Download or read book Reforming Suburbia written by Ann Forsyth and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-03-14 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Reforming Suburbia is a fascinating book. Forsyth examines the planned new towns of Columbia, Irvine, and The Woodlands through dozens of interviews with developers, designers, and residents as well as extensive archival research. She tackles complex public and private investments and asks how negotiations proceeded between government and real estate developers, all the while keeping an eye on the issues of race, gender, environmental sustainability, and marketing. This is required reading for anyone interested in the practice of American urban development."—Dolores Hayden, author of Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 "Ann Forsyth significantly enriches the fields of planning and architectural history with her thorough analysis of the social, ecological, and economic successes and shortcomings of these three prominent new communities. She offers valuable insights and wonderfully captures the idealistic spirit of the late 1960s and early 1970s."—Frederick Steiner, author of Human Ecology

Download or read book Reforming Suburbia written by Ann Forsyth and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-03-14 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "new community" movement of the 1960s and 1970s attempted a grand experiment in housing. It inspired the construction of innovative communities that were designed to counter suburbia's cultural conformity, social isolation, ugliness, and environmental problems. This richly documented book examines the results of those experiments in three of the most successful new communities: Irvine Ranch in Southern California, Columbia in Maryland, and The Woodlands in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. Based on new research and interviews with developers, designers, and residents, Ann Forsyth traces the evolution, the successes, and the shortcomings of these experiments in urban innovation. Where they succeeded, in areas such as community identity and open space preservation, they provide support for current "smart growth" proposals. Where they did not, in areas such as housing affordability and transportation choices, they offer important insights for today's planners, designers, developers, civic leaders, and others interested in incorporating new forms of development into their designs.

Download or read book New City Upon a Hill written by Joseph Rocco Mitchell and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2007-03-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in anticipation of Columbia's fortieth anniversary in 2007, this book showcases the history of one of the nation's leading "new towns." Built from the brilliant plan developed by visionary designer James Rouse, Columbia's innovative design is the foundation for a unique community that has thrived for decades and flourishes today.

Download or read book The Death and Life of Main Street written by Miles Orvell and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a century, the term "Main Street" has conjured up nostalgic images of American small-town life. Representations exist all around us, from fiction and film to the architecture of shopping malls and Disneyland. All the while, the nation has become increasingly diverse, exposing tensions within this ideal. In The Death and Life of Main Street, Miles Orvell wrestles with the mythic allure of the small town in all its forms, illustrating how Americans continue to reinscribe these images on real places in order to forge consensus about inclusion and civic identity, especially in times of crisis. Orvell underscores the fact that Main Street was never what it seemed; it has always been much more complex than it appears, as he shows in his discussions of figures like Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Frank Capra, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. He argues that translating the overly tidy cultural metaphor into real spaces--as has been done in recent decades, especially in the new urbanist planned communities of Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany--actually diminishes the communitarian ideals at the center of this nostalgic construct. Orvell investigates the way these tensions play out in a variety of cultural realms and explores the rise of literary and artistic traditions that deliberately challenge the tropes and assumptions of small-town ideology and life.

Download or read book Building Suburbia written by Dolores Hayden and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-11-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and provocative history of the contested landscapes where the majority of Americans now live. From rustic cottages reached by steamboat to big box stores at the exit ramps of eight-lane highways, Dolores Hayden defines seven eras of suburban development since 1820. An urban historian and architect, she portrays housewives and politicians as well as designers and builders making the decisions that have generated America’s diverse suburbs. Residents have sought home, nature, and community in suburbia. Developers have cherished different dreams, seeking profit from economies of scale and increased suburban densities, while lobbying local and federal government to reduce the risk of real estate speculation. Encompassing environmental controversies as well as the complexities of race, gender, and class, Hayden’s fascinating account will forever alter how we think about the communities we build and inhabit.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to the Suburbs written by Bernadette Hanlon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to the Suburbs provides one of the most comprehensive examinations available to date of the suburbs around the world. International in scope and interdisciplinary in nature, this volume will serve as the definitive reference for scholars and students of the suburbs. This volume brings together the leading scholars of the suburbs researching in different parts of the world to better understand how and why suburbs and their communities grow, decline, and regenerate. The volume sets out four goals: 1) to provide a synthesis and critical appraisal of the historical and current state of understanding about the development of suburbs in the world; 2) to provide a forum for a comprehensive examination into the conceptual, theoretical, spatial, and empirical discontents of suburbanization; 3) to engage in a scholarly conversation about the transformation of suburbs that is interdisciplinary in nature and bridges the divide between the Global North and the Global South; and 4) to reflect on the implications of the socioeconomic, cultural, and political transformations of the suburbs for policymakers and planners. The Routledge Companion to the Suburbs is composed of original, scholarly contributions from the leading scholars of the study of how and why suburbs grow, decline, and transform. Special attention is paid to the global nature of suburbanization and its regional variations, with a focus on comparative analysis of suburbs through regions across the world in the Global North and the Global South. Articulated in a common voice, the volume is integrated by the very nature of the concept of a suburb as the unit of analysis, offering multidisciplinary perspectives from the fields of economics, geography, planning, political science, sociology, and urban studies.

