possible."

Answer 26

Keep in mind that there were lots of options: - Central California's San Joaquin, northern California's Sacramento, and western Oregon's Willamette valleys contained fine farmland. - Fine farmland also dotted western Canada's Red River Valley, now penetrated by the Canadian Pacific, and eastern Washington's inland empire, just opened up by the Great Northern. - And American immigrants—be they New York farmers who chose the forested Ohio Valley over the treeless Dakota Territory or Piedmont planters who preferred the Tennessee hills to the Louisiana lowlands—traditionally favored a countryside with a familiar climate, topography, vegetation, and agriculture. For immigrants, who were unaccustomed to a warm, arid climate and uneasy amid a timberless, mountainous landscape and who had never irrigated a field, pruned a vine, or grafted a citrus tree, southern California had little appeal. What aided the movement? Rate wars between rail companies and help to populate California with boosters/boomers

Answer 27

- On the whole, American was being sold as a nation of farmers - And yet, by 1900 the nations countrymen were profoundly dissatisfied with their lot. They were tired, and many of them have been born tired, or tired, toil-broken parents. They yearned to escape the toil, drudgery and drabness of their farms and shops, to free themselves from the bonds of their narrow spheres; and most important of all, to spare their children their own fate. Desiring life's amenities no less than its decencies and less arduous but more rewarding livelihoods, they were strongly attracted by the far greater comforts and better opportunities in American cities. California sold the idea that the difference between this and many parts of our land is that here nature seems to work with man and not against him and tends to soften the asperities and abate the restless rush and haste of usual life. Instead of promising prospective immigrants material prosperity, southern California's promoters offered them an easier, more varied, less complicated, and well-rounded life.

Answer 28

- Suburbanization - The growth of satellite cities - The decentralization of manufacturing activities - There was no urban-industrial fabric to negotiate (a blank canvas) - A landscape ripe for polycentric sprawl

Answer 29

- Agricultural development (vineyards, beef ranches, vegetables, citrus groves) - Climate and amenities - A tourist paradise - Oil …But really it was BOOSTERISM! BOOSTERISM driven by land speculators, real estate players, developers and media What image were they selling? - A new Eden for middle-class, white and Protestant American home seekers locating to escape the racially mix east coast - The American Dream (property and prosperity)

Answer 30

What was being sold/packaged? Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel, Ramona written to expose the mistreatment of the Mission Indians by Angelo-Americans, the book did much to encourage interest in Spanish/Mexican California She had wanted to write something akin to Uncle Tom’s Cabin but instead stimulated Spanish Revival Europeans were viewed to be benevolent and Mexican California was considered evil She romanticized the history of race relations in California She linked Southern California to Mediterraneanism – a second Italy, Greece or Spain A full blown tourist industry was built around the novel Colonel Otis (and Harry Chandler) He took control of the city’s business organizations and prevented unionization and harassed picketers He sold the open shop mentality Los Angeles Times "Los Angeles is in a transition state," he wrote in an early editorial. "She has finally waked up from the dull lethargy of those old days when she was one great sheep-walk and cattle range. All she needs now is men of brawn and brains to grow up with her." Charles Fletcher Lummis Walked from Ohio to Southern California Helped create the boom of the 1880s by marketing Southern California as a place to escape the ravages of eastern cities (health, tourism, a winter sojourn, even a permanent move) A place to amalgamate the genteel tradition and the strenuous life Los Angeles became the sunny refuge of White Protestant America in the age of labor upheaval and the mass immigration of the Catholic and the Jewish poor from Eastern and Southern Europe The interplay of metaphors allowed Southern California to be constructed akin to a stage set (Mediterranean motifs, architecture and places names helped complete the image)

Answer 31

“Los Angeles it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be advertised and sold to the people of the United States like automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash.” (Morrow Mayo) “Unlike other American cites that maximized their comparative advantages as crossroads, capitals, seaports, or manufacturing centers, Los Angeles was first and above all the creature of real-estate capitalism: the culminating speculation, in fact, of the generations of boosters and promoters who had subdivided and sold the west from the Cumberland Gap to the Pacific.”(Mike Davis, 1992)

Answer 32

Sold an idyllic Los Angeles to Protestant America Rooted the regional economy in agriculture, land speculation, boosterism, tourism and the specialized health and leisure services required by wealthy white (often retirees)

Answer 33

This economic base was clearly not sustainable - -From 1900-1920 L.A. begins to shift towards industrial development - A Western Outlier to the American -Manufacturing Belt - Petroleum - Aircraft Industry - The Movie Industry - An expanded port complex (1906) – L.A. annexed San Pedro - The Completion of the California Aqueduct - Significant migration streams (European, Japan, Mexico) - Automobile Forty widely scattered suburbs were created during this period (‘black gold suburbs’)

Answer 34

“"shoestring annexation" is a term used in the United States for an annexation by a city, town or other municipality in which it acquires new territory that is not contiguous to the existing territory but is connected to it by a thin strip of land. It is sometimes called a "flagpole annexation" because the territory resembles a flagpole, in which the connection is the "pole" and the annexed territory the "flag".”

Answer 35

Oil Drilling takes off in the 1890s (pin cushion hill) Owens Valley Aqueduct (commenced in 1905 and completed in 1913)

Answer 36

1920-1940: A roaring Los Angeles -A continuous boom in comparison to the rest of the country -Two Great Migrations: Mexicans fleeing the Revolution, African Americans fleeing the South -Annexations - during the 1920s L.A. annexed 45 adjacent communities -A collection of suburbs in search of a city Formation of a vast urban industrial zone -The rise of a vast science complex (Caltech) and other state-of-the-art research facilities that attracted top scientists interested in technologically-oriented research high-tension electrical transmission hydraulics, electronics -Support for and then the construction of passenger aircrafts -The Aero Club of Southern California -A commercial market for aircraft

Answer 37

Ironically, the image of the industrial might of America forced everyone to look at the Manufacturing Belt Meanwhile L.A. continued to diversify its industrial base - It led the country in movie production (90% of all films in the United States), oil refining, airplane manufacturing, and secondary automobile manufacturing - It was second in tire production - It was fourth in furniture production and women’s apparel In short, L.A. had developed all the ingredients for its post war triumph as a “military-industrial complex”

Answer 38

“Los Angeles emerged as America’s first essentially middle-class metropolis … Los Angeles’ appeal lay in its being the first major city that was not quite a city, that is, not a crowded industrial metropolis. It was a garden city of backyards and quiet streets, a sprawling small town magnified a thousandfold and set among palms and orange trees under a sunny sky” (David Brodsly) “Precisely because Los Angeles lacked natural advantages and a dominant industry, its leaders realized that they would have to create these attributes themselves. Where other municipalities provided facilities in response to population growth and industrial expansion, the Los Angeles elite very early realized that their real business was growth itself. That is, they must invest to provide the essential infrastructure that the city lacked—water, power, a port, transportation—and then use this infrastructure to lure the new population and businesses which alone could justify the investments.”

Answer 39

The organisation of industry: -Industrial capitalism = more efficient transport and communication networks -More pronounced patterns of economic specialization/greater integration -Steel rails = heavier loads, greater speeds, concentration of industry in larger cities -Expansion of railroad system --allowed Birmingham, Jacksonville, Memphis and Houston to emerge as central places with regional status --Infilling of settled areas --Colonization of frontier areas Copper in Montana Lead and zinc in Missouri Iron ore around Lake Superior -Tourism in Florida -The demand for coal produced numerous new sites

Answer 40

Urban Hierarchy (around 1920) More than 4 million New York 1.5 million Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh 150000-750000 several cities of the West (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle), Southwest (Dallas), Midwest (Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis), Northeast (Baltimore, Cincinnati, Providence) Continued Growth of Cities Falling Death Rates = greater natural increase Large scale immigration -The territorial expansion of the manufacturing belt (National economic heartland) -Cities were closely integrated -The result of initial advantage at a regional scale (core-periphery pattern) -Scale and intensity differed in the manufacturing belt -The production of goods for a national market -Specialization provided the basis for increased commodity flows between towns and cities -Local Specialization: Brewers = Milwaukee, St. Louis Men’s clothing, fruit and vegetable canning = Baltimore Musical instruments and men’s clothing = Boston Meat packing, furniture, printing, publishing = Chicago Coach building, furniture = Cincinnati Glass, iron, steel = Pittsburgh Textiles = Philadelphia

Answer 41

Essentially all 20th century US population growth has been in cities increasing the urban population fraction from 40 percent in 1900 to more than 75 percent in 1990. This move to the cities is projected to continue

Answer 42

- The closing of the frontier - the growth of large cities - european immigration - an expanding immigrant working population - the end of slavery - industrial expansion - rise of new affluence/expansion of the middle class - influence of health and moral reformers (settlement of house workers, YMCA, Playground Association of America - acceptance of sport as a significant social and economic institution of American life.

