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. New Amsterdam was probably the most clearly commercial, but Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia were no slackers when it came to money-making. The Looking Back box shows how vigorously founder William Penn promoted his town ofPhiiadel­ phia in a 1684 prospectus.

North American preindustrial cities were bustling port cities of commerce. Theirconcentrations of people and multitude of activities impressed visitors then, but they contained only about 5 percent of the total population. Not until the nineteenth century did any reach today's minimum standard of 100,000 for large cities, as this 1830s view of New York's Broadway suggests. . Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 66

"[LOOKING BACK

· Town Lots in Philadelphia: A Good Investment in 1684

Philadelphia" " . our intended Brewers, Glovers, Tanners, Felmongers, Wheel­ : Metropolis ... is two Miles rights, Millrights, Shiprights, Boatrights, · long, and a Mile broad, and at Ropemakers, Saylmakers, Blockmakers, Turn­ · eacb end ... upon a Navigable ers, etc.. .. River.... From [August 1683 to There are Two Markets every Week, and August 1684] ... tbe Town ad­ Two Fairs every year.... Some Vessels have vanced [from 80] to Three hun­ been here Built, and many Boats; and by that dred and fifty-seven Houses; means a ready Conveniency for Passage of divers of them large, well-built, People and Goods .... The Town is well fur­ With good Cellars, three stories, nish'd with convenient Mills .... The Im­ and some with Balconies .... provement of the place is best measur'd by There is a fair [dock] of about three hun­ the advance of Value upon every man's dred foot square ... to which a shiJ> of five lot. ... the worst Lot in the Town, without any hundred Tuns may lay her broadSlde .... Improvement upon it, is worth four times There inhabits most sorts of useful Trades­ than it was when it was lay'd out. ... men, As Carpenters, Jayners, Bricklayers, Masons, .. Plasterers, Plumers, Sm,iths, Glasi­ Source: William Penn, cited in,Bayrd, Still, Urban America ers, Taylers, Shoemakers, Butchers, Bakers, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), pp."16--17.

The underlying concept of all these cities Through all this the cities prospered, at­ as that they would serve as export centers for tracting more and more diverse people. Al­ wolonial raw materials going to the European though Boston was able to maintain its Puritan ~ome country. Boston, for example, supplied stamp for a time, New York attra£ted Germans, lumber for the ships of the British Royal Jews, and Swedes; Philadelphia absorbed sig­ Navy; for its part, Charles Town (Charleston) nificant numbers of Germans; Irish, Welsh, and shipped rice and indigo back to the British Dutch; and Charleston became· home to IsleS; New York and Montreal served as bases groups of French Huguenots and Scots (Par­ for the lucrative fur trade. rillo, 1996:40). N time wore on, however, U.S. cities, dis­ When Quebec was ceded to Britain in 1763, tant from England geographically, became about 60,000 people-practically all of them more and more independent. Colonial mer­ Canadian-born .French descendants-lived in chants began to compete with the British and the region. Ontario in the late eighteenth cen­ established separate trade agreements with the tury was home to a comparable number of peo­ West Indies and even with Europe. Enterpris­ ple, most of them from the United States, who ing craftspeople I?roduced goods for local con­ were British loyalists, frontier farmers, and sumption equal In quahty to those Imported Quakers and Mennonites from Pennsylvania. from England. On the civic front, more and Many newcomers to the United States more city governments, technically responsi­ moved inlana as the eighteenth century pro­ ble to their "home offices" in Eurupe, found gressed, and numerous new, secondary cities, reason to cave in to local demands for more such as New Haven and Baltimore, were es­ freedom in trade. tablished. Although only a small fraction of the Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 67

