Chapter 3 the Development of North American Cities

CHAPTER 3 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NORTH AMERICAN CITIES THE COLONIAL F;RA: 1600-1800 Beginnings The Character of the Early Cities The Revolutionary War Era GROWTH AND EXPANSION: 1800-1870 Cities as Big Business To The Beginnings of Industrialization Am Urhan-Rural/North-South Tensions ace THE ERA OF THE GREAT METROPOLIS: of! 1870-1950 bui Technological Advance wh, The Great Migration cen Politics and Problems que The Quality of Life in the New Metropolis and Trends Through 1950 onl tee] THE NORTH AMERICAN CIITTODAY: urb 1950 TO THE PRESENT Can Decentralization oft: The Sun belt Expansion dan THE COMING OF THE POSTINDUSTRIAL CIIT sug) Deterioration' and Regeneration the The Future f The Human Cost of Economic Restructuring rath wor /f!I#;f.~'~~~~'A'~~~~ '~·~_~~~~Ji?l~ij:j hist. The Colonial Era Thi: fron Growth and Expansion coa~ The Great Metropolis Emerges to tJ New York Today new SUMMARY Nor CONCLUSION' T Am, cent EUf( izati< citie weal 62 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 63 Come hither, and I will show you an admirable cities across the Atlantic in Europe. The forces Spectacle! 'Tis a Heavenly CITY ... A CITY to of postmedieval culture-commercial trade be inhabited by an Innumerable Company of An· and, shortly thereafter, industrial production geL" and by the Spirits ofJust Men .... were the primary shapers of urban settlement Put on thy beautiful garments, 0 America, the Holy City! in the United States and Canada. These cities, like the new nations themselves, began with -Cotton Mather, seventeenth· the greatest of hopes. Cotton Mather was so century preacher enamored of the idea of the city that he saw its American urban history began with the small growth as the fulfillment of the biblical town-five villages hacked out of the wilder· promise of a heavenly setting here on earth. ness ... each an "upstart" town with no past, Has that promise been realized? To find out, an uncertain future, and a host of confound· this chapter examines the development of ing and novel problems. urban North America in terms of four phases: -Alexander B. Callow,Jr. (1982) 1. The Colonial Era. This was the preindustrial pe~ nod extending from the first settlements in the To the visitor from London, the cities of North early 1600s to just after the ceding of Quebec America may seem to lack the rich texture that to England and the U.S. Revolutionary War. accumulates over centuries of history. In no city 2. '17U!Em oJEarly Urban Growth and Mi'stwardEx· of North America, for example, does a single pansion. Lasting from about 1800 to 1870, this building rival in age the Tower of London transitional period saw the shift from an agri~ whose foundations were erected in the eleventh cultural and trade·based way oflife to an in· century during the reign of William the Con dustrial economy. queror. Even the current Houses of Parliament 3. The Era of the Great Metropolis. Running from 1870 to \9.50,. this was the period of full and Buckingham Palace-relative newcomers industrialization. on the London scene dating from the mid-nine 4. The Modern Era. Extending from 1950 to the teenth century-are older than all but a few present, this has been a period of emerg· urban structures in the United States and ing urban regionalism and a postindustrial Canada. Indeed, throughout Europe and much economy. of the non-Western world, one can find abun dant examples of exqUisite old architecture that suggests a vibrant, urhan past that long predates THE COLONIAL ERA: 1600-1800 the founding of Canada and the United States. However, if the cities of North America are If one could return to the North America of rather recent developments in the course of the late sixteenth century, the only human world urban history, they have a fascinating populations one would find would be those of history of their own, spanning some 350 years. indigenous groups that Europeans dubbed "In This chapter examines this urban history dians." These groups lived in manysmall soei from the earliest settlements on the Atlantic e't:ies spread across the contllent. Some, such coast, literally "hacked out of the wilderness," as the Cheyenne and the Sioux of the western to the massive metropolitan regions of the plains, were nomadic; others, like the Hopi and new century, which contain some 200 million the Navajo tribes of Arizona and New Mexico, North Americans. and the eastern Iroquois, maintained seasonal The first European settlements in North or permanent settlements of up to 500 people. America were founded in the early seventeenth Some cultures from Cen tral America and century at the time when the medieval city in Mexico (discussed in the last chapter) appar Europe was being transformed by industrial ently spread into North America from the ization. Perhaps not surprisingly, the New World Southwest, moving as far east as