Summary

Honorable Mention, 2009 Lewis Mumford Prize, Society for City and Regional Planning History

In the early twentieth century, America was transformed from a predominantly agricultural nation to one whose population resided mostly in cities. Yet rural areas continued to hold favored status in the country's political life.

For prominent figures in the social sciences, city planning, and real estate who were anxious about the future of cities, this obsession with the agrarian past inspired a new campaign for urban reform. They called for ongoing programs of natural resource management to be extended to maintain and improve cities.

Jennifer S. Light finds a new understanding of the history of urban renewal in the United States in the rise and fall of the American conservation movement. The professionals Light examines came to view America's urban landscapes as ecological communities requiring scientific management on par with forests and farms. The Nature of Cities brings together environmental and urban history to reveal how, over four decades, this ecological vision shaped the development of cities around the nation.

Choice Review

Light (Northwestern) shows how ecological concepts influenced the work of social scientists (particularly sociologists and geographers), urban planners, and the real estate industry from the 1920s through the early 1960s. She convincingly argues that those concerned with cities borrowed ecological concepts from the conservation movement as an effort to garner federal government attention to urban concerns. The author provides examples to show how different parties used ecological concepts over the period studied to promote various and sometimes-contradictory practices and policies, including neighborhood redlining, the use of restrictive covenants, citywide planning, and slum clearance, as well as neighborhood renovation and community development efforts. Light gives particular attention to the influence of key individuals, including Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, and Homer Hoyt, in promoting the concepts of human ecology beyond academia and to key professions shaping urban policy, and the centrality of certain Chicago universities and municipal planning offices to these efforts. Of interest to scholars and students of urban history, planning, geography, and sociology, as well as urban studies more generally. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. M. E. Pfeifer Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi