H-Net Discussion Networks - Re: U.S. New Towns, circa the 1960s: Successes and Failures

View the H-Urban Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Urban's November 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread]
View the Next Message in H-Urban's November 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread]
Visit the H-Urban home page.

From: Wendy Plotkin <wendyplotkin@wbhsi.net>
List Editor: Wendy Plotkin <wendyplotkin@WBHSI.NET>
Editor's Subject: Re: U.S. New Towns, circa the 1960s: Successes and Failures
Author's Subject: Re: U.S. New Towns, circa the 1960s: Successes and Failures
Date Written: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:10:26 -0700
Date Posted: Thu, 18 Nov 2009 03:10:26 -0500

Nicholas Dagen Bloom has written two good books on New Towns:

_Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the
American Dream_. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001.
http://www.ohiostatepress.org/

The H-Urban review by Joshua Olson is at
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5759 .

_Merchant of Illusion: James Rouse: America's Salesman of the
Businessman's Utopia_. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004.
http://www.ohiostatepress.org/

For another recent biography of Rouse, see

Olson, Joshua. _Better Places, Better Lives: A Biography of
James Rouse_. Urban Land Institute, 2004.
http://commerce.uli.org/AM/Ecommerce/ProductDisplay.cfm?Productid=874

For more of a local history emphasis, see

Mitchell, Joseph Rocco and David L. Stebenne. _New City Upon a
Hill, A History of Columbia, Maryland_. The History Press, 2007
https://historypress.net/indexsecure.php

and

Kellner, Barbara. _Columbia (MD) (Images of America)_. Arcadia
Press, 2005.
http://www.arcadiapublishing.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=9780738517926&Store_Code=arcadia&search=columbia&offset=0&filter_cat=&PowerSearch_Begin_Only=&sort=name.asc&range_low=&range_high=%20%26srch_name%3D1

For scholarly literature on New Towns in Australia, see

Peel, Mark. _Good Times, Hard Times: The Past and the Future of
Elizabeth_ (1995)
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Times-Hard-Future-Elizabeth/dp/0522846289

In his introduction, Mark writes:

"Outside interpretations of this place have generally moved
towards one pole or the other: the model and the experiment, or the
failure and the decline....Nowadays, it is usually the negatives that
win out. In Adelaide, 'Elizabeth' is a shorthand for difference and
despair, a symbol of what lurks in the darker spaces of a city's
life. In this language, Elizabeth is a 'poor place', which means
victims and villains, those who can blame others and those who can only
blame themselves." (3)

"But this book is not a way of settling old scores. Most of the
patronising assumptions amused us then and amuse me now. Nor is this
an attempt to detail the everyday life of a working-class
suburb. Instead, this book is about the model town and the 'slum', how
Elizabeth was made and unmade." (3)

Finally, on Brasilia, see

Holston, James. _The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of
Brasilia_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=3639202

Wendy Plotkin
H-Urban Editor

H-Urban: http://www.h-net.org/~urban/ (including
logs & posting guidelines)
Posting Address: h-urban@h-net.msu.edu / mailto:h-urban@h-net.msu.edu (Click)

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online