Answer 43

- Baseball becomes acknowledged as the national pastime - basketball is invented - boxing explodes in popularity - the rise of college football - expansion of the sporting goods industry - a recreation/parks movement takes root in the nation - sport becomes firmly added into the educational curriculum - tennis,golf,bicycling sweeps through the middle class

Answer 44

1. Geographic mobility - there were a means of escape - if life is unsatisfactory in one place, you move on - a nation not just of immigrants but migrants - rural-to-urban migration reversed Turner's theory that plentiful land in teh West calmed urban tensions. Instead cities attracted those disappointed with farm life and those fed up with life in another city - it took thousands o dollars to start a farm but only a few dollars to buy a railroad ticket 2. social mobility - upward mobility soothes our souls - it is not equally of condition but equality of opportunity that Americans have celebrated - perhaps rising to th top is a myth, but the middle is thought to be possible (a new job, some real estate, or other forms of satisfaction helped ease social unrest and represented an improvement over life i in the old country.)

Answer 45

1. a high degree of national slovenliness 2. that cities were full of stench (poor sanitation, industrial fumes) 3. that too many sacrifices had been made to the altar of industry 4. that cities were visually cluttered and unpleasing (billboards, aesthetic nuisances) 5. that too much attention had been placed on innovations and inventiveness related to territorial expansion and not enough attention had been placed on figuring out how to create and foster ideals for communal living.

Answer 46

Progressive Era 1890-1920 Progressivism is the term applied to a variety of responses to the economic and social problems rapid industrialization, immigration and urbanization introduced to America Jane Adams, Jacob Riis (How the Other Half Lives) concerned over the ‘tumor of the tenement’, pathogens Daniel Burnham, Olmstead (and others) were concerned over city aesthetics Two critical questions: How could the masses be disciplined and regulated? How to control spatial growth but ensure productivity?

Answer 47

1. women 2. evangelicals 3. journalists 4. social workers 5. experts 6. professionals 7. politicians 8. conservationists 9. civil rights activists

Answer 48

"Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate, of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat." (Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives) Slums were “nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our jails and police courts; that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out in the last eight years a round half a million beggars to prey upon our charities . . . because, above all, they touch the family life with deadly moral contagion.”

Answer 49

1. Sanitary reform (water supply, sewage) 2. Parks/Playground movement 3. City Beautiful

Answer 50

Parks Reform: Returning ‘Nature’ to the City “As long as the rural order was considered to be the source of national vitality, spiritual renewal, and democratic control, the American city would appear morbid and artificial. Because of the belief that urban society had been abruptly cut off from the harmonies of a natural order, it was held that it could be rejuvenated only by inserting the values and ethos of the rural past into the fabric of the urban order” (Christine Boyer 1983, 9). What is a park? A rural landscape emptied of rural labor and laborers? An enclosed tract of land held by royal grant or prescription for keeping beasts of the chase (i.e. deer)? An artificially natural landscape? Is it not interesting to note that parks are usually identified with cities?

Answer 51

Reformers were still committed to and nostalgic from the values instilled by America’s rural democratic past Parks were part of the “back to nature movement”. They were restorative. Idyllic counterpoint to the congestion of the city Islands of nature in the artificial urban milieu They were therapeutic. a place to relieve the tension of urban living “foul air prompts to vice, oxygen to virtue” “curative natural environments” physical relief/breathing spaces Had a democratic force -Create a fraternal spirit Recreation opportunity for laboring masses Pleasure grounds for the upper classes Enhanced/increased the property values of neighboring properties Prices was relatively modest (aka the time was ripe)

Answer 52

Central Park (initially opened in 1857) ``` Emerged out of a complex mix of motivations: Make money Display the city’s cultivation Lift up the poor Refine the rich To advance commercial interests To retard commercial development To improve public health To curry political favor To provide jobs ``` New York did have a number of private parks/gardens and public squares But NYC didn’t have something to match expansive parks of European capitals where royal grounds had been converted to public use Seeking “a public space worthy of our great metropolis” By the late 1840s, NYC’s population had grown to half a million people 20,000 new immigrants arrived at the port each year -Blocks of houses/stores stretched north of the Battery to 30th street and ferries linked the island to Brooklyn and New Jersey -Increased size, density and social heterogeneity meant dramatic social changes and New Yorkers were keen to outline where improvements were needed. -The idea of large public park competed for attention

Answer 53

Pitched as an idea (a necessity) that had emerged and was approved by all classes in the community -In reality, most of the public discussion took place in the narrower community of politicians, merchants, bankers, landowners, publishers/editors (basically the park was a “project of relatively few gentlemen who saw themselves as representing the public.” These men justified the park on three grounds: #1 Utilitarian Claims: It would promote the city’s commercial and physical health ``` #2 Social and Moral Arguments: It would ‘improve’ the ‘disorderly classes’ and foster order among them ``` ``` #3 Cultural uplift: It would display the cultivation of the leading citizens ```

Answer 54

By the first decades of the 19th century New York had become the “Commercial Metropolis of the New World” It was America’s most important port After decades of expansion, NYC had finally begun to be measured against the great European centers of trade But unlike the best European cities NYC didn’t have a comparable public space When merchants/businessmen/gentlemen returned from Europe “they found their city sadly deficient in the public grounds of Old World capitals. They felt embarrassed at its [NYC’s] lack of refinement.” In short, NYC could boast that it matched the commercial stature of London or Paris, but it fell short of matching their cultural achievements Alexis de Tocqueville opined that Americans were “restless, materialistic, and individualistic” and “indifferent to higher cultural pursuits” “Building a grand, landscaped park would be one way to disprove European criticism (and assuage American self-doubt) about the mediocrity and unsettledness of American society. Such a grand public institution would answer Tocqueville’s charge that Americans became involved in civic affairs more out of self-interest and greed than from pride or a sense of duty.”

Answer 55

In urging for the creation of a park, New York gentlemen were calling on the state (and city) to invest heavily in the private land market (a new kind of public institution) They were expanding the definition of appropriate state action on behalf of the public good Such a commitment couldn’t be done unless it was in the name of all citizens Central or sidelong?: Should downtown residents be asked to bear the same costs (increased taxes) for an uptown park (direct benefit)? Should other areas be expanded (the Battery = No enlargement, No Park)? How about multiple smaller parks? We should also note that uptown was not (as is popularly characterized) a slum/shantytown, rather it was a suburb (filled with orphan asylums, hospitals, old age homes, asylums, garden patches, craft shops, factories, farms, country estates): - Land was cheap - A country atmosphere was seen as rehabilitative - Paupers/lunatics/criminals were considered undesirable neighbors

Answer 56

What should it look like? What should it represent? Determining an aesthetic sensibility Republican simplicity (rationality, economy, convenience, aesthetic monotony) Popular eclecticism (commercial pleasure gardens, novelty, diversion, pleasure through performances (theater programs, fireworks, acts, demonstrations, a mixture of picnics, sports, festivals, the goal was to ‘tickle the fancy’ of the masses) Romantic naturalism (curves, vistas, picturesque plantings, broad, expansive, tranquil, capturing Rus in Urbe, pastoral) Artificial civic displays (works of human progress are beautiful (arches, columns, water-works, etc.), an elegant parade ground, race course, geometrically straight avenues, beauty in civic engineering (aqueducts, reservoirs), mix of nature and art (botanical gardens, aboretum) Pleasure garden? Civic Monument? Pastoral Eden? Ornamented or Open? A place of play or performance? Should there be a central focal point? The design competition ultimately required a prominent fountain, a winter skating lake, a flower garden, an exhibition or concert hall, a lookout tower, playgrounds, a parade ground, and an institution of cultural uplift In 1857, New York held a design competition which was won by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux (“Greensward plan”). It was plan 33 out of 33 entries “the two envisioned [the park] as a pastoral retreat from the pressures and aesthetic monotony of a growing city.”

Answer 57

843 acres of largely undeveloped land that was north of the growing city Designed with a unique circulation system Different points of access for three methods of transportation (on foot, carriage/car, bridal path) The three routes seldom intersect (when they do there is often a pedestrian underpass that minimizes the potential for accidents) Four crosstown roads that do not intersect the circulation within the park These are depressed and masked by clever landscape design Basically you can be in Central Park without noticing the presence of vehicles

