Download or read book Downtown America written by Alison Isenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downtown America was once the vibrant urban center romanticized in the Petula Clark song—a place where the lights were brighter, where people went to spend their money and forget their worries. But in the second half of the twentieth century, "downtown" became a shadow of its former self, succumbing to economic competition and commercial decline. And the death of Main Streets across the country came to be seen as sadly inexorable, like the passing of an aged loved one. Downtown America cuts beneath the archetypal story of downtown's rise and fall and offers a dynamic new story of urban development in the United States. Moving beyond conventional narratives, Alison Isenberg shows that downtown's trajectory was not dictated by inevitable free market forces or natural life-and-death cycles. Instead, it was the product of human actors—the contested creation of retailers, developers, government leaders, architects, and planners, as well as political activists, consumers, civic clubs, real estate appraisers, even postcard artists. Throughout the twentieth century, conflicts over downtown's mundane conditions—what it should look like and who should walk its streets—pointed to fundamental disagreements over American values. Isenberg reveals how the innovative efforts of these participants infused Main Street with its resonant symbolism, while still accounting for pervasive uncertainty and fears of decline. Readers of this work will find anything but a story of inevitability. Even some of the downtown's darkest moments—the Great Depression's collapse in land values, the rioting and looting of the 1960s, or abandonment and vacancy during the 1970s—illuminate how core cultural values have animated and intertwined with economic investment to reinvent the physical form and social experiences of urban commerce. Downtown America—its empty stores, revitalized marketplaces, and romanticized past—will never look quite the same again. A book that does away with our most clichéd approaches to urban studies, Downtown America will appeal to readers interested in the history of the United States and the mythology surrounding its most cherished institutions. A Choice Oustanding Academic Title. Winner of the 2005 Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians. Winner of the 2005 Lewis Mumford Prize for Best Book in American Planning History. Winner of the 2005 Historic Preservation Book Price from the University of Mary Washington Center for Historic Preservation. Named 2005 Honor Book from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

Download or read book America s Downtowns written by Richard C. Collins and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1991-03 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s Downtowns Growth, Politics & Preservation Policies that shape urban growth are critical to the future of the American preservation movement and America’s cities. America’s Downtowns explores local growth management policies and preservation issues in 10 major cities across America — Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Denver, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Roanoke, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Seattle. Each of these cities has experimented with goals and strategies designed to help it increase the attractiveness of its downtown through historic preservation. This book provides an in-depth look into ways preservation values can be integrated into local policies that shape growth and development.

Download or read book Downtown written by Robert M. Fogelson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Downtown is the first history of what was once viewed as the heart of the American city. Urban historian Robert Fogelson gives a riveting account of how downtown--and the way Americans thought about it--changed between 1880 and 1950. Recreating battles over subways and skyscrapers, the introduction of elevated highways and parking bans, and other controversies, this book provides a new and often starling perspective on downtown's rise and fall.

Download or read book Downtown Inc written by Bernard J. Frieden and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991-07-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pioneering observers of the urban landscape Bernard Frieden and Lynne Sagalyn delve into the inner workings of the exciting new public entrepreneurship and public-private partnerships that have revitalized the downtowns of such cities as Boston, San Diego, Seattle, St. Paul, and Pasadena.

Download or read book America s New Downtowns written by Larry Ford and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-07 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Larry R. Ford is a professor of geography at San Diego State University who has taught urban geography for thirty years."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Our Towns written by James Fallows and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BEST SELLER • The basis for the HBO documentary now streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.

Download or read book Walkable City written by Jeff Speck and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a plan for American cities that focuses on making downtowns walkable and less attractive to drivers through smart growth and sustainable design

Download or read book The Heart of the City written by Alexander Garvin and published by . This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles. In The Heart of the City, distinguished urban planner Alexander Garvin shares lessons on how to plan for a mix of housing, businesses, and attractions; enhance the public realm; improve mobility; and successfully manage downtown services. Garvin opens the book with diagnoses of downtowns across the United States, including the people, businesses, institutions, and public agencies implementing changes. In a review of prescriptions and treatments for any downtown, Garvin shares brief accounts--of both successes and failures--of what individuals with very different objectives have done to change their downtowns. The final chapters look at what is possible for downtowns in the future, closing with suggested national, state, and local legislation to create standard downtown business improvement districts to better manage downtowns. This book will help public officials, civic organizations, downtown business property owners, and people who care about cities learn from successful recent actions in downtowns across the country, and expand opportunities facing their downtown. Garvin provides recommendations for continuing actions to help any downtown thrive, ensuring a prosperous and thrilling future for the 21st-century American city.

Download or read book Building Downtown Los Angeles written by Leland T. Saito and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1970s on, Los Angeles was transformed into a center for entertainment, consumption, and commerce for the affluent. Mirroring the urban development trend across the nation, new construction led to the displacement of low-income and working-class racial minorities, as city officials targeted these neighborhoods for demolition in order to spur economic growth and bring in affluent residents. Responding to the displacement, there emerged a coalition of unions, community organizers, and faith-based groups advocating for policy change. In Building Downtown Los Angeles Leland Saito traces these two parallel trends through specific construction projects and the backlash they provoked. He uses these events to theorize the past and present processes of racial formation and the racialization of place, drawing new insights on the relationships between race, place, and policy. Saito brings to bear the importance of historical events on contemporary processes of gentrification and integrates the fluidity of racial categories into his analysis. He explores these forces in action, as buyers and entrepreneurs meet in the real estate marketplace, carrying with them a fraught history of exclusion and vast disparities in wealth among racial groups.

Download or read book Edith Halpert the Downtown Gallery and the Rise of American Art written by Rebecca Shaykin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-11 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the fascinating untold story of art-world tastemaker Edith Halpert, who sold, promoted, and effectively defined American art in the 20th century.

Download or read book Reimagining Greenville written by John Boyanoski and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People everywhere have hailed downtown Greenville as one of the best in America. From its tree-lined Main Street to its bustling riverfront to the gardens around its cascading waterfalls, the city inspired numerous other cities to try and duplicate its success. Using unique public-private partnerships, the revitalization of downtown Greenville was a true collaborative effort that helped to create a walkable and livable downtown. The city also boasts amazing modern and traditional art as well as a host of top-notch restaurants. Once considered just a business-only town, Greenville has emerged as a metropolitan destination. In this updated edition, authors John Boyanoski and Mayor Knox White detail the toils and tribulations that produced a world-class city.

Download or read book Saving America s Cities written by Lizabeth Cohen and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Bancroft Prize In twenty-first-century America, some cities are flourishing and others are struggling, but they all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. Cities have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good. It wasn’t always this way. For almost three decades after World War II, even as national policies promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents into the suburbs. In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal. He worked to revive a declining New Haven, became the architect of the “New Boston” of the 1960s, and, later, led New York State’s Urban Development Corporation, which built entire new towns, including Roosevelt Island in New York City. Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy: Neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes and progressive goals. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness, opening up possibilities for our own time.

Download or read book The Death and Life of Great American Cities written by Jane Jacobs and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Downtown Roanoke written by Nelson Harris and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downtown Roanoke celebrates the vibrant history of a community that lies at the heart of the scenic Roanoke Valley. From the saloons and livery stables of the late 19th century to the flagship department stores that attracted hundreds of shoppers in the late 1950s, Roanoke has experienced dramatic change. Over 200 archival images have been compiled to produce a stunning collage of the downtown area over the past century. Included are the American Theater, the Rialto, the Jefferson, and the time-altered streetscapes of Jefferson, Campbell, Kirk, and Church. This collection highlights the storied past of Roanoke through hotels, hospitals, churches, merchants, and special events, including the American Legion parades, the Diamond Jubilee, and the march of the VMI and VPI cadets at Thanksgiving en route to Victory Stadium. Downtown Roanoke is a tribute to the heritage of Southwestern Virginia's leading urban center. Today it remains a metropolitan district alive with culture and commerce, having re-emerged from the challenges of shopping malls and suburbia. The photographs in this collection, many published for the first time, provide a nostalgic look at the progress of Roanoke's historic downtown corridor.

Download or read book Small Town Economic Development written by Joaquin Jay Gonzalez III, and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-05-24 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We tend to associate small town economic development with the decline of the rural United States--empty houses, shuttered shops and rusting factories. A common diagnosis of sluggish small town recovery is their lack of lifestyle amenities that attract new residents and businesses. Yet many small towns have shown progress and potential in recent years. This collection of recent articles by experts presents stories of small-town America's struggle and describes innovations and practices behind successful revivals.

Download or read book Downtown Phoenix written by J. Seth Anderson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-02 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a bed of a primordial ocean floor and in a valley surrounded by jagged mountains, a city was founded atop the ruins of a vanished civilization. In 1867, former Confederate soldier Jack Swilling saw the remains of an ancient canal system and the potential for the area to blossom into a thriving agricultural center. Pioneers moved into the settlement searching for new opportunities, and on October 20, 1870, residents living in adobe structures that lined dirt streets adopted the name Phoenix, expressing the optimism of the frontier. For decades, downtown Phoenix was a dense urban core, the hub of agricultural fields, mining settlements, and military posts. Unfortunately, suburban sprawl and other social factors of the postWorld War II era led to the centers decline. With time, things changed, and now downtown Phoenix is uniquely positioned to rise again as a prominent 21st-century American city.

Download or read book San Jose s Historic Downtown written by Lauren Miranda Gilbert and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: San Jose is the "Capital of the Silicon Valley," the high-rise, economic engine of advanced technology. Yet it was once a verdant valley, inhabited by wildlife, waterfowl, and the native Ohlone people. The Spanish who founded California's first civilian settlement here in 1777 named it for Saint Joseph, the patron saint of the Spanish Expedition. Their farms fed the soldiers at the Monterey and San Francisco presidios, beginning an agricultural industry that thrived for nearly 200 years. Although serving briefly as California's first state capital, for many decades downtown was the somewhat sleepy commercial center of the Santa Clara Valley. A housing and population expansion that began in the 1950s exploded with San Jose's rebirth as a technological mecca.