population lived in towns, an urban society was the first capital in 1789, and Philadelphia took emerging along the eastern shore of what soon over the title in 1790. would become a new nation. By the late 1760s, Despite this urban dominance, however, the 13 colonies had at least 12 major cities and most of the population was not urban at this a total population (city and hinterland) of 2 point. When the first census was completed million English, half a million of other Euro­ in 1790, only 5 percent resided in urban pean backgrounds, and nearly 400,000 slaves, places (places with 2,500 or more persons), almost all of whom were in the South (Parrillo, and only 24 such places existed. Philadelphia 1996:41-45). The major cities were rapidly los­ was the largest settlement, with a population ing their "backwater" status. of only 42,000. If the first phase of the urban history of the The Revolutionary War Era United States was marked by the establishment of a chain of important urban settlements on Just as the events of the French Revolution cen­ the East Coast, the next phase revealed a dra­ tered on Paris, many significant events of the matic shifting of attention westward as the new American Revolutionary era unfolded in cities. nation began an expansion that, before the Most prominent were the Boston Massacre middle of the nineteenth century, would reach (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), the Phila­ the Pacific Ocean. delphia meetings of the Continental Congress (1774 and 1775), and the Constitutional Con­ vention in Philadelphia (1787). In November GROWTH AND EXPANSION: 1775, American revolutionary forces occupied 1800-1870 Montreal, but they withdrew the following spring following the unsuccessful siege of Que­ At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the bec city by Benedict Arnold's troops; this fail­ western frontier of the northern colonies ex~ ure ended efforts to secure Canada for the tended barely past the Hudson River, and the newly forming United States. southern colonies reached outward only to Although the struggle for U.S. independence the Appalachian Mountains. By the time the did not take place entirely in cities, it was in many war was over, the territory of the United States ways a city-instigated war. The bulk of the eco­ extended roughly to the Mississippi River. The nomic trade of the colonies was carried out in tremendous economic potential of this new re­ its citi,es. American merchants and colonists gion captured the interest of business leaders wanted freedom to pursue their life's interests as in established cities and, by the early decades they saw fit) and in most cases economic inter­ of the nineteenth century, plans wer:~_.!l!19.er ests were uppermost in their minds. The growth way to link the new territories with cities in tpe and development of the northern seaport towns East. All this was decidedly competitive, as Con- generated numerous changes that affected labor stance Green notes: ., -_.. ,- - _. ------" ------:--:.. relations, the distribution of wealth, the restruc­ turing of social groups, and the emergence of The .. _Atlantic port cities were . . . increasingly the laboring class into the political arena. AJ; his­ aware that whoever captured the bulk of the torian Gary B. Nash (1979:383) notes, Ohio valley trade would prosper at the expense of all other competitors. (1957:36) This led, as the Revolution approached, to the rise of a radical consciousness among many and The first of these links westward was estab­ to an interplay between calls for internal reform lished in 1818: The National Road (now In­ and insurgency against external forces that ad­ versely affected the lives of city people. terstate 40) was built, pushing through the Appalachians from the city of Baltimore. This Mter the war, leadership of the new nation con­ trade route, along with Baltimore's large ship-­ tinued to be urban centered. New York became building industry, caused that city to grow in &8 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities size and wealth. Philadelphia attempted to Toronto experienced rapid devdopment keep pace, opening both canal and turnpike with the coming of the Grand Trunk and routes west, although with more modest suc­ Great Western railways and the signing of a cess. Not to be outdone, New York opened the trade treaty with the United States. From Erie Canal in 1825. Although it was not fully 9,000 in the 1830s, its population ballooned recognized at the time, the canal was to be the to 45,000 by 1861. Similarly, Montreal's rail­ key to New York's increasing dominance over road linkage to Toronto and initiation of East Coast urban trade in the mid-nineteenth shipping service with Europe brought its century. By cutting across upstate New York population to 270,000 by the end of the nine­ from the Hudson, the canal opened a water teenth century. Quebec city and its sur­ route to the entire Great Lakes region and rounding region numhered about 1 mil1ion much of Canada. Undaunted, Baltimore began by 1850, due mostly to rapid natural growth. another round in this interurban rivalry by Thereafter, lack of additional fertile lands in opening a railroad line to Ohio in 1828. Other a favorable climate for this mostly agrarian cities followed suit. Soon many railroad lines economy prompted many French Canadialls stretched westward, linking coastal cities to to migrate to work in the new industries in the hinterland. the United States. By 1830, New York, Philadelphia, and fast­ growing Baltimore had emerged as the main Cities as Big Business coastal cities, largely due to their control of the lion's share of commerce with the Ohio Economic gain was clearly the major objective Valley. The remarkable rate of growth of these of the urban growth of the early nineteenth cities in comparison with Charleston, an orig­ century. As Europe had sought economic re­ inal East Coast city still focused on tobacco ward through colonization of the New World, and cotton production, is suggested in Table so, in turn, did the cities of the East Coast seek 3-1. As westward expansion proceeded, many to enrich themselves through expansion ,of new cities were incorporated. A glance at trade networks with the West. Pittsburgh, Table 3-2 shows that fully 39 major urban Cincinnati, Louisville, Kansas City, Chicago, areas appeared between 1816 and 1876, the and other cities all attempted to gain their height of the westward expansion movement. share of trade with their region and beyond. Canadian cities also benefited from new This competition and frenetic growth is por­ transportation links, especially in the 1850s. trayed in the Cityscape box.