Answer 58

``` Once New York City created Central Park, citizens in almost every other American city pressed for something similar “Public parks have come to be recognized as institutions essential to the health as well as the happiness of thickly settled communities … to keep down the death rate, and to be rid of wasting disease, a plentiful supply of parks is needed in every large town.” (Minneapolis Tribune 1880) And so… we get Fairmount Park in Philadelphia Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. Forest Park in St. Louis Golden Gate Park in San Francisco City Park in Denver And so on ```

Answer 59

The Playground of the Metropolis

Answer 60

“The use of public parks is to promote the well-being and happiness of the people, to alleviate the hard conditions of crowded humanity, to encourage outdoor recreation and intimacy with nature, to fill the lungs of tired workers from city factories and shops with pure and wholesome air whenever they will or can afford to spend a day in shady groves, under spreading trees or on the jeweled meadows. They are havens of sweetness and rest for mothers and wives and sweethearts; above all, they are for the children, for all the people, high and low, rich and poor without distinction, with equal rights and privileges for every class. A city that does not acknowledge the necessity for public parks as a means for promoting the welfare and happiness of its people, and recognize the substantial advantages that follow the making of a city attractive and comfortable as a place of residence is not progressing but is already on the wane” (Charles Robinson 1906, 9).

Answer 61

Why children? Children were a useful target group. They could be used by reformers/progressives to put pressure on officials (Who doesn’t want to ensure the health/happiness/progress of children?) You begin with children and then you shift scales! Child – the home – neighborhood – finally the city Children required education, parks and playgrounds, and sanitary conditions to succeed. Improvement in these areas for children would result in increased honesty, beauty, cleanliness, efficiency and order (and a healthy workforce) This initiative was expanded into a broader recreation movement (aimed at providing spaces for adult activities as well) Parks and playgrounds became municipally controlled (as well as special facilities like gymnasiums, field houses, and swimming ponds were constructed “In a playground with proper supervision children for their own good soon recognize that they must regard others’ rights, and that in order to enjoy themselves they must permit others to do so; that they must respect property which they have in common as well as that of one another; and these habits help to build up men who make good citizens, carrying the same principles into adult life” (Sadie American 1898, 159). “Play is the natural expression of the physical energies, the animal spirits. It is nature’s way of toning up life. Dam up the legitimate outlet, and the forces will break forth in other and illegitimate directions” … “Children’s imagination is vivid and must be satisfied. It will satisfy itself, whether we wish it or not. Feed it properly, and it will blossom into beautiful fruitage; starve it and throw it back upon itself, and we will have all the ugly excrescences, deformities, and depravities of crowded-city life” (Sadie American 1898, 167).

Answer 62

“The showers and swimming pools, tennis and basketball courts, meeting rooms, and assembly halls provided opportunities especially welcome in crowded low-income neighborhoods. Parks provided an important component of community, creating, along with the church, school, and saloon, a social fabric that helped to define the very term “neighborhood”.”

Answer 63

Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux’s Central Park really started the movement. (took root in Philly, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, St. Louis and Chicago) In 1900, 13 cities had organized playgrounds By 1906, there was 38 cities

Answer 64

1. Congestion and overcrowding/ alienation from nature (artificiality of the urban environment) - social sickness - crime - decline of the birthrate - physical fatigue - deterioration in mind and body - contaminating poison (social unrest, political disorder) - ambivalent loyalties/anomalous behaviors of the poor - basically a whole collection of city ills (filth, ugliness, disorder, congestion, violence, poverty, evil vices, loose morals, bad habits, intemperance, idleness) 2. An instinct for improvement: - rooted in personal disgust at how ugly/chaotic city conditions were - the belief that urban life was unhealthy/unnatural - slums were sore spots that shamed society - slumdom was "humanity sick and ignorant" and needed to be "healed and taught" - the belief that if you improved the environment then you would mitigate the social pathologies of urban life - a sanitary, well organized environment could confine undesirable traits - if the external milieu was tolerable then poverty would take of itself. 3. City neighborhoods yielded: - no trace of healthy village life - no common bond amongst the various social classes - no natural ties of friendship or moral support - no control over housing conditions, water supply, sanitary codes The American city had "become the receptacle for multiple crimes perpetrated against the whole of society." As the American city expanded as a place of production and consumption, it simultaneously deteriorated as a place for human life and activity.

Answer 65

Waste in the United States was often collected and discarded onto the land either uncovered or buried. Human and animal waste was often utilized as fertilizer Sometimes it was used as fuel – burned Sometimes it was fed to animals – swine It was also dumped open bodies of water, ponds, bogs, lakes, rivers, oceans “In eastern cities, where crowding became a chronic problem as early as the 1770s, the streets reeked with waste, wells were polluted, and deaths from epidemic disease mounted rapidly.” Martin Melosi

Answer 66

Frightening events (public hysteria) Contagionists vs. anti-contagionists Was disease being spread from person to person or was it coming from filth? Was the decaying organic waste laying in the streets and open pits and being emitted from sewer gas causing people to get sick? Note: Germ theory was not developed until 1880s

Answer 67

The onset of America’s civil war helped fuel the sense of urgency towards cleanliness (preventative sanitation) U.S. Sanitary Commission (disease could be controlled by cleaning the environment) Women gained a degree of political clout (they were needed as fund-raisers, supply collectors, nurses so they had to be listened to/tolerated) The link between domesticity and politics Legislation to require street cleaning, establish tenement inspections, and to enact food protection Women had been the guardians of virtue and morality, protectors of the home, now they were engaged in the desire to have public house keeping, creation of women’s clubs designed to educate, create public opinion (activate), and to secure better living conditions (elevate)

Answer 68

Filled with tuberculosis, dysentery, smallpox, typhoid fever, influenza, pneumonia, diphtheria Settlement movement began in the 1890s (Jane Adams) By ‘settling’ among the lower classes, educated female settlement workers could: Transmit middle-class values and practices Teach the values of thrift, cleanliness, orderliness, refinement, manners, culture, responsibility, and citizenship Visiting nurses taught health and hygiene practices Workers also inspected water supplies, monitored garbage disposal and sanitary conditions, and reported violations The female social reformers were role models The power of “social Christianity” The power of social work The imposition of white middle-class values The first goal was often outreach (especially to children and mothers) day care nurseries kindergartens small play lots English classes groups (arts, crafts, music, drama) Job clubs Once a community was developed the next step was to lobby for change/reform What does our neighborhood need? Sanitation, education, a playground, a bathhouse, waste collection, library, etc. Move from domestic housekeeping to municipal housekeeping Clean water Better sewageLocal meat inspection Sought to convince authorities and individuals that public health is rooted in day to day cleanliness, not the periodic removal of refuse

Answer 69

- Removal of Waste - The Safer Provision of Water - Prevention of Communicable Diseases (Vaccination Programs) - Clean and Nutritious Food - Housing and Social Services - Hospitals and Ambulance Services - Services to Infants and Parents

Answer 70

Parks: free from commercialism, pietism Lungs of the city/idea of hygiene Helped us imagine the significance of public life Helped us imagine a role for urban planning Everyone’s front yard ``` Apartment House: Re-articulation of family life Unit of land ownership Helped us to imagine the power of private space Moral effects of housekeeping ```

Answer 71

If the goal of the parks movement was to, in part, reconnect the citizenry with nature, then the call for aesthetic reforms was to create a degree of harmony between the parks and the city itself (i.e. beautify the city itself) - - civic art, architecture, plazas, monuments/statuary, fountains, murals, public pageantry, attention to design, color and texture, emphasis on vistas, street ornaments, trees, decoration - - The merger of artists, architects and engineers - - Efforts must be made to control unruly growth, tidy the chaos, and return/provide order to the arrangement of buildings

Answer 72

The answer was a symbol: Chicago's "White City" of 1893 Beauty over utility

Answer 73

- in the great Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893 we find the blueprint for modern American - we have achieved cultural parity with europe - the fair symbolized the faith in the ability of the urban landscape to shape progress and foster civic order and harmony - it was the ideal city/model - a place where the problems plaguing modern American cities - crowding, poor living conditions, class and ethnic tensions - were eradicated - chicago asked in 1893 for the first time the question whether the american people knew where they were driving. the exposition had an emphatic answer: onward and upward. The fair symbolized the emerging faith in the ability of physical structure and design of cities to shape their civic and social cohension

Answer 74

Dilemma’s of the White City Tourists over citizens Citizenship = Consumerism Political agency equated to purchasing power Contrived landscapes? Aesthetically pleasing but politically innocuous A place for escape rather than engagement Entertainmentality (bringing people together but simultaneously keeping them apart) Highly mediated version of reality Designed to be ephemeral

Answer 75

“The White City offered Americans a new urban model just when one was needed” Impeccable sanitation Different functions for different spaces but each contributing to the whole Cities were growing vigorously and laissez-faire planning couldn’t be the model When grids extended for miles the effects were oppressive The White City publicly demonstrated how unruly downtowns might be tamed Axial views Expansive public squares Formal groupings of buildings

Answer 76

The American public was willing to accept large-scale urban interventions The City Beautiful movement became a “rallying cry that brought together civic reformers, community volunteers, businessmen, municipal politicians, architects, landscape architects.” It was the turn-of-the century’s historic preservation movement common today. The movement made American’s cities look at themselves critically How might we improve the grid? A formal civic center (city hall, public library, auditorium) Grand railroad stations (symbolizing arrival) Exhibitions University campuses All of these were opportunities to prove that Americans could build beautiful places

Answer 77

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.” Daniel Burnham

Answer 78

Reconstruction of The Mall In Washington L’Enfant (akin to Washington’s vision) had intended it as a great park, but it was never completed The disfigured Mall had come to symbolize all that was wrong with American cities Senator James McMillan successfully proposed that a group of experts (including Burnham and Olmstead, Junior) look into improving the area The new plan was the L’Enfant plan on a larger scale (an exercise in pure Beaux Arts design)

Answer 79

What happened to the City Beautiful Movement? “In the Land of the Dollar, [the genteel] vision of civic harmony was given short shrift; the city profitable replaced the city beautiful. A profitable city was to be as little regulated as possible. It meant a city in which the no-nonsense street grid was reasserted without any urban frills such as diagonal boulevards or public squares.” City planning should be concerned with engineering, economic efficiency, and social reform, not with aesthetics A mantra of ‘acceptable’ replaced beautiful Commercial forces once unleashed produced a dynamic urbanism – vertical cities (Europe was thrust aside) and then suburban societies

Answer 80