Download or read book Lone Star Suburbs written by Paul J. P. Sandul and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is it that nearly 90 percent of the Texan population currently lives in metropolitan regions, but many Texans still embrace and promote a vision of their state’s nineteenth-century rural identity? This is one of the questions the editors and contributors to Lone Star Suburbs confront. One answer, they contend, may be the long shadow cast by a Texas myth that has served the dominant culture while marginalizing those on the fringes. Another may be the criticism suburbia has endured for undermining the very romantic individuality that the Texas myth celebrates. From the 1950s to the present, cultural critics have derided suburbs as landscapes of sameness and conformity. Only recently have historians begun to document the multidimensional industrial and ethnic aspects of suburban life as well as the development of multifamily housing, services, and leisure facilities. In Lone Star Suburbs, urban historian Paul J. P. Sandul, Texas historian M. Scott Sosebee, and ten contributors move the discussion of suburbia well beyond the stereotype of endless blocks of white middle-class neighborhoods and fill a gap in our knowledge of the Lone Star State. This collection supports the claim that Texas is not only primarily suburban but also the most representative example of this urban form in the United States. Essays consider transportation infrastructure, urban planning, and professional sports as they relate to the suburban ideal; the experiences of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos in Texas metropolitan areas; and the environmental consequences of suburbanization in the state. Texas is no longer the bastion of rural life in the United States but now—for better or worse—represents the leading edge of suburban living. This important book offers a first step in coming to grips with that reality.

Download or read book Desert Visions and the Making of Phoenix 1860 2009 written by Philip VanderMeer and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether touted for its burgeoning economy, affordable housing, and pleasant living style, or criticized for being less like a city than a sprawling suburb, Phoenix, by all environmental logic, should not exist. Yet despite its extremely hot and dry climate and its remoteness, Phoenix has grown into a massive metropolitan area. This exhaustive study examines the history of how Phoenix came into being and how it has sustained itself, from its origins in the 1860s to its present status as the nation’s fifth largest city. From the beginning, Phoenix sought to grow, and although growth has remained central to the city’s history, its importance, meaning, and value have changed substantially over the years. The initial vision of Phoenix as an American Eden gave way to the Cold War Era vision of a High Tech Suburbia, which in turn gave way to rising concerns in the late twentieth century about the environmental, social, and political costs of growth. To understand how such unusual growth occurred in such an improbable location, Philip VanderMeer explores five major themes: the natural environment, urban infrastructure, economic development, social and cultural values, and public leadership. Through investigating Phoenix’s struggle to become a major American metropolis, his study also offers a unique view of what it means to be a desert city.

Download or read book Suburban Alchemy written by Nicholas Dagen Bloom and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream, Nicholas Dagen Bloom examines the "new town" movement of the 1960s, which sought to transform the physical and social environments of American suburbs by showing that idealism could be profitable. Bloom offers case studies of three of the movement's more famous examples -- Reston, Virginia; Columbia, Maryland; and Irvine, California -- to flesh out his historical account. In each case, innovative planners mixed land uses and housing types; refined architectural, graphic, and landscape design; offered well-defined village and town centers; and pioneered institutional planning. As Bloom demonstrates, these efforts did not uniformly succeed, and attempts to reshape community life through design notably faltered. However, despite frequent disappointments and compromises, the residents have kept the new town ideals alive for over four decades and produced a vital form of suburban community that is far more complicated and interesting than the early vision promoted by the town planners. Lively chapters illustrate efforts in local politics, civic spirit, social and racial integration, feminist innovations, and cultural sponsorship. Suburban Alchemy should be of interest to scholars of U.S. urban history, planning history, and community development, as well as the general reader interested in the development of alternative communities in the United States.