TABLE 3-1 Population Growth of Selected East Coast Cities, 1790-1870

1790 1810 1830 1850 1870

New York 33.131 100,775 214,995 515,500 942,292 Philadelphia 44,096 87,303 161,271 340,000 674,022 Boston 18,320 38,746 61,392 136,881 250,526 Baltimore 13,503 46,555 80,620 169,054 267,354 Charleston 16,359 24,711 30,289 42,985 48,956

Total U.S. urban dwellers 202.000 525,000 1,127,000 3,543,700 9,902,000 Total percent urban 5.1 7.3 8.8 15.3 25.7

S()Urce: Statistics derived from U.S. Censuses in 1850, 1860, and 1910 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office). Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 69

Incorporation Dates of the 50 largest U.S. Cities by Historical Period

1776-1820 (7) 1821-1860 (25) 1861-1880 (8) 1881-1910 (7)

New York (1685) Nashville (1784) Boston (1822) Denver (1861) Virginia Beach (1887) Philadelphia (1701) Baltimore (1797) St.·Louis (1822) Tucson (1864) Long Beach, CA (1888) Charlotte (1774) Dayton (1805) Detroit (1824) Minneapolis (1867) Oklahoma City (1890) New Orleans (1805) Memphis (1826) Seattle (1869) Miami (1896) San Amonio (1809) Jacksonville (1832) Phoenix (1871) Tul,. (1898) Pitt>burgh (1816) Columbus (1834) Fort Worth (1873) Honolulu (1909) Cincinnati (1819) Cleveland (1836) Fresno (1874) Las Vegas (1909) Chicago (1837) Indianapolis (1874) Houston (1837) Toledo (1837) Austin (1840) Milwaukee .(1846) Adanta (1847) Albuquerque (1847) Kansas City (1850) Los Angeles (1850) EI Paso (1850) Sacramento (1850) San Diego (1850) San Francisco (1850) San Jose (1850) Portland- (1851) Oakland (1854) Dallas (1856) Omaha (1857)

Source: Based on data from Statistical AhIlract of the United Stales 1998 and from EnI.'Jdopaedia Britannica, 1999.

The Beginnings of Industrialization Jersey, at the site of the Passaic Falls, second only to Niagara Falls in its width and height. As Jaimie McPheeters's diary makes obvious, Pierre L'Enfant, the French-born engineer as the nineteenth century wore on, in all the who would later plan Washington, D.C., de­ nation's Cities one heard more and more Signed a water raceway system to harness this the sound 'of machines. Although the major water power for mills. A. the ftrst planned in­ part of the NorthAmerican Industrial Revolu­ dustrial city, Paterson quickly emerged as tion would not occur until the latter part of the the cotton town of the United States and then century, ito;; beginnings were much earlier. as a locomotive-building center. Soon, New Surveying a country with abundant raw rna· England emerged as the leader in textiles. Lit­ terials before them, U.S. entrepreneurs lost no erary critic Van Wyck Brooks notes that by the time after the Revolutionary War in adopting 1830s around Boston, factory towns ''were ris­ the new industrial techniques of Europe to es­ ing on every hand, in Eastern Massachusett"l tablish a manufacturing base in the new na­ and New Hampshire-Lawrence, Lowell, Fitch­ tion. This process, in itself, gave birth to new berg, Manchester, Lynn. Every village with a and important cities inland. Secretary of the waterfall sct up a textile mill or a paper mill, Treasury Alexander Hamilton played a major a shoe factory or an iron foundry" (1936:4). role in the founding in 1792 of Paterson, New Slowly, industrialization supported by private 70 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