``` Adjustment to a cultural mosaic Helped people to laugh at themselves Poked fun at ethnic stereotypes (we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously) Allowed people (esp. women) to see themselves as stars Refinement/gentility Managed Spectacle Not consumer goods – but entertainment Linked to the process of incorporation ```

Answer 81

Offered respite from the boredom of the home Helped make the feminine public possible and gave many a new economic life Idea of browsing as a suitable use of one’s time Destinations You shopped not simply for procurement but for entertainment (or perhaps to ward off feelings of loneliness or anomie, depression) Learned the value/role of conspicuous consumption (draw attention to one’s wealth) “In department stores, buyers of goods learned new roles for themselves, apprehended themselves as consumers, something different from the mere users of goods. Thus, the department store stood as a prime urban artifice of the age, a place of learning as well as buying: a pedagogy of modernity." Alan Trachtenberg

Answer 82

“The sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near physical necessity: I must have it. The grace of capitalism is to make wants feel like hopes, so that material objects and stuff can feel like the possibility of something heroic and civic. The urge of the great department stores was to hide acquisition as sociability, to disguise acquisitiveness as membership, so that one entered them not as one entered a store – with one eye on the beseeching salesgirl, one hand on the knob of the door, just looking – but as one entered a library or a club: striding in with pleasure. The department store was the cathedral of that material aspiration, and its diminishment leaves us with one less place to go and hope in.” Adam Gqopnik

Answer 83

``` Mental map Moral map English Human-Interest stories Underlines a common humanity Helped to entrench the pursuit of wealth/materialism ```

Answer 84

Superdome/Sports/Saints can help establish the “pulse of the community” A place to witness how competition can thrive under the influence of rules and regulations Baseball helps people understand the notions of authority, team work, individual skill, cooperation, loyalty, sacrifice, efficiency, economy of motion A new form of leisure on a mass scale – Indirect edification Puts people into contact with one another (differences that exist on non-game days lose their distinctiveness when people see themselves simply as fans) American civic celebration A vehicle of ethnic pride But you can also make the ballpark a middle class paradise Helps people recognize the corporate culture (Baseball players are highly skilled, you had to compete to get good players) Investors seek profits at the expense of labor "fundamentally, baseball is what America is not, but has longed or imagined itself to be” -- a typically romantic sentiment glossing over both the game's past and present. We think of baseball as a rural game, yet it was born in Manhattan, the very epitome of urbanism. We think of a game of noble heroes, not drunken pawns of gamblers. We think of players, not profiteering owners. We think of leisurely pace and a pastime inherently democratic and fair, not King Kelly's rule-bending and a sport Ty Cobb called "something like a war." In baseball, it is possible to trace the demographic evolution of the game as waves of immigrants (Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Slaves, Latin American’s and finally Asians) utilized baseball as a “shortcut to American assimilation” (Barney and Barney 2005, 160). “Fifty thousand people gathered in a single place can do fewer things together than twenty-five groups of two thousand: their chief function is limited to being there and saying Hurrah! or Heil! at the right moment. That is why dictators love crowds and seek to provide bigger arenas and auditoriums for them: the bigger the crowd, the emptier their function.” Lewis Mumford The choice between “vicarious exercise” or “none at all” is a process that must be considered “growth by civic depletion” argues Mumford (1938, 250). According to Mumford (1938, 250), it is troubling to find that “[f]orty-five thousand people may attend a baseball game: but not even Chicago could boast the twenty-five hundred diamonds that would be necessary if each spectator claimed the right to play.”

Answer 85

parks, apartment house, vaudeville, department stores, metropolitan press, ballparks,

Answer 86

Coney Island First attempt to create a summer resort was in 1824 Tonic in sea bathing But it wasn’t until the 1860s that Coney Island was directly connected to New York City and when visits surged. Coincided with the popular belief that saltwater bathing was beneficial to an individual’s health With the extension of stage coach and ferry lines that provided daily service from Brooklyn other amenities began to appear Construction of the Coney Island Pavilion (bathing, dining, dancing) Brilliant beaches (shallow, long, smooth) You could swelter in the streets of New York or you could seek relief in the surf Coney wasn’t elitist like Newport Proximity and lack of pretension made it popular It became the “the Great Democratic Resort – the ocean bathtub of the great unwashed” Competition over space/real estate The eastern end of the island became a “resort for the wealthy and refined multitude.” Manhattan Beach (wealthy), Brighton Beach (middle class), West Brighton (lower classes)

Answer 87

“NEW YORK, although not yet the largest city in the world, has the largest suburb in the world; Long Island, the name by which that suburb is appropriately called, being about one hundred and twenty miles in length by twenty in breadth.” By the late 1870s, approximately 1.8 million people lived in close proximity to Coney Island Connected by four rail lines, two ocean piers, and a highway The beach was accessible to millions of lower-income New Yorkers The beach could be considered the “first made-to-order resort in America” Situated at the edge of America’s Metropolis it would develop into a pleasure resort of a kind that really had not existed before Coney Island confronted ‘reformers’ and ‘progressives’ who wanted to impose their vision of wholesome recreation upon the lower classes (a seaside park) Competition between reformers and entrepreneurs Result was a new form of mass culture (the amusement park)

Answer 88

Coney Island (with the rise of the amusement park) represented “the transformation of a new urban culture under the impact of commercial values and a consumerist ethos.” The amusement parks were joined by horse racing tracks Sea Lion Park-the first outdoor amusement park in the world An Enclosed park with an admission price Later became Luna Park Steeplechase (1895), Luna Park (1903), Dreamland (1904) Coney Island’s amusement parks offered a microcosm of the big city’s cultural diversity Completed in 1885 (a 150 foot elephant was gatekeeper to the promised land) “It bursts upon the astonished gaze of passengers on the incoming European steamers, it gives them their first idea of the bigness of some things in this country.”

Answer 89

Coney Island “offered the masses a collective escape from thoughts of material inequalities.” Coney was “an argument against a too strict Sabbatarianism.” It gave America’s urban workers—who had previously been excluded from the pursuit of leisure—their day in the sun “an immense valve of pleasure opened to an immense nation” It catered to a lower-class public It was the “Empire of the Nickel” – cheap entertainment for millions of people It contributed to the development of the first mass urban culture (along with baseball stadiums, movie theaters) All customers were treated the same (crossed boundaries of ethnicity and gender) “A little United Nations by the sea” A place of freedom and tolerance Thrust strangers into intimate physical contact that mimicked and transcended the overcrowded city streets/tenements (social solidarities/distinctions muted) They made the leisure pursuits of the rich accessible (mechanical horse back riding) For some it was a “Sodom by the Sea” For others though, “Coney Island [was] the Tom-Tom of America. Every nation .. Has needs of orgiastic escape from … the world of what-we-have-to-do into the world of what-we-would-like-to-do, from the world of duty that endures forever into a world of joy that is permitted only for the moment.” Coney Island provided something people could not find elsewhere – it gave them access to a side of themselves that was childlike

Answer 90

Along conspicuous consumption was critical, Coney Island offered entertainment options that didn’t cost a thing Bathing in the ocean Promenading on piers People watching/gazing (the empire of the body) Collecting seashells/driftwood “You may, if you please, go to Coney Island and spend the day, and enjoy yourself hugely, without expending one more cent than is required to pay your fares to and from the beach.” Part of Coney Island’s appeal to the American public was that it could be experienced (at least partially) for free.

Answer 91

Why did Coney Island Decline? Competition Other amusement areas (Coney Island truly was a low class space, and the lower-middle class was looking for a slightly more refined image) Coney became the “Poor Man’s Riviera” or “Poor Man’s Paradise” catering to fewer and fewer middle-class patrons The extension of the subway line in the 1920s make Coney Island even more accessible to the poor and working class residents Disneyland and Vegas “the repressed desire of an emerging postwar middle class was to get farther away from the city” Television images of exotic other places that were both desirable and accessible [i.e. Las Vegas] It is worth noting that these other spaces were WHITE SPACES Air conditioning By the 1930s the amusement zone, the beach and the surrounding residential neighborhoods were “tawdry and dingy.” The rise of “natural” as opposed to “man-made” attractions Rezoning for residential development (led by Robert Moses) Many people abandoned Coney Island (i.e. the business community) and it wasn’t until the 1980s that preservationists began to revitalize the area It suffered from a “debilitating erosion of its amusement resources, crime, the avarice of its landlords, misguided urban renewal, and racial tension.”

Answer 92

Created by the visionary genius and ruthless tenacity of Robert Moses (Chairman of the New York Parks Commission) Jones Beach is 27 miles east of midtown Manhattan The Power of Public Works and the extension of the Parks System Building began in 1924 (Long Island State Park Commission) The first act was the construction of a causeway It was couple with a massive dredging project that moved sand from the bottom of South Oyster Bay to the barrier beach The automobile becomes the escape route More than 500 million people have visited Jones Beach since its official opening in 1929 Stimulated a building boom (real estate developments in proximity to the beach and along the parkway that leads to it) “By the time construction began on Jones Beach, Coney Island had already been a flourishing seaside resort for almost half a century. It was world famous, it was enormous, it was crowded … and, to Moses, it was disgusting: dirty, tawdry, filled with cheap amusements and low entertainments that brought out the worst in human nature. There was nothing edifying in Coney Island, as far as he was concerned. He saw it as a once-beautiful ocean beachfront, exploited by greed and ultimately wasted. ‘Every square inch of the precious shore was preempted by speculators who had one ambition, to cash in and get away’.”

Answer 93