Download or read book Post Suburbia written by Jon C. Teaford and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-03 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The years shortly after the end of World War II saw the beginnings of a new kind of community that blended the characteristics of suburbia with those of the central city. Over the decades these "edge cities"have become permanent features of the regional landscape. Originally published in 1996. The years shortly after the end of World War II saw the beginnings of a new kind of community that blended the characteristics of suburbia with those of the central city. Over the decades these "edge cities" have become permanent features of the regional landscape. In Post-Suburbia, historian Jon Teaford charts the emergence of these areas and explains why and how they developed. Teaford begins by describing the adaptation of traditional units of government to the ideals and demands of the changing world along the metropolitan fringe. He shows how these post-suburban municipalities had to fashion a government that perpetuated the ideals of small-scale village life and yet, at the same time, provided for a large tax base to pay for needed municipal services. To tell this story, Teaford follows six counties that were among the pioneers of the post-suburban world: Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York; Oakland County, Michigan; DuPage County, Illinois; Saint Louis County, Missouri; and Orange County, California. Although county governments took on new coordinating functions, Teaford concludes, the many municipalities along the metropolitan fringe continued to retain their independence and authority. Underlying this balance of power was the persistent adherence to the long-standing suburban tradition of grassroots rule. Despite changes in the economy and appearance of the metropolitan fringe, this ideology retained its appeal among post-suburban voters, who rebelled at the prospect of thorough centralization of authority. Thus the fringe may have appeared post-suburban, but traditional suburban attitudes continued to influence the course of governmental development.

Download or read book Suburban Crossroads written by Thomas J. Vicino and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In fear of becoming havens for illegal immigrants, numerous local communities adopted and implemented their own immigration laws during the 2000s. Suburban Crossroads chronicles the debates and policy responses that emerged over laws like the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, an...

Download or read book Prairie Crossing written by John Scott Watson and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2016-01-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carved out of century-old farmland near Chicago, the Prairie Crossing development is a novel experiment in urban public policy that preserves 69 percent of the land as open space. The for-profit project has set out to do nothing less than use access to nature as a means to challenge America's failed culture of suburban sprawl. The first comprehensive look at an American conservation community, Prairie Crossing goes beyond windmills and nest boxes to examine an effort to connect adults to the land while creating a healthy and humane setting for raising a new generation attuned to nature. John Scott Watson places Prairie Crossing within the wider context of suburban planning, revealing how two first-time developers implemented a visionary new land ethic that saved green space by building on it. The remarkable achievements include a high rate of resident civic participation, the reestablishment of a thriving prairie ecosystem, the reintroduction of endangered and threatened species, and improved water and air quality. Yet, as Watson shows, considerations like economic uncertainty, lack of racial and class diversity, and politics have challenged, and continue to challenge, Prairie Crossing and its residents.

Download or read book Design for a Vulnerable Planet written by Frederick Steiner and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We inhabit a vulnerable planet. The devastation caused by natural disasters such as the southern Asian tsunami, Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, and the earthquakes in China's Sichuan province, Haiti, and Chile—as well as the ongoing depletion and degradation of the world's natural resources caused by a burgeoning human population—have made it clear that "business as usual" is no longer sustainable. We need to find ways to improve how we live on this planet while minimizing our impact on it. Design for a Vulnerable Planet sounds a call for designers and planners to go beyond traditional concepts of sustainability toward innovative new design that fosters regeneration and resilience. Drawing on his own and others' experiences across three continents, Frederick Steiner advocates design practice grounded in ecology and democracy and informed by critical regionalism and reflection. He begins by establishing the foundation for a more ecological approach to planning and design, adopting a broad view of ecology as encompassing human and natural, urban and wild environments. Steiner explores precedents for human ecological design provided by architect Paul Cret, landscape architect Ian McHarg, and developer George Mitchell while discussing their planning for the University of Texas campus, the Lake Austin watershed, and The Woodlands. Steiner then focuses on emerging Texas urbanism and extends his discussion to broader considerations beyond the Lone Star State, including regionalism, urbanism, and landscape in China and Italy. He also examines the lessons to be learned from human and natural disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the BP oil spill. Finally, Steiner offers a blueprint for designing with nature to help heal the planet's vulnerabilities.

Download or read book Soul City written by Thomas Healy and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice The fascinating, forgotten story of the 1970s attempt to build a city dedicated to racial equality in the heart of “Klan Country” In 1969, with America’s cities in turmoil and racial tensions high, civil rights leader Floyd McKissick announced an audacious plan: he would build a new city in rural North Carolina, open to all but intended primarily to benefit Black people. Named Soul City, the community secured funding from the Nixon administration, planning help from Harvard and the University of North Carolina, and endorsements from the New York Times and the Today show. Before long, the brand-new settlement – built on a former slave plantation – had roads, houses, a health care center, and an industrial plant. By the year 2000, projections said, Soul City would have fifty thousand residents. But the utopian vision was not to be. The race-baiting Jesse Helms, newly elected as senator from North Carolina, swore to stop government spending on the project. Meanwhile, the liberal Raleigh News & Observer mistakenly claimed fraud and corruption in the construction effort. Battered from the left and the right, Soul City was shut down after just a decade. Today, it is a ghost town – and its industrial plant, erected to promote Black economic freedom, has been converted into a prison. In a gripping, poignant narrative, acclaimed author Thomas Healy resurrects this forgotten saga of race, capitalism, and the struggle for equality. Was it an impossible dream from the beginning? Or a brilliant idea thwarted by prejudice and ignorance? And how might America be different today if Soul City had been allowed to succeed?

Download or read book Bulldozer Revolutions written by Andrew C. Baker and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By examining the metropolitan fringes of Houston in Montgomery County, Texas, and Washington, D.C., in Loudoun County, Virginia, this book combines rural, environmental, and agricultural history to disrupt our view of the southern metropolis. Andrew C. Baker examines the local boosters, gentlemen farmers, historical preservationists, and nature-seeking suburbanites who abandoned the city to live in the metropolitan countryside during the twentieth century. These property owners formed the vanguard of the antigrowth movement that has defined metropolitan fringe politics across the nation. In the rural South, subdivisions, reservoirs, homesteads, and historical villages each obscured the troubling legacies of racism and rural poverty and celebrated a refashioned landscape. That landscape’s historical and environmental “authenticity” served as a foil to the alienation and ugliness of suburbia. Using a source base that includes the records of preservation organizations and local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as oral histories, Baker explores the distinct roots of the environmental politics and the shifting relationship between city and country within these metropolitan fringe regions.

Download or read book New Suburbanism Sustainable Tall Building Development written by Kheir Al-Kodmany and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the anticipated future growth in the United States will take place in suburbia. The critical challenge is how to accommodate this growth in a sustainable and resilient manner. This book explores the role of suburban tall as a viable, sustainable alternative to continued suburban sprawl. It identifies 10 spatial patterns in which tall buildings have been integrated into the American suburbs. The study concludes that the Tall Building and Transit-Oriented-Development (TB-TOD) model is the most appropriate to promote sustainable suburbanism. The findings are based on analyzing over 300 projects in 24 suburban communities within three major metropolitan areas including: Washington, DC, Miami, Florida, and Chicago, Illinois. The book furnishes planning strategies that address the social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainable tall building development. It also discusses sustainable architectural design and site planning strategies and provides case studies of sustainable tall buildings that were successfully integrated into suburban settings.

Download or read book Sprawl Justice and Citizenship written by Thad Williamson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-12 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Must the strip mall and the eight-lane highway define 21st century American life? That is a central question posed by critics of suburban and exurban living in America. Yet despite the ubiquity of the critique, it never sticks-Americans by the scores of millions have willingly moved into sprawling developments over the past few decades. Americans find many of the more substantial criticisms of sprawl easy to ignore because they often come across as snobbish in tone. Yet as Thad Williamson explains, sprawl does create real, measurable social problems. Utilizing a landmark 30,000-person survey, he shows that sprawl fosters civic disengagement, accentuates inequality, and negatively impacts the environment. Yet, while he highlights the deleterious effects of sprawl on civic life in America, he is also evenhanded. He does not dismiss the pastoral, homeowning ideal that is at the root of sprawl, and is sympathetic to the vast numbers of Americans who very clearly prefer it. Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship is not only be the most comprehensive work in print on the subject, it will be the first to offer an empirically rigorous critique of the most popular form of living in America today.