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Item Details
Title:
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THE CREATIVE DESTRUCTION OF MANHATTAN, 1900-40
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By: |
Max Page |
Format: |
Hardback |

List price:
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£30.00 |
We believe that this item is permanently unavailable, and so we cannot source
it.
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ISBN 10: |
0226644685 |
ISBN 13: |
9780226644684 |
Publisher: |
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS |
Pub. date: |
22 February, 2000 |
Series: |
Historical Studies of Urban America 1999 |
Pages: |
248 |
Description: |
Argues that early-20th-century cities were dominated by the politics of destruction and rebuilding that became the hallmark of modern urbanism. This text analyzes the process of urban development, using Manhattan as a case study. |
Synopsis: |
"It'll be a great place if they ever finish it," O. Henry wrote about New York City. This laconic remark captures the relentlessly transitory character of New York, and it points toward Max Page's synthetic perspective. Against the prevailing motif of a naturally expanding metropolis, Page argues that the early-20th-century city was dominated by the politics of destruction and rebuilding that became the hallmark of modern urbanism. The oxymoron "creative destruction" suggests the tensions that are at the heart of urban life: between stability and change, between particular places and undifferentiated spaces, between market forces and planning controls, and between the "natural" and "unnatural" in city growth. Page investigates these cultural counterweights through case studies of Manhattan's development, with depictions ranging from private real estate development along Fifth Avenue to Jacob Riis's slum clearance efforts on the Lower East Side, from the elimination of street trees to the efforts to save City Hall from demolition.In these examples some New Yorkers celebrate planning by destruction or marvel at the domestication of the natural environment, while others decry the devastation of their homes and lament the passing of the city's architectural heritage. A central question in each case is the role of the past in the shaping of collective memory - which buildings are preserved? which trees are cut down? which fragments are enshrined in museums? Contrary to the popular sense of New York as an ahistorical city, the past - as recalled by powerful citizens - was, in fact, at the heart of defining how the city would be built. |
Illustrations: |
79 halftones |
Publication: |
US |
Imprint: |
University of Chicago Press |
Returns: |
Non-returnable |
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