the state of cities were founded specifically as trade- and Mississippi. One such group was the Natchez, wealth~generating centers to fuel the growth of who lived in permanent settlements of perhaps 64 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 1,000 people and had considerable diversity Quebec city's European roots date to its and specialization of occupations, including founding in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, priests and artisans. U'1til the Europeans ar making it the oldest city in Canada. Montreal rived, the Natchez probably were the most destined along with New York and San Fran "urban" people on the continent. cisco to become one of North America's most cosmopolitan cities-traces its European be Beginnings ginnings to 1642, when Paul de Chomedey established a settlement there that included Although the Spanish founded St. Augustine dwellings, a chapel, a hospital, and separate in Florida in 1565, this settlement never be schools for boys and girls, all within a protec came much more than an outpost. The seven tive stockade. Toronto, site of small French teenth century, however, began a far-reaching forts in the early eighteenth century, had a transformation. The English settled in James later start as a city. In 1793, Colonel John Sim town, Virginia, in 1607. Jamestown, like St. coe, lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, se Augustine, long remained little more than a lected the site as his capital because of its fine village, but it established a pattern: There was harbor, its strategic location for defense and a continent to be exploited. As word of suc trade, and the rich potential of its wilderness cessful British settlement in North America hinterland. spread, more northern Europeans dared the dangerous voyage across the Atlantic. In 1620 The Character of the Early Cities the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts and es tablished the Plymouth Colony. By 1630 some These were the beginnings. With the excep of their number had moved a few miles to the tion of Newport (eclipsed in prominence by north, to a site with a fine harbor, and estab Providence in the nineteenth century) ,'all of lished the city of Boston. (The potential of a these settlements became important North good river or seaport was a principal reason American cities. During their earliest stages, most cities were founded where they were.) In however, they were so different from the cities 1639 a group breaking away from the strict we know today that they would appear virtually Puritanism of Boston founded the town of unrecognizable were we to visit them. Newport in present-day Rhode Island. In 1624, To begin with, they were exceptionally the Dutch arrived at the tip of Manhattan small, both in physical size and in population. Island and named their town New Amster New Amsterdam, for example, occupied only dam. By 1664, New Amsterdam had been the southernmost tip of Manhattan Island, a ceded to the British and was named New York far cry from the huge, five-borough City of New after King Charles II's brother James, the York that was incorporated in 1898. As for pop Duke of York. ulation, until the eighteenth century, neither Soon after, two more urban settlements New Amsterdam nor any of the other urban joined t.he New World list. In 1680, the English settlements of North America had populations established Charles Town (Charleston) on the approaching even 10,000. Not until the Revo eastern shore of what later would be the state lutionary War did any of these places begin to of South Carolina. So impressed were they with develOp the population sizes we associate with this site that early Charlestonians boasted that a dty today. the Ashley and Cooper Rivers met at Charles Second, the small size of these settlements ton to form the Atlantic Ocean! Also impres and the common ethnic and religious back sive was the town founded by'William Penn, ground of most of their population resulted leader of the Quaker religious group, at the in a very personalize~ urban existence. The po in t of junction of the Schuylkill and town's inhabitants experienced a social life Delaware Rivers. In 1682 Penn christened it his that was, in a real sense, collective, continu City of Brotherly Love-Philadelphia. ally interacting with one another throughout Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 65 Philadelphia. settled haifa century later than the others. was built from the beginning on the more familiar grid system now found in many North American cities (see Chapter 7. Figure 7-3). Although many of these cities were founded as religious havens and had a me diev.al feel to them, such qualities were de ceptive. Beneath the surface they were part and parcel of the change that was sweeping European urban civilization: They were un abashed trading centers bent on profit and growth.

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