Urban America in the Modern Age

Since the appearance of Urban America in the Modern Age in 1987, the study of American cities has flourished. In this long-awaited second edition, Carl Abbott draws on the recent works of historians who have explored issues of urban growth, municipal politics, immigration and ethnicity, “suburbanization,” and environmental change. The fascination with growth and change in the nation’s metropolitan areas spans a wide range of scholarly fields, and the new edition also benefits from scholarship in disciplines closely related to urban history, including geography, political science, sociology, and urban planning. Featuring an entirely new chapter covering the years since 1980 and a bank of interesting photographs, the second edition of Urban America in the Modern Age further explores and fine-tunes the themes and topics central to its predecessor—the physical form of metropolitan areas, their sources of growth and mix of ethnic and racial groups, the shaping of and responses to public policy, and ideas of community planning. Regionally balanced—with examples from New York, Boston, and Chicago, as well as Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, San Antonio, Miami, Charlotte, Washington, Detroit, and Cleveland—the second edition of Urban America in the Modern Age makes ideal supplementary reading for courses in Urban History, twentieth-century America, as well as the second half of the U.S. survey.

Foreword V Preface IX INTRODUCTION: The Metropolitan Era 1 CHAPTER ONE: The First Modern Cities 9 Core and Periphery 10 The Climax of Immigration 16 The Transition of Reform 22 Making the African American Ghettos 27 Model T Suburbs 36 Urban Survival in the Great Depression 44 City Problems and Possibilities 51 CHAPTER TWO; Building and Rebuilding 53 Cities at War 55 The Landscape of Prosperity 60 Neighborhood Change and the Northward Movement 67 The Politics of Growth 74 Federal Housing and Federal Highways 80 Metropolitan Governments 86 Evaluating the Great Cities 90 CHAPTER THREE: A New Urban America 93 Discovering the Sunbelt 96 New Americans 101 The Exploded Metropolis 105 The Urban Crisis 110 The Decline of Policy 117 The Vitality of the Everyday City 125 CHAPTER FOUR: Prosperity and Poverty 134 The Age of Real Estate 135 Entrepreneurial Cities 145 International Cities 154 Back in the ‘Hood: Poverty and Place 160 Planning Compact Cities 168 POSTSCRIPT: The Promise of Urban Life 180 Bibliographical Essay 187 Index 211 Photographs follow page 133 Maps, Tables Diagrams TABLE 1.1 Urbanization of the United States in the Twentieth Century 3 TABLE 1.2 Metropolitan Population 1920—2000 4 TABLE 1.3 Suburban Population 1920—2000 6 MAP: Metropolitan Districts in 1930 13 TABLE 1.1 Origins of European-Born Population of Twenty-five Large Cities, 1920 19 MAP: San Francisco: Origin of Out-of-Town War Workers 57 MAP: Racial Violence in Chicago, 1756—57 72 MAP: Revitalizing Neighborhoods in Major Cities 127 TABLE 4.1 Greatest Populations Giants & Losses, 1990—2000: Metropolitan Statistical Areas 137 Diagram: Old and New Neighborhood Patterns 143 Diagram : The Central City as Disneyland 151 TABLE 4.2 Global Network Connectedness of U.S. Cities 157 MAP: Ten Megalopolitan Areas and Their Interstate Highways 178 TABLE P.1 Populations of Twelve Largest Metropolitan Areas, 1920 and 2000 181