CITYSCAPE

A City-Making Mania

Urban historian Richard C. various metals,leather, wool, cotton and flax," Wade offers a glimpse of the in­ and "seminaries of learning conducted by ex­ credible urban growth that cellent teachers.... " characterized the eady nine­ Not all the towns founded in the trans­ teenth century. Although the Allegheny region in this period fared as well, however. Many never developed much beyond common conception is that a survey and a newspaper advertisement. Oth­ towns and cities sprang up after ers after promising beginnings, slackened and land-hungry settlers had filled settled down to slow and unspectacular devel­ up a new region. notice Wade's opment. Still others flourished briefly then assertion that towns actually faded, leaving behind a grim story of deserted preceded much of the westward mills, broken buildings, and aging people-the movement of population. In fact, many who West's first harvest of ghost towns. Most of these started west during this period went in search were mere eddies in the westward flow of ur~ of urban-rather than rural-opportunities. banism. but at flood tide it was often hard to distinguish the eddies from the main stream. The towns were the spearheads of the Ameri­ Indeed, at one time Wheeling, Virginia, St can frontier. Planted a'iforts or trading posts far Genevieve, Missouri, New Albany, Indiana, and in advance of the line of settlement, they held Zanesville. Ohio were considered serious chal~ the West for the approaching population.... lengers to the supremacy of their now more fa­ The speed and extent of this expansion mous neighbors. ' startled contemporaries. Joseph Charless. the Other places such as Rising Sun, Town editor of the Missouri Gaz.ette, who had made a of America. or New Athens, were almost trip through the new country in 1795, re­ wholly speCUlative ventures. Eastern investors membered the banks of the Ohio as "a dreary scanned maps looking for likely spots to es- , ' wilderness, the haunt of ruthless savages," yet tablish a city, usually at the junction of two twenty yean; later he found them "sprinkled rivers, or sometimes at the center of fertile with towns" boasting "spinning and weaving es­ farm districts. They bought up land, laid it out tabllshrnents. steam mills. manufacturers in in lots. gave the place a name, and waited for

investment began to transform the developing to attain much-desired "room to breathe." continent, particularly in the North. As it did long as the early North American settkment so, new tensions began to mount. remained small and kept their relatively mogeneous character. few tensions existed Urban-Rural/North-South Tensions tween urban and rural sections. Yet the founders of the United States u.s. culture has always contained a streak of greatly about how growing cities might antiurbanism. Some analysts link this sentiment form the new nation. to the popular image of North America as the was nurtured in the rural aristocratic "last frontier," the place where the confines of of Virginia, condemned cities as "ulcers (urban) civilization could be left behind and body politic" and saw their growth as an adequate "space" found at last. Many of the tation to all the corruption and evil that country's original settlers came here specifi~ befallen the Old World across the cally to escape Europe's rapid urbanization and Commenting on an outhreak of yellow Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 71