``` No heavy intrusion of modern business or commerce No hotels, casinos, Ferris wheels, roller coasters, parachute jumps, pinball machines, honky-tonks, loudspeakers, neon signs, no dirt, no random noise, no disarray. “Even when Jones Beach is filled with a crowd the size of Pittsburgh, it ambience manages to be remarkably serene.” “It contrasts radically with Coney Island, only a few miles to the west, whose middle-class constituency it immediately captured on its opening.” The density and intensity, the anarchic noise, the seedy vitality … is wiped off the map in the visionary landscape of Jones Beach ```

Answer 94

His parkways could only be experienced in cars! Their underpasses were purposely built too low for buses to clear them No public transit to bring the masses of people from the city to the beach A techno-pastoral garden (only opened to those who possessed the latest modern machines [the Model-T]) A privatized public space Use of physical design as a means of social screening His new green world offered only a red light to a large mass of humanity at the lower ends of the social scale His planning sought to undo diversity The idea of the beach being a public good was tarnished in an exercise that fragmented city folks. Escape was made possible for only a select few For access to the beach, he built two highly landscaped parkways (that became models for transportation planners) The popularity of Jones Beach was comparable to the success of Central Park 71 years earlier: 350,000 people crowded into the park during its first month of operation alone. It challenged/displaced Coney Island as New York’s most famous seaside resort. “As long as you’re fighting for parks, you can be sure of having public opinion on your side. And as long as you have public opinion on your side, you’re safe. As long as you’re on the side of parks you’re on the side of the angels. You can’t lose.” (Robert Moses)

Answer 95

If we step away from the particulars of Moses’s gigantic public works projects we find out that whatever his original purpose, what he created was the basis for commuting on an unprecedented scale. He helped to facilitate a more permanent escape from the city His parkways provided 3-4 times the effective radius of the subway system Where is Levittown located? Answer: just off an interchange on Moses’s Wantagh State Parkway (built 20 years earlier as one of the approaches to Jones Beach State Park) “Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country.”

Answer 96

What is your impression or image of suburbia? What are the core physical characteristics of the suburb? Post-WWII Single-family tract housing Products of the age of automobile and superhighways But isn’t the idea of suburbia also rooted in America’s desire for: Expansive freedom Mobility Escape Are these desires new? Suburbia is as old as the nation itself “Our property seems to me the most beautiful in the world. It is so close to Babylon that we enjoy all the advantages of the city, and yet when we come home we are away from all the noise and dust” (Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier). “Thus, the suburb as a residential place, as the site of scattered dwellings and businesses outside city walls, is as old as civilization and an important part of the ancient, medieval and early modern urban traditions.” “However, suburbanization as a process involving the systematic growth of fringe areas at a pace more rapid than that of core cities, as a lifestyle involving a daily commute to jobs in the center, occurred first in the United States and Great Britain, where it can be dated from about 1815.”

Answer 97

1814 – the first steam boat began ferrying passengers between New York and Brooklyn Advertisements claimed that the Lots of Brooklyn Heights were “the nearest country retreat, and easiest of access from the center ...” and offered “as a place of residence all the advantages of the country with most of the conveniences of the city.” Between 1820-1840, Brooklyn’s population increased fivefold, while New York only doubled it number of residents -By 1854, the Union Ferry Company offered 1,250 crossing each day -Ferry crossing also opened the shores of Jersey to commuters (rise of Hoboken, New Jersey in 1838) and to New Brighton on Staten Island Basically we see the rise of bedroom communities

Answer 98

Railroads 1849: 59 commuter trains converged on Boston every day (Cambridge, Brookline, Newton) 1855: opening of the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad led to a ‘suburban building boom’ in Chicago Without question sprawl and land speculation go hand-in-hand, prices did increase dramatically to buy a ‘suburban’ plot But, profit was not the all consuming motive

Answer 99

The goal was to create an alternative environment (tranquility, beauty, purity, safety) ROMANTIC PLANNING the goal was not to simply extend the city The result was a significant difference in design (natural terrain, naturalistic landscaping, large lots, irregular lots, curving streets) 1850s Glendale, north of Cincinnati 1853 Llewellyn Park in Orange, New Jersey (13 miles by rail from New York City) 1857 Lake Forest, Chicago area 1869 Riverside, Illinois (9 miles west of Chicago) By 1870 then, “an upper-middle-class suburban ideal had emerged”. The belief that the “good life” was found in such communities continues today

Answer 100

Thought to be the country's first planned residential community and the site of the first large-scale naturalization of crocus, narcissus and jonquils. The landscaping is in the 19th century romantic style of New York's Central Park, and includes winding paths and rare ornamental trees, shrubs and flowers

Answer 101

Thought to be the country's first planned residential community and the site of the first large-scale naturalization of crocus, narcissus and jonquils. The landscaping is in the 19th century romantic style of New York's Central Park, and includes winding paths and rare ornamental trees, shrubs and flowers

Answer 102

1. picturesque: an informal landscape style characterized by curvillinear forms; changes in topography; babbling brooks; full layered forest and glade planting; a sense of mystery and dappled light and shade 2. Pastoral: informal landscape style characterized by open, gently sloping meadows, calm, reflective ponds and lakes graced by overhanging trees 3. Gardenesque: a formal landscape style characterized by geometry and formal shapes, decorative bedding and individual plantings to highlight exotic plants or planting groups

Answer 103

“Almerin Hotchkiss, a landscape designer who had previously designed large cemeteries in Brooklyn, St. Louis, and Rock Island, Illinois, laid out the town in 1857. His design for Lake Forest echoes the picturesque style of nineteenth-century cemeteries in the curving streets that converge at the depot of the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad. On this 1873 map, the underlying grid shows plainly beneath the irregular curved streets; section and subsection lines run north-south and east-west without deviation. On the western portion of the map, the curved streets disappear, and straight streets return. “

Answer 104

Glendale and Llewelyn park blended nicely with the inspiration for Olmsted’s central park “the ordinary directness of line in town streets, with its resultant regularity of plan, would suggest eagerness to press forward, with out looking to the right hand or left, we should recommend…gracefully curved lines, generous spaces, and the absence of sharp corners, the idea being to suggest and imply leisure, contemplativeness, and haappy tranquility” (Olmsted, Vaux & Co. 17 ). “Asked to describe how Lake Forest has changed over the years, Mohr says, "Used to be the landscaping dominated a property. That's still the character of Lake Forest—the beautiful grounds of the estates. But some of the newer houses dominate the landscaping and punch you in the stomach with bulk”.”

Answer 105

“Suburbia was deemed a retreat nurturing happy tranquility and wholesome domesticity, a place conducive to the most desirable family life and combining the advantages of city and country. Nature, home, family, and peace were all components of the ideal upper-middle-class suburb and were to be preserved at all costs.” (Teaford, 2008, 8) “No great town can long exist without great suburbs” (Olmstead, 1868) “the suburb would erase the line demarcation along which marched the antagonisms of country and city” (Boyer 1996)

Answer 106

“Suburbia was deemed a retreat nurturing happy tranquility and wholesome domesticity, a place conducive to the most desirable family life and combining the advantages of city and country. Nature, home, family, and peace were all components of the ideal upper-middle-class suburb and were to be preserved at all costs.” (Teaford, 2008, 8) “No great town can long exist without great suburbs” (Olmstead, 1868) “the suburb would erase the line demarcation along which marched the antagonisms of country and city” (Boyer 1996)

Answer 107

1. Congestion 2. Distinction between city and country 3. Mixture of functions 4. Short distance between house and work 5. Location of fashionable residences close to the center of town

Answer 108

Walking City 30-45 minutes Any attempt to go beyond these mobility constraints meant courting with disaster/failure (i.e L’Enfant’s lavish spatial plan) Concentration of activities Income based residential communities Horse and carriage allowed the wealthy respite (omni-bus 1820s). Omni buses were often slower or the same speed as travelling on foot They also couldn’t hold very many passengers

Answer 109

Slightly faster More efficient over unpaved/muddy roads Perhaps the first ‘mass transit’ Accommodated radial routes/peripheral development Stimulated the ‘flight of the middling-class’ The early formation of the CBD (specialized services)

Answer 110

Electric Street Car First electric trolley began in Richmond 1888 It was quickly adopted by more than two dozen major cities within a year By the early 1890s it was the dominant mode of transportation Increased the outward migration Tripled the average speeds (15mph) Creation of star shaped entity Suburban subdivision of land Upward and spatial mobility Loss of integrated communities An affordable Intra-city circulatory system The creation of a new social geography for cities (ethnic neighborhoods) (live with your own kind) A different understanding of social distance (based on ethnicity, not class)

Answer 111

A suburb that sprang up at the edge of the city around the terminal of a radial streetcar line. By making it feasible to travel up to 10 miles from the Central Business District in 30 minutes or so, the streetcar greatly increased the territory available for residential development.

