Introduction: Making Places, Shaping Cities—Narrating Spatial History in Three American Cities

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 576-581
Author(s):  
Matthew Klingle
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Cities ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Powerful computing technologies and theoretical advances have empowered historians to follow the spatial turn in their work. Yet despite new technological and conceptual innovations, narrating spatial histories remains an ongoing challenge. The authors of three essays in this section apply spatial analysis in their narratives of politics, culture, and environmental change within three iconic U.S. cities—New York City, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh—from the eighteenth century to the late-twentieth century.

Immigrants in New York City: Reaping the Benefits of Continuous Immigration

Daedalus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
pp. 92-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Waters ◽  
Philip Kasinitz
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
York City ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
Gateway Cities ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Cities

Using New York City as an example, this essay examines how American cities that have a long and continuous history of absorbing immigrants develop welcoming institutions and policies for current immigrants and their children. Cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, and New York have been gateway cities for many previous waves of immigrants and continue to absorb new immigrants today. The ethnic conflicts and accommodations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continue to shape the context of reception of today's immigrants. In contrast to “new destinations,” which in recent years have often been centers of anti-immigrant sentiment and nativist local social policies, New York has generally adopted policies designed to include and accommodate new immigrants, as well as repurposing institutions that served earlier European immigrants and native-born African Americans and Puerto Ricans. The continuing significance of race in the city is counterbalanced in the lives of immigrants by a relative lack of nativism and an openness to incorporating immigrants.

American Urban, Suburban, and Metropolitan Folklore and Folklife

2018 ◽  
pp. 556-576
Author(s):  
David J. Puglia
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Car Culture ◽  
Lawn Care ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Yard Art ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Metropolitan folklore and folklife studies often focus on ethnic, religious, and occupation-centered neighborhoods and their distinctive festive events. The material culture of streets and lots has also led to documentation of folk arts, vernacular structures, and customs that have been adapted to this environment. Examples include sidewalk altars in New York City, painted screens in Baltimore, and storefront churches in Los Angeles. In addition, beginning in the late twentieth century, both urban and suburban folklife studies took on the tinge of consumer culture as tradition and mass media mixed freely in commercial centers. Furthermore, the longstanding critique of suburbia as a homogenizing force has itself become embedded in American legend and belief, but suburbs have developed their own traditions of cookouts, malls, yard art, lawn care, car culture, and other modes of “hanging out.”

The Eureka Moment

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Ann L. Buttenwieser
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recreational Facilities ◽  
York City Department ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Magazine Articles ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter describes the historic Battery Maritime Building, which contains the archives of the New York City Department of Docks (DD) that dated back to 1880. It mentions how the author sought documents in the building to confirm her theory that recreational facilities played a role in the primarily industrial New York City waterfront. It also highlights that the idea of floating baths captured the author' imagination after she proved her theory, solidifying her conviction to introduce floating baths to late twentieth-century readers through magazine articles and her book, Manhattan Water-Bound. The chapter discusses how the author's eureka moment started the twenty-seven-year-long campaign to reintroduce the floating baths to New York City and give the recreationally underserved urban public a place to swim on the city's riverfront. It details how the author convinced others of the historical appropriateness and modern-day desirability of creating a twenty-first-century “Floating Pool Lady.”

Introduction: Making and Unmaking Neighborhood Boundaries in Postwar U.S. Cities

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 1191-1205
Author(s):  
Marta Gutman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Boundary Making ◽  
Neighborhood Boundaries

This essay introduces the theme of this special issue, “Making and Unmaking Neighborhood Boundaries in Postwar U.S. Cities,” by tracing the enduring meanings of the words, neighbor, neighborliness, and neighborhood, and relating them to community, place, conduct, and the idea of dwelling, important in Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space. The four case studies in this issue highlight places, where neighborhood formation and boundary making stand out in the historical production of space, and are examples of the benefits of the recent spatial turn in urban history. By examining neighborhoods in San Francisco, Atlanta, and New York City, the authors topple assumptions that prop up postwar urban history and demonstrate the relevance of historical studies of neighborhoods to the crises of the present moment (and the need for more of the same).

scholarly journals Cultural Encounters: Glimpses of the United States in Late Twentieth-Century Romanian Travel Narratives

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-89
Author(s):  
Anca-Luminiţa Iancu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Travel Narratives ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Abstract Travel narratives are complex accounts that include a significant layer of factual information – related to the geography, history, and/or the culture of a particular place or country – and a more personal layer, comprising the author’s unique perceptions and rendering of the travel experience. In the last thirty years of transition from a communist to a democratic society, the Romanians have been free to travel to any country they choose; however, during the communist period, especially during the 1980s, travelling to Western, capitalist countries, such as France, Great Britain, Canada, or the United States, was rather limited and fraught with complex issues. Still, Romanian travelers during that time managed to visit the United States, on diplomatic- or business-related exchanges, and published interesting travel stories of their experiences there. Therefore, this essay sets out to capture, from a comparative perspective, the impressions and encounters depicted by Radu Enescu in Between Two Oceans (1986), Ion Dinu in Traveler through America (1991) and Viorel Sălăgean in Hello America! (1992), with a view to analyzing how their descriptions and perceptions of two major urban spaces, New York City and San Francisco, reflect the complexity of the American social and cultural landscape in the late 1970s and mid-1980s.

URBAN DISPLACEMENT AND LOW-INCOME COMMUNITIES: THE CASE OF THE AMERICAN CITY FROM THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 06 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Knight ◽  
Mohammad Gharipour
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Urban Redevelopment ◽  
Minority Populations ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Cultural Connections ◽  
American Cities ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

How can urban redevelopment benefit existing low-income communities? The history of urban redevelopment is one of disruption of poor communities. Renewal historically offered benefits to the place while pushing out the people. In some cases, displacement is intentional, in others it is unintentional. Often, it is the byproduct of the quest for profits. Regardless of motives, traditional communities, defined by cultural connections, are often disrupted. Disadvantaged neighborhoods include vacant units, which diminish the community and hold back investment. In the postwar period, American cities entered into a program of urban renewal. While this program cleared blight, it also drove displacement among the cities’ poorest and was particularly hard on minority populations clustered in downtown slums. The consequences of these decisions continue to play out today. Concentration of poverty is increasing and American cities are becoming more segregated. As neighborhoods improve, poorer residents are uprooted and forced into even more distressed conditions, elsewhere. This paper examines the history of events impacting urban communities. It further reviews the successes and failures of efforts to benefit low-income communities.

Jane Jacobs

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-169
Author(s):  
Paul Kidder ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
York City ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Population Densities ◽  
Jane Jacobs ◽  
The People ◽  
Architectural Preservation ◽  
American Cities

Jane Jacobs’s classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, famously indicted a vision of urban development based on large scale projects, low population densities, and automobile-centered transportation infrastructure by showing that small plans, mixed uses, architectural preservation, and district autonomy contributed better to urban vitality and thus the appeal of cities. Implicit in her thinking is something that could be called “the urban good,” and recognizable within her vision of the good is the principle of subsidiarity—the idea that governance is best when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses—a principle found in Catholic papal encyclicals and related documents. Jacobs’s work illustrates and illuminates the principle of subsidiarity, not merely through her writings on cities, but also through her activism in New York City, which was influential in altering the direction of that city’s subsequent planning and development.

Resisting Independence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad A. Jones
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
Close Study ◽  
New Nation

This book maps the loyal British Atlantic's reaction to the American Revolution. Through close study of four important British Atlantic port cities — New York City; Kingston, Jamaica; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Glasgow, Scotland — the book argues that the revolution helped trigger a new understanding of loyalty to the Crown and empire. The book reimagines loyalism as a shared transatlantic ideology, no less committed to ideas of liberty and freedom than the American cause and not limited to the inhabitants of the thirteen American colonies. The book reminds readers that the American Revolution was as much a story of loyalty as it was of rebellion. Loyal Britons faced a daunting task — to refute an American Patriot cause that sought to dismantle their nation's claim to a free and prosperous Protestant empire. For the inhabitants of these four cities, rejecting American independence thus required a rethinking of the beliefs and ideals that framed their loyalty to the Crown and previously drew together Britain's vast Atlantic empire. The book describes the formation and spread of this new transatlantic ideology of loyalism. Loyal subjects in North America and across the Atlantic viewed the American Revolution as a dangerous and violent social rebellion and emerged from twenty years of conflict more devoted to a balanced, representative British monarchy and, crucially, more determined to defend their rights as British subjects. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, as their former countrymen struggled to build a new nation, these loyal Britons remained convinced of the strength and resilience of their nation and empire and their place within it.

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