Derailed: The Postwar End of New York City Subway Expansion

2019 ◽  
pp. 009614421989657
Author(s):  
Jonathan English
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Labor Cost ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Aging Infrastructure ◽  
Second World

New York City witnessed the construction of one of the largest subway systems in the world in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Expansion virtually ceased thereafter, and New York’s public transportation has since relied on a legacy of aging infrastructure. The explanation of this unexpected cessation is key to understanding the city’s current transit problems, and also offers valuable lessons for other cities experiencing infrastructure construction booms. Identifying the 1951 bond issue as a key turning point, this article argues that there are three convergent factors that brought about the end of subway expansion after the Second World War: political leadership distracted by disputes over administration and unable to plan for the long term; financial constraints imposed by construction and labor-cost inflation, the strained municipal budget, and declining ridership; and the New York transit authorities’ indifference to the growing demographic, political, and symbolic significance of the rapidly growing suburbs.

Trends, Events, and Centres, 1970–92

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-35
Author(s):  
Ranald C. Michie
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Shadow Banks ◽  
The Face ◽  
Long Term Consequences ◽  
Fundamental Forces ◽  
Second World

It is always difficult to disentangle the effects of trends from that of events when making judgements about the causes of long-term development. Evidence drawn from contemporary observers magnifies the significance of events, as they had no means of judging long-term consequences. Reliance on later commentators minimizes the importance of an event leading to a conclusion of inevitability. This can be seen most clearly when examining financial centres with prominence given to the survivors, like London and New York, while others are ignored despite their past importance. Even before the 1970s fundamental forces were driving change in global financial markets, especially globalization and the technology of communications and trading. In the face of these governments struggled to maintain the controls and compartmentalization introduced after the Second World War, faced with the rise of offshore financial centres, alternative financial markets, and shadow banks. In the 1970s it proved impossible to resist these forces leading to the beginning of a transformation of global financial markets in the 1980s, led by developments in New York, Chicago, and London

Producing Outside the Box: Creative Strategies in the Work of Betty E. Box, 1957–64

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-374
Author(s):  
John D. Ayres
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Film Production ◽  
World War ◽  
E Box ◽  
Film Producer ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
Location Shooting ◽  
Second World

This article considers the working practices of British cinema's only major female film producer during the early-to-mid post-Second World War era, Betty E. Box (1915–99). Via reference to her extensive archive at the British Film Institute and the films Campbell's Kingdom (1957), The Wind Cannot Read (1958) and Hot Enough for June (1964), the article charts how Box initially envisaged multi-generational casting for roles that were eventually taken by long-term collaborator Dirk Bogarde. It considers the manner in which she approached the diplomatic complexities of location shooting, with particular focus on Ralph Thomas's military romance The Wind Cannot Read, the first British film to be shot in India for twenty years at the time of its production. The reasoning for Box's ongoing absence, as a female creative figure, from scholarship addressing British cinema, and film production more generally, will also be addressed.

The Imperial Army Project

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Delaney
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
High Point ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

How did British authorities manage to secure the commitment of large dominion and Indian armies that could plan, fight, shoot, communicate, and sustain themselves, in concert with the British Army and with each other, during the era of the two world wars? This is the primary line of inquiry for this study, which begs a couple of supporting questions. What did the British want from the dominion and Indian armies and how did they go about trying to get it? How successful were they in the end? Answering these questions requires a long-term perspective—one that begins with efforts to fix the armies of the British Empire in the aftermath of their desultory performance in South Africa (1899–1903) and follows through to the high point of imperial military cooperation during the Second World War. Based on multi-archival research conducted in six different countries on four continents, Douglas E. Delaney argues that the military compatibility of the British Empire armies was the product of a deliberate and enduring imperial army project, one that aimed at ‘Lego-piecing’ the armies of the empire, while, at the same time, accommodating the burgeoning autonomy of the dominions and even India. At its core, this book is really about how a military coalition worked.

International Opera in Nineteenth-century New York

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-269
Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War I ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
World War ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
The City

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”

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