the development of the region to appreciate got up by some merchant or other that seemed its value. Looking back over this period one to have a good deal of time on his hands. There editor called it a "city-making mania," when were three pianoforte manufacturies, too, and everyone went about "anticipating flourishing three breweries, two tallow-rendering houses, cities in vision, at the mouth of every creek an ivory-black maker-for use in refining sugar, and bayou.. " you know-eight soap and candle factories; three shipyards; two glue factories; and four Louisville, 1849 pork houses that slaughtered upwards of sev­ enty thousand hogs a year. As evidence of the portrait just painted, And if you were looking for steam machin­ here is a section from the diary of Jaimie ery, they had twelve foundries that made the McPheeters, a 15-year-old boy. In 1849, after best on the river, or so the pamphlet claimed. hearing stories of the gold rush in California, There were rope factories, flouring mills, oil­ Jaimie and his dad decided to leave Louisville, cloth factories, three potteries; six tobacco Kentucky, and head west. Just before leaving, stemmeries, a paper mill, and a new gas works ]aimie's mother told him that when he re­ that lit 461 street. lamps over sixteen miles of main. Not only that, it had a gas holder mea­ turned, he could take his rightful place in suring sixty feet in diameter and twenty-two feet "the cultural life of Louisville, and share high. People used to ride out Sundays to look . in the city's advancement." This possibility at it, but the superintendent said it was a nui­ prompted the following ruminations in sance because he couldn't keep the children Jaimie'sdiary. Clearly, even in 1849, Louisville off. In the end, they were obliged to hire a was no "hick town." watchman, but he was bullyragged so steady that he sort of went ou't of his head, so to speak, Well, I thought, if you ask me, they've gone too and they had to place him in a hospital that far with this Louisville already. It was overde­ made a specialty of such cases. veloped and blown up with commerce and busi­ ness so you could hardly get across the streets Sources: Richard C. Wade, "Urban Life in Western Amer­ any more without being run down by teamsters. ica, 1790-1830," in American Historical Review (October Why, they had eight brickyards in Louisville in 1958), pp. 14-30; and Robert Lewis Taylor, The Travels of 1849-1 saw itin a bragging pamphlet that was Jaimie McPheeters (New York; Arbor House, 1985), p. 22.

Jefferson wrote the following to Benjamin To escape their influence, some people moved Rush in 1800: westward. The cities followed and brought with them the more mechanized existence of the \tVhen great evils happen I am in the habit of industrial age. By 1850 many rural Americans looking out for what good may arise from them were deeply alarmed about these develop­ as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact ments. Agrarian periodicals regularly touted so established the order to things, as that most the superiority of country life over the deceitful evils are the means of producing some good. The yellow fever will discourage the growth of great ways of city life. The Looking Back box >uggests cities in our nation, and I view great cities as the tone and substance of this confrontation. pestilential to the morals, the health and the lib­ The debate on the pros and cons of city life erties of man. soon took on a new and powerful dimension on the regional level: hostility between the As if in defiance of Jefferson's wishes, Amer­ North and the South. This conflict resulted ica's cities grew in number and·prominence. from the fact that the unparalleled growth of

., ,'." 72 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

LOOKING BACK

The Rural-Urban Debate

In 1811 a farmer near Lexing­ the town dweller. "\Vhat a fine smooth com­ ton [Kentucky] expressed the plexion you have Urbanus: you look like a [rural-urban] conflict as con­ weed that has grown up in the shade. Can temporaries saw it in a dialogue you walk your streets without inhaling the between "Rusticus" and "Ur­ noxious fumes with which your town is preg­ banus." The latter referred to nant? .. . Can you engage in calm co:ntem­ the "rude, gross appearance'! of plation, when hammers are ringing in every his neighbor, adding: "How' direction-where there is as great a rattling strong you smell of your as in a storm when the hail descends on our ploughed ground and corn house tops?" field. How dismal, how gloomy your green woods. What a miserable clash your Source: .Kentucky &parter (Lexington) ,July 2, 1811. Cited whistling woodland birds are continually mak­ in Alexander B. Callow, Jr, (ed,), American Urban History ing." Rusticus replied with the rural image of (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 105.

U.S. cities between 1820 and 1860 was largely attack on) Fort Sumter. ,iSece"ssion ·of'a kin~l';"a centered in the North. Cities such a' New York, very practical secession, had ilready taken place." Philadelphia, and Baltimore simply outdis­ (1969:33-34) tanced the conservative, slowly growing cities like Charleston and Savannah. The northern The Civil War broke out in 1861. Although its cities had the canal routes and the bulk of the causes were numerous, many historians believe railroad lines to the West, which produced that it was, in a very fundamental sense, a con~ tremendous increases in wealth and popula­ frontation between urban and rural, industrial tion. Moreover, they were dominating ever and agricultural values. The North's victory was greater shares of regional and national mar­ a symbolic turning point. The world ofJeffer­ kets, outstripping the South in overall pro­ son was dying. America's commitment to duction as industrialization spread. The West, urban industrial expansion was now unchal­ observes Arthur Schlesinger, lenged. The stage was set for an urban explo­ sion comparable to the one that had shaken was becoming steadily morc like the Northeast, Europe a century before. whereas the South, chained by slavery to agri­ culture, contained few sizable cities and those mostly at its edges. , , , Every year sharpened the THE ERA OF THE GREAT contrast between the urban spirit of progress an­ METROPOLIS: 1870-1950 imating the one section and the static, rural life of the other. Few important industries existed below the Mason and Dixon line, .. , [The] The record number of small cities incorpo­ Southerners, lacking the nerve centers for cre­ rated in the United States during the 50-year ative cultural achievement, fell behind in art'), period that ended in 1870 had not yet acquired letters and science. "It would have been surpris­ many of the urban characteristics most familiar , ing had they not desired secession," remarked to us: towering bUildings, populations in the Anthony Trollope, in America shortly after [the millions, and blazing lights downtown. Two " Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 73

historical events would provide thi: impetus transportation, real-estate speculators built for this transformation: (1) the technologi­ bousing tracts by tbe dozens. For example, be­ cal advance of industrialization and (2) the tween 1870 and 1890 the suburbs of Roxbury, migration of millions of people to urban West Roxbury, and Dorchester, immediately North America.' surrounding Boston, witnessed the construc­ tion of over 23,000 new. houses (Warner, 1962). Technological Advance For the burgeoning middle class, an escape from the city's dirt and din was at last possible: Industrialization involved much more than simply a proliferation of factories in and The ... general satisfaction with suburbs came around the enlarging urban areas. Several in- from their ability to answer some of the major ventions emerged that changed the face of the needs of the day.... To middle class families North American city. The construction of [they] gave a safe, sanitary environment, new buildings with iron, and then steel, pushed the houses in styles somewhat in keeping with their city skyward. In 1848 a five-story factory built conception of family life, and temporary neigh­ with an iron franle had made news in New borhoods of people with similar outlook .. .. In York; by 1884 a ten-story steel struct!}re in addition to benefiting [the middle class) the sub­ Chicago had ushered in the era of urban sky­ urbs [also served that portion of the city's] pop­ ulation which could not afford them. The scrapers. The success of these taller buildings apparent openness of the new residential quar­ was further ensured as another invention, the ters, their ethnic variety, their extensive growth, Otis elevator (devised in the 1850s), became and their wide range of prices from fairly inex­ widespread in the 1880s. By the end of the cen­ pensive rental suites to expensive single-family tury, some buildings reached 30 stories; by houses-these visible characteristics of the new . ,1910 a few were as higb as 50. By 1913 New sul;mrbs gave aspiring low-income families the York had 61 buildings taller than 20 stories, certainty that should they earn enough money and the famous city skyline was beginning to they too could possess the comfort~ and symbols take form (Still, 1994:206--207). ofsuece". (Warner, 1962:157) As cities grew upward, they also pushed out­ ward, aided by a new technology in street-level Technology thus spawned the suburban dream transportation. Prior to the Civil War, pedes­ in the late 1800s, enabling the middle class to trians had only horse-drawn vehicles to con­ move out of the city, separating their place of tend with. By the 1870s steam-powered trains work from their place of residence. Unlike the were running on elevated tracks in New York. more mixed pattern of the earlier walking city, Soon after, "eIs" were built in other large cities. the new housing tracts created homogeneous People's ability to move about certainly was en­ economic and social communities that by and hanced, but the thunderous noise, billowing large excluded the poor (Palen, 1995:39-40). smoke, and cascading sparks and cinders of This pattern ofsoeial class segregation, and the lhese trains surely did little to preserve the attempt of many to escape to the suburbs, have peace and quiet of local neighborhoods or remained two powerful aspects of urban his­ the quality of the environment. tory ever since. In the 1880s the electric street trolley came Technological advance via the streetcar not into use. Still in operation today in Philadel­ only allowed cities to sprout suburbs, but also phia, Boston, and New Orleans, these devices linked cities to one another with cheap trans­ also helped make mass transit a reality. Indeed, portation, At one time in the mid-nineteenth streetcars, and the subways that followed, were century, believe it or not, it was possible to primarily responsible for making suburhan travel from Boston all the way to New York and life possible for millions. They allowed fast and beyond simply by transferring from streetcar inexpensive transportation beyond the city line to streetcar line. Such a system greatly stim­ limits. Quick to see the possibilities of such ulated interurban migration. 74 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

