Saving America S Great Places

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.

"Many cities have a rich past. No one knows if many have a future" Richard C. Longworth Caught in the Middle, 2007, p. 28 "In the last six decades, no stagnant or decaying city has been globally or signifi cantly saved - never" David H. McDonald "More and more, federal and state governments are growing their already out-of-control fi nancial problems. Cities are on their own to sink or swim, now more than ever" David H. McDonald "Only two states in the nation have, over time, lost population. If the states are gaining population but the cities are losing, then it is the cities' fault" David H. McDonald "Occasionally a city will, usually by accident, 'back into' attempting growth in the right manner. It always works" David H. McDonald "Virtually no city has a workable vision of how to even achieve stability - let alone a return to vibrancy. Th is book presents such a vision and a clear path to beginning the process of stabilization and growth" David H. McDonald "Whatever is going to save your cities, it won't be government. Both political parties are largely trapped in the past, driven by a desire to protect old sacred cows"

The Negro Motorist Green Book was a groundbreaking guide that provided African American travelers with crucial information on safe places to stay, eat, and visit during the era of segregation in the United States. This essential resource, originally published from 1936 to 1966, offered a lifeline to black motorists navigating a deeply divided nation, helping them avoid the dangers and indignities of racism on the road. More than just a travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book stands as a powerful symbol of resilience and resistance in the face of oppression, offering a poignant glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the African American experience in the 20th century.

In Saving Our Cities, William W. Goldsmith shows how cities can be places of opportunity rather than places with problems. With strongly revived cities and suburbs, working as places that serve all their residents, metropolitan areas will thrive, thus making the national economy more productive, the environment better protected, the citizenry better educated, and the society more reflective, sensitive, and humane. Goldsmith argues that America has been in the habit of abusing its cities and their poorest suburbs, which are always the first to be blamed for society's ills and the last to be helped. As federal and state budgets, regulations, and programs line up with the interests of giant corporations and privileged citizens, they impose austerity on cities, shortchange public schools, make it hard to get nutritious food, and inflict the drug war on unlucky neighborhoods.Frustration with inequality is spreading. Parents and teachers call persistently for improvements in public schooling, and education experiments abound. Nutrition indicators have begun to improve, as rising health costs and epidemic obesity have led to widespread attention to food. The futility of the drug war and the high costs of unwarranted, unprecedented prison growth have become clear. Goldsmith documents a positive development: progressive politicians in many cities and some states are proposing far-reaching improvements, supported by advocacy groups that form powerful voting blocs, ensuring that Congress takes notice. When more cities forcefully demand enlightened federal and state action on these four interrelated problems—inequality, schools, food, and the drug war—positive movement will occur in traditional urban planning as well, so as to meet the needs of most residents for improved housing, better transportation, and enhanced public spaces.

This title was first published in 2000: The noble goals embodied in the Endangered Species Act are colliding with financial and social realities. Citizens increasingly face the costs of current policies, while initiatives which fail to respect liberty and property meet serious resistance at every turn. Despite widespread verbal support for saving species ’at any cost’, when trade-offs become obvious, and values compete, support for these policies evaporates. This edited collection examines ethically and materially responsible approaches to this problem, written by leading international figures from a variety of disciplines. The result is the most comprehensive and constructive analysis of the effectiveness and viability of endangered species protection available.

Saving Spaces offers an historical overview of the struggle to conserve both individual parcels of land and entire landscapes from destruction in the United States. John Sprinkle, Jr. identifies the ways in which the identification, evaluation, and stewardship of selected buildings and landscapes reflect contemporary American cultural values. Detailed case studies bring the text to life, highlighting various conservation strategies and suggesting the opportunities, challenges, and consequences of each. Balancing close analyses with a broader introduction to some of the key issues of the field, Saving Spaces is ideal for students and instructors of historic preservation.

The compelling history of how Latino immigrants revitalized the nation's cities after decades of disinvestment and white flight Thirty years ago, most people were ready to give up on American cities. We are commonly told that it was a "creative class" of young professionals who revived a moribund urban America in the 1990s and 2000s. But this stunning reversal owes much more to another, far less visible group: Latino and Latina newcomers. Award-winning historian A. K. Sandoval-Strausz reveals this history by focusing on two barrios: Chicago's Little Village and Dallas's Oak Cliff. These neighborhoods lost residents and jobs for decades before Latin American immigration turned them around beginning in the 1970s. As Sandoval-Strausz shows, Latinos made cities dynamic, stable, and safe by purchasing homes, opening businesses, and reviving street life. Barrio America uses vivid oral histories and detailed statistics to show how the great Latino migrations transformed America for the better.