Answer 112

1870 to 1910 horsecars and then electric streetcars carried people to lots Not designed for the private automobile. These types of development existed both inside city lines as well as in satellite industrial towns. Higher density

Answer 113

Heavier electric railways (interurban) Dispersed settlement Los Angeles provides the best example The Pacific Electric Railway developed a massive system that connected the San Gabriel Valley to Santa Monica and from San Fernando Valley to Orange County’s Newport Beach All along these lines, new residential subdivisions sprouted Permissive legislature also led to the creation of thousands of independent cities Choice between incorporation/union or independence/annexation Stimulated the creation of elevated expressways/subways (but keep in mind subways were really expensive and thus limited to major urban centers [New York, Boston, Philly, Chicago]) Most construction was completed by the 1920s and new construction didn’t emerge until the 1960s

Answer 114

1. Railway terminals: Public transit lines all converged on the downtown (a centripetal transit system) Streetcar, subway, elevated rail, bus lines all led to the Central Business District “Although air terminals existed in the fringe areas, the downtown rail depots were still the primary front door of the city, the place where wartime Americans arrived and departed from the metropolis” ``` 2. Office District (Workplace concentration) Corporate Headquarters Lawyers Accountants Advertising agencies Banks Other business services A downtown location = reputation ``` 3. Skyscrapers (the preeminent symbol of office culture) Reflect the power of ego and inflated property values (layers of rentable space/vertical growth became a necessity) 4. Department stores 5. Government institutions

Answer 115

Rockefeller Center A complex of office towers, theaters, stores, restaurants became an inspiration to downtown developers throughout the nation following WWII Highly imitated, never emulated “Not only did it offer millions of square feet of leasable commercial space, but its gardens, sculptures, murals, skating rink, and giant Christmas tree display offered an oasis of civilized living in the congest core of the city.”

Answer 116

“More than any other innovation in the history of the city, the car would transform – and ultimately threaten with extinction – the qualities that had defined [cities]. For three hundred years, every new breakthrough in transportation and communication, from the packet ship and the Erie Canal to the steamship, telegraph, railroad, and subway, had augmented the city’s centrality, increased its density, and enhanced its power, even as the city itself expanded. The automobile would be a radical departure from all that. Appearing on the streets … in the early years of the century – at the very zenith of the age of rail – the car, and the world that would rise up around it, would challenge all previous assumptions about urban life: replacing the radial patterns of ships and railways that had concentrated forces in the city for centuries with a diffuse grid of roads and highways that dispersed people and resources out across the open countryside.”

Answer 117

Streetcars Clean Efficient Dependable Affordable It opened the city up to working and lower classes Creation of first ring suburbs Led to suburban real estate speculation (corridors out of the city) Led to the growth of downtowns Street car companies were also involved in amusement ventures Why did the automobile take off? Private vs. Public Subsidization ``` Cars Expensive Chauffeurs were often required (driver and mechanic) Roads were bad (flats) Gasoline stations were infrequent Weather was a problem Traffic control was shoddy ``` ``` Henry Ford (mass production) Massive restructuring of American cities The relentless efforts of special interest groups to make the car the mode of transportation Realtors Car dealers Tire makers Construction workers Anybody prodevelopment ```

Answer 118

Car Costs Spiral Upward Repaving of streets New sewer/water lines built before homes were constructed New infrastructure to accommodate cars Stoplights and other traffic measures But for many—like Kunstler (1993, 90)—the “greatest cost to the public was one that can’t be quantified in dollars: the degradation of urban life caused by enticing the middle class to make their homes outside of town. It began an insidious process that ultimately cost America its cities.”

Answer 119

1945: the Metropolitan Lifestyle was focused on the city center The center dominated work, play, shopping, and governmentA single dominant hub (“suburbs remained satellites orbiting around a common star”)

Answer 120

“There was nothing like it before in history: a machine that promised liberation from the daily bondage of place. And in a free country like the United States, with the unrestricted right to travel, a vast geographical territory to spread out into, and a national tradition of picking up and moving whenever life at home became intolerable, the automobile came as a blessing.” (Kunstler 1993, 86)

Answer 121

We need to take account of the preconditions for sprawl: 1. principle of land use zoning 2. Backlog of unfulfilled demand for housing 3. Cheap, long-term home financing 4. Federal Highway Act (1956) 5. A certain degree of fear (race issues)

Answer 122

1) Demographic: millions of military personnel returned to civil life following the war – marriage, and families (kids) – more households with young kids. During these decades the supposed American Dream materialized A massive demand for housing 2) Political: Cheap, long-term home financing (GI Bill – partly designed to facilitate home ownership for returning veterans) FHA and VA loan guarantee programs the vast majority of Federal money was used to finance suburban sprawl, and little went to help inner-city neighborhoods Governments have made the suburb into a deal – made it possible for a large portion of the population to entertain the notion of home ownership New and improved roads under the Federal Highway Act (1956). 3) Economic: Thousands of workings found relatively high paying jobs following WWII in factories that propelled the postwar economy. It was easier to save money for a down payment and to make monthly mortgage payments. The government (through tax and mortgage subsidies) made it cheaper to buy than to rent (albeit for a target portion of the population) “What distinguishes American society is not that so many Americans prefer a private dwelling, but that so many of them can afford one.” 4) Technical: a shift in the construction methods for the building of homes. The public sector designed policies to make buying homes more cost effective and the private sector chipped in with innovative design materials and construction methods to further reduce the prices Standardized building plans. Task specific crews. The building of several houses simultaneously.

Answer 123

Interstate highways By 2001, the U.S. Federal government had spent “over 370 billion on 46,675 miles [of highways/interstates].”

Answer 124

1. Good Roads 2. Movement (1890s) 2. Federal Road Acts (1916 & 1921): Millions of dollars to help get rural America “out of the mud” Farmers wanted all-weather, farm-to-market roads Rise of the automobile Home delivery of mail Regulation of interstate commerce “Promote the general welfare of the public/nation" Political associations/ representation Network first connected just the major urban areas – quicker, cheaper, and easier long distance travel A boom for the trucking industry Residents could commute farther distances in the same amount of time It became easier to speculatively develop large greenfield tracts of land into residential subdivisions “although the motorcar was the quintessentially private instrument, its owners had to operate it over public spaces” (Jackson quoted in Kunstler 1993, 90) It facilitated lower density living It created the conditions where shopping centers, business parks, and other economic uses decentralized as well (not just housing) In terms of housing, the highway system: (1) provided an economic rationale for a greater diversity of housing types farther away from the core (2) provided a greater diversity of employment opportunities farther from the core

Answer 125

#1 Location By 1950 the national suburban growth rate was ten times that of central cities The inner cities did have some empty lots——serviced by sewers, electrical connections, gas lines, and streets——available for development. But these lots were often not amenable to mass production techniques. Inner city lots could not satisfy economic requirements nor could they accommodate the psychological mood of the times.

Answer 126

#2 Low density The row house simply lost favor Individual plots and detached houses Typical lot sizes were relatively uniform around the country, averaging between 1/5 (80 by 100 feet) and 1/10 (40 by 100 feet) of an acre. A rough estimate is that Levittown was half as dense as streetcar suburbs

Answer 127

``` #3 Architectural similarity Basic plans Monotony and repetition One fad after another became the rage (split-level, then the ranch, then the modified colonial) Loss of identity? ``` “In the mass movement into suburban areas a new kind of community was produced, which caricatured both the historic city and the archetypal suburban refuge: a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless pre-fabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold, manufactured in the central metropolis. Thus, the ultimate effect of the suburban escape in our own time is, ironically, a low-grade uniform environment from which escape is impossible.” (Lewis Mumford, 1961)

Answer 128

Because of mass-production techniques, government financing, high wages, and low interest rates, it was, quite simply, cheaper to buy new housing in the suburbs than it was to reinvest in central city properties or to rent at the market price In wasn’t until the 1980s that ‘threshold of purchase’ shifted again (lucky us)

Answer 129

Suburbia required cars, highways and government-guaranteed mortgages It also required William Levitt Brought assembly line techniques to housing construction Broke the construction process in 27 operations (each step having specialized teams to repeat the operation) Put up houses fast and cheap (cheap enough for teachers, bus drivers and boilermakers to afford them) Changed the face of the American Housing Industry “Levittown houses were social creations more than architectural ones—they turned the detached, single-family house from a distant dream to a real possibility for thousands of middle-class American families.” Paul Goldberger

Answer 130

#5 Economic and racial homogeneity The automobile accentuated a discriminatory “Jim Crow” pattern A thoroughness of the physical separation “We can solve a housing problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem. But we cannot combine the two.” William Levitt Not surprisingly, in 1960 not a single one of the Long Island Levittown’s 82,000 residents was black Homogeneity is aided by zoning/ land-use restrictions In recent years the suburbs have become places of increased diversity

Answer 131

“The young families who joyously moved into the new homes of the suburbs were not terribly concerned about the problems of the inner-city housing market or the snobbish views of Lewis Mumford and other social critics. They were concerned about their hopes and their dreams. There were looking for good schools, private space, and personal safety, and places like Levittown could provide those amenities on a scale and at a price that crowded city neighborhoods, both in the Old World and in the new, could not match. The single-family tract house——post-World War II style——whatever its aesthetic failings, offered growing families a private haven in a heartless world. If the dream did not include minorities or the elderly, if it was accompanied by the isolation of nuclear families, by the decline of public transportation, and by the deterioration of urban neighborhoods, the creation of good, inexpensive suburban housing on an unprecedented scale was a unique achievement in the world.” (Kenneth T. Jackson, 1985)18\

Answer 132

• At the beginning of the 20thCentury only 1 in 20 Americans lived in suburbs, by the end of the century it was almost 1 in 2. • Suburbs have shifted from being appendages to being the center of metropolitan gravity

Answer 133

1. road construction 2. car ownership 3. conspicuous consumption 4. construction, manufacturing, retailing 5. economic growth is now intimately tied to continued patterns and levels of suburbanizatin (ie bank interest rates)

Answer 134

“Edge Cities represent the third wave of our lives pushing into new frontiers in this half century. First, we moved our homes out past the traditional idea of what constituted a city. This was the suburbanization of America, especially after World War II. Then we wearied of returning downtown for the necessities of life, so we moved our marketplaces out to where we lived. This was the mallingof America, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, we have moved our means of creating wealth, the essence of urbanism -our jobs -out to where most of us have lived and shopped for two generations. That has led to the rise of Edge City.” (Garreau)

Answer 135

Mall Glut The United States has about 40,000 shopping centers (housing twice the amount of retail space than any other country) Malls tend to put pressure on (lead to the decline of) Main Streets. At the same time, retail malls have recently entered into a period of economic trouble because of competition from outlet and big boxes as well as internet shopping.

Answer 136

Category Killer Dominates one part of the retail market (building materials, home and garden, drugs, books) “It competes with smaller stores –independent hardware Stores, lumberyards garden centers, pharmacies, or bookstores –and in retail jargon, cannibalizes them.”

Answer 137

The Rise of the “Megaburb”:1985 -present • Jobs follow the people to the suburbs • Suburbs are no longer “bedroom communities”; rather they are essentially independent of the central city • The rise of the “edge city” suburban downtown, or suburban cluster • Edge city:Suburban "down towns" that began to spring up on the edges of metropolitan areas in the 1980s, usually at the intersection of a radial freeway and a bypass or beltway • Traffic congestion (and job growth!) is often more intense in suburbs than in central city • Suburbs are also much more socially diverse than in previous eras.

Answer 138

Boomburg A rapidly growing, urban-sized place in the suburbs Coined by Robert Lang and Patrick Simmons –to describe the “fast-growing suburban cities,” or “places with more than 100,000 residents that are not the largest cities in their respective metropolitan areas that have maintained double digit rates of population growth in recent decades.” In 2002 Lang and Simmons had counted 53 boomburgs in the United States. Plano, Texas had a growth rate of 5,909% from 1960-2000.

Answer 139

ZoomburgA place growing even faster than a boomburg.

Answer 140

Edge Cities (Garreau) • Have five million square feet or more of office space. • Have 600,000 square feet or more of retail space. • Have more jobs than bedrooms. • Are perceived by the population as one place. • Were nothing like a “city” as recently as thirty years ago. • “They're called suburban business districts, major diversified centers, suburban cores, minicities, suburban activity centers, cities of realms, galactic cities, urban subcenters, pepperoni-pizza cities, superburbia, technoburbs, nucleations, disurbs, service cities, perimeter cities, peripheral centers, urban villages, and suburban downtowns but the name that's now most commonly used for places that the foregoing terms describe is "edge cities.”” • “The archetypal edge city is Tysons Corner, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C.”

Answer 141

Edgeless cities – are not perceived as one place – lack a well-defined boundary or edge and extend over tens, and in some cases, hundreds of square miles of urban space. – Individual components of Edgeless Cities often have an identity (as a named office park or corporate headquarters), but collectively these places seldom strike a casual observer as unified in any meaningful way.

Answer 142

thousands of square miles.

Answer 143

1. a dream of infinite mobility 2. abandon the grid 3. whose streets? 4. we have to stop being nostalgic. stop thinking about a paradise lost. 5. kill the street and construct highways.

Answer 144

• Frank Lloyd Wright – “It’d be cheaper to abandon it!” – “America’s cities were great failures unworthy of a democratic nation.” – “Centralization, the social force that made the king an appropriate necessity … is now the economic force that has overbuilt the pseudo-monarchic towns and cities of today.” – “The Skyscraper is a milestone and the gravestone of Capitalist Centralization!” – The automobile had open the way to the democratic life of decentralization – And therefore we get BroadacresCity (maximized mobility)

Answer 145

Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City (early 1930s) • Popularized the idea of organic architecture (harmony between human habitation and the natural world) • Thought dense designs should be avoided at all costs • He sought to vastly increase the open space and to create vastly lower densities • He imagined cities as being easily spread over 100 square miles or more • His vision was quintessentially suburban • Privately owned plots • Dispersed settlement • He was not proposing to ‘marry’ city and town, rather he wanted to merge them “Every citizen an urbanite and farmer”

Answer 146

• In 1950, the South was home to 44 million people, but had no urban centers of more than 1 million; it was also home to 63% of the nation’s black population. • The West, in 1950, was sparsely populated, accounting for 13% of the nation’s population.

Answer 147

west region: 19.1% change midwest region: 10.6% change northeast region: 4.9% chagne south region: 24.2% change national average: 15.01% change

Answer 148

creation of the projects (superblocks) Title I: slum clearance and urban redevelopment • Central-city business interests viewed it as a means of boosting sagging property values • Mayors and city councils perceived it as a tool to increase tax revenues • Social welfare leaders hoped it would clear the slums and better the living conditions of the poor • Advocates of low-and moderate-income housing thought it would increase the stock of decent, affordable dwellings in the central cities

Answer 149

Urban Renewal began with noble aims – The Housing Act of 1949 sought to eliminate substandard housing and provide a decent built environment – By 1973 (when the program officially ended) approximately 2000 individual projects had been undertaken • 200,000 units had been demolished • 2,000,000 people were displaced – “It ranks with the removal of Native Americans as one of the largest and saddest forced migrations in the history of the nation.”' – The program “involved a net loss of housing” • Four dwellings were demolished for every one built • Houses were replaced by more expensive housing, parking garages, shopping centers, office blocks, hospitals and so on. – The program destroyed communities, increased segregation, and further contributed to central-city decline

Answer 150

“Fill No More: the Fillmore, world famous for its thriving jazz clubs, was bulldozed into oblivion in an urban renewal project that the Redevelopment Agency later admitted was intended to drive all Black people out of San Francisco. Over 200 Black-owned businesses and 5,000 homes weredestroyed.” Cabrini-Green, Chicagobuilt 1942 –1962; rebuilt starting 1995 ``` Bunker Hill (1955) •Initially designed for 10,000 units of desperately need low-income housing but eventually became claimed by real-estate/business interests •Remains one of L.A.’s most politically charged places ``` Pruit-Igoe 1951-1972

Answer 151

Title I: Criticisms/Comments/Problems • The exact goals of the program were ambiguous and ill-defined, there was constant controversy over its application. • Improved housing seemed to be the principal goal of Title I, but Congress had not specified what kind of housing and had left an opening for non-residentialprojects. • An ever-increasing amount of urban renewal money was spent for commercial projects and facilitated the use of the urban renewal mechanism to expand colleges, universities, and hospitals in the central city. • The poor were removed/relocated/replaced – “not a war on poverty but rather a war on the poor” – Reduced the already limited housing stock available to ethnic communities (it should be noted that many of the renewal projects leveled white ethnic neighborhoods as well [Boston’s West End, Chicago’s Near West Side]) • What was produced never matched the hype • Time lag in project construction (vacant tracts of land) • Too many projects were not seeds of a burgeoning renaissance (they didn’t launch a wave of downtown living to counter the outward flow to the suburbs) • Many were aesthetically displeasing (dull boxes, blocks of nothing, modernist design idea that less is more actually became less is less in urban renewal efforts) • Urban renewal was clearly intended to renew the city, but what exactly this meant was a matter of debate – HOW DO YOU DEFINE URBAN RENEWAL? – HOW DO YOU DETERMINE BLIGHT?

Answer 152

“Moses became the most influential non-federal public official in the nation of his time without ever being elected to public office.He was an outspoken, fiery controversial visionary whose strong character, energy, zeal and singleness of purpose transformed the landscapes of New York State, New York City and Long Island.In the city he held power for 34 years through the mayoralties of La Guardia, O’Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay.At the state level, Moses remained in power for 44 years through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harrman and Rockefeller.He is memorialized by the Robert Moses State Park in Long Island; another Robert Moses State Park at Massena; the Robert Moses Causeway on Long Island; the Robert Moses Parkway at Niagara; and the dams at Niagara and at Massena which also are named after him.” Moses held 12 public jobs at once

Answer 153

• Highway Construction – Exacerbated urban clearance – The U.S. became a car culture (infinite mobility) – Money was directed away from public transportation – Road construction became a self-generating system (charges and taxes [license and registration fees/gasoline taxes) are revenue to build more) – How do you make room for freeway construction? • You condemn land • 5,300 miles of urban expressways were blasted through cities in America • Neighborhoods were torn down, people evicted • You got a notice on your door and you had 90 days to vacate • The worst hit were inner-city, low-income, minority neighborhoods • Interstate 95 in Miami plowed through the black community of Overtown • In Nashville, the I40 kinked so that it went through the black community of North Nashville • The I95 in Syracuse, the I10 in New Orleans, the I85 in Montgomery, the I59 in Birmingham, Alabama, the I95 in Camden, N.J., the I77 in Charlotte, N.C. are just a few more examples where highway construction plowed through low-income and especially low-income minority communities – The inner-city became even less attractive as a place to live – Rather than bringing middle-class people back to the city, the new roads made it easier for them to escape

Answer 154

Heritage/Historic Preservation and Political Activism: - Ada Louise Huxtable - Jane Jacobs “we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but the monuments we destroy” Ada Louise Huxtable Jane Jacobs

Answer 155

``` Two Views • Robert Moses – Total dominance of the automobile – The city must be built to accommodate the expressway – Urban Renewal as the solution to urban blight • Complete leveling of whole neighborhoods • Towers-in-the-park • Expressways to allow “infinite mobility” • Grand schemes to revitalize the nation’s cities. ``` ``` Jane Jacobs – Cities matter – The power of the neighborhood – The power of the sidewalk – Little plans, not big plans create diversity and the ‘true glory of a great city’ – Trust the evidence of your own eyes – Distrust the Grand Design – Streets become safe not when they are heavily policed but when people begin to look out for one another – We need to protect the old –preserve it (historic preservation movement) ```

Answer 156

1. the massive expenditures of federal funds on Title 1 and Title II were really investments in physical form 2. question of priorities: - neighborhoods collapsed - loss of middle class - lower class citizens were trapped - deterioration of finances - race issues remained - crime and violence increased - open conflict (riots)

Answer 157

• Was Moses a necessary figure? • Physical legacy: – Bridges, parkways, expressways, 20,000 acres of parklands in the city alone, monumental buildings, 255 playgrounds, housing projects – In the 20 years prior to Moses, the city did not manage to build one mile of arterial highway… he built 627 miles of arterial highways. In the 30 years following his demise… only 13 miles of highway were built. • Social legacy: – He segregated people by race and income • Which legacy will endure longer? Which legacy is easier to accomplish? – The problem of building public works, the gigantic public works needed in a crowded global city –the problem of building in a dense, crowded urban setting –is one that democracy had [has] not solved. – How difficult will it be to undue the social and spatial segregation that Moses created?

Answer 158

Cities vs. Suburbs • Central cities often have insufficient funds and resources relative to the demands for the services they are responsible (downloading of services) • Decentralization of jobs and homes, the aging of inner-city environments, the concentration of elderly and low-income households in inner-city neighborhoods has led to a narrowing of the tax base, while rising the demand for services • Aging housing requires high levels of fire protection • High crime rates mean higher policing costs • High levels of unemployment and ill-health means the need for welfare and health care facilities

Answer 159

#1 Central city-suburban fiscal-disparity • Central cities, especially those that are shrinking, have a declining tax base and lower-income population • Older suburbs are in fact in decline themselves, with aging infrastructures and housing stock and declining tax base • Suburbs tend to have an expanding tax base and a relatively affluent population

Answer 160

#2 The problem with public education – Who funds the public school system? (mostly state and municipal sources) – Rich states can spend more than poor states – Affluent suburbs can spend more than struggling suburbs and central cities – Fiscal disparity is reflected in performance (both of teachers and students) – While throwing money at social problems is not normally a good idea, when it comes to education the statistics show that the more you spend per pupil the greater the results – Unfortunately, “for most low-income households trapped in poor school districts, public education is a funnel of failure.” (isolation from the structures of opportunity)

Answer 161

#3 The lack of metropolitan-wide civic engagement – Fragmentation reinforces divisions, differences and fracture lines in U.S. society (rich from poor, black from white, cities from suburbs) – Fragmentation Begets Homogeneity (which contributes to structural racial inequality, hostility toward the poor and to minorities) – Basically the city is at risk of being balkanized architecturally (gated communities) and politically – “to be actively involved in your all-white suburban neighborhood, or predominately Latino neighborhood, may be public involvement, but it is not civic engagement in the sense of engaging a variety of metropolitan experiences.”

Answer 162

• Different politics: One of economic decline vs. the management of growth – Where does funding get spent? – Will this spending reinforce inequality? – The suburbanization of America is inextricably tied to the creation and expansion of the ghetto, barrio, and slum – Will suburbs eventually face the same “Spiral of decline” • “The migration to the suburbs included not only people but resources.” • In many inner-cities, residents find themselves in spaces physically distant from newly created opportunities (especially jobs [think edge cities, more jobs than bedrooms]) • Critical Question: How should central cities be revitalized?

Answer 163

• The shift to entrepreneurialism in urban governance (basic questions) – How can urban governments cope in a competitive age? – How might they secure a ‘better future for their populations’? – Should urban governments play some kind of supportive or even direct role in the creation of new enterprises and if so of what sort? – Should they struggle to preserve or even take over threatened employment sources and if so which ones? Or should they simply confine themselves to the provision of those infrastructures, sites, tax baits, and cultural and social attractions that would shore up the old and lure in new forms of economic activity?

Answer 164

• Basically the Federal government no longer had the fiscal resources to contribute to their solution • The result has been a revival of local civic boosterism/cities have become entrepreneurs

Answer 165

#1 Improvement of competitive position within the international division of labor – Basically you make your city/place advantageous for the production of goods and services – Investment in physical and social infrastructure – Provision of subsidies (tax breaks, cheap credit, procurement of sites) – You offer a “package of aids and assistance” as inducement • Smokestack chasing: attract manufacturing jobs (low operating costs) • Target marketing: you go after specific industries (i.e. call centers) • Product development: jobs of the future/service industry #2 Improvement of competitive position in terms of the spatial division of consumption – Tourismand retirementattractions – Gentrification, cultural innovation, and physical up-grading of the urban environment (styles of architecture and urban design) – Provision of consumer attractions (sports stadia, convention and shopping centers, marinas, exotic eating places) and entertainment (the organization of urban spectacles on a temporary or permanent basis) – Above all, the city has to appear as an innovative, exciting, creative, and safe place to live or to visit, to play and consume in. – You use tourism dollars to create spin-off effects (facelifts, new facilities, quality of life) • The Festival Package (sport, resorts, spas, shopping) • The Clean and Green Theme (natural, recreation, beaches, swimming) • The Package of Pluralism (ethnicity, a varied experience, restaurants, carnivals) • The Historic Theme (authenticity, nostalgia, landmarks, historical narratives) #3 The acquisition of key control and command functions in high finance, government, or information gathering and processing – heavy investments in transport and communications (i.e. airports and teleports) – Provision of adequate office space – Assemblage of supportive services (information processing, educational institutions [business and law-schools, high-tech production sectors, media skills]) – Inter-urban competition in this realm is very expensive and peculiarly tough because this is an area where agglomeration economies remain supreme (favors established centers like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) – Basically you are trying to capture a piece of the high-end producer services market (you are going to be an informational city –financial, informational, knowledge-producing) #4 Improvement of competitive edge with respect to redistributions of surpluses through state/central governments – Here you try to secure military and defense contracts – You might also go after health and education

Answer 166

“Communities suffering from declines in farming, mining, timber-work and manufacturing are now begging for prisons to be built in their backyards. The economic restructuring that began in the troubled decade of the 1980s has had dramatic social and economic consequences for rural communities and small towns. Together the farm crises, factory closings, corporate downsizing, shift to service sector employment and the substitution of major regional and national chains for local, main-street businesses have triggered profound change in these areas. The acquisition of prisons as a conscious economic development strategy for depressed rural communities and small towns in the United States has become widespread. Hundreds of small rural towns and several whole regions have become dependent on an industry which itself is dependent on the continuation of crime-producing conditions.”

Exam #2 Flashcards

(190 cards)