The Great Migration five mi11ion 9r.rived in the IJnltPn ~tate!;, pro­ duced some strIking statistics for individual Cities, The growing suburbs proved important in yet In 1890, New York ... contained more foreign another way: They helped siphon off the born resident.;; than any city in the world. The city had half as many Italians as Naples, as many incredible population growth of the era. The Germans as Hamburg, twice as many Irish as expanding industrial economy created oppor­ Dublin, and two and a half times the number of tunities for millions. Between 1870 and 1920, Jews in Warsaw, In ] 893, Chicago contained the urban places (places with over 2,500 residents) third largest Bohemian community in the world; in the United States increased their populations by the time of the First World War, Chicago from just under 10 million to over 54 million. ranked only behind Warsaw and Lodz as a city of The country became, for the first time, a pre­ Poles. (1967:138-139) dominantly urban nation. (The United States passed the 50 percent urban population mark One important effect of all this in-migration in 1913.) The rate of growtb for many of the was the clustering together of cultural groups largest cities was nothing short of astonishing. By in distinctive city districts. The tremendous va­ 1920 Chicago had over 12 times its 1870 popula­ riety of these groups gave cities of the late nine­ tion and was fast approaching the 3 million mark. teenth century a degree of diversity and New York, not yet a city of 1 million in 1870, excitement that was quite new in the United was by 1920 approaching the 6 million mark. States-and would affect the character of the Two demographic trends were primarily re­ city from that time on. To travel the breadth sponsible for this striking increase in city of Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, or New York dwellers: (1) depopulation of rural areas, as was-and still is today-to experience a suc­ people moved into cities and (2) immigration cession of differing worlds, each characterized to the United States from abroad. The move­ by its own shops and products; its own soiinds ment from the countryside to the city was and smells, its own language. Hence, in addi­ brought about by automation-machinery tion to upward and outward expansion and raw was making old forms of hand-powered labor population growth, cultural heterogeneity be­ obsolete-and the possibility of greater wealth came a third major characteristic of the new in the city. Between 1880 and 1890, nearly 40 American metropolis. percent of the nation's 25,746 townships actu­ ally lost population (Glaab, 1963:176). Unable Politics and Problems to survive in the country and lured by the cities, thousands abandoned their farms to seek With the enormous changes that reshaped cities thdr fortunes elsewhere. As might be expected, in this period came equally enormous problems. migration was most intense in the Northeast How were the incoming millions to be fed, pro­ and Midwest, where the largest cities were. vided with water, electricity, jobs, and protection The absolute number of foreign immigrants against unscrupulous exploitation? Only the city to the United States was a bit smaller than the government was empowered to cope with these number of city-bound Americans who left rural issues; however, the pressures against repre­ areas during this period, but the changes senting the public interest fairly were great. All ' wrought by immigrants from abroad were far the utility companies required franchises to use greater. Representing dozens of different na­ the streets-water and gas companies to lay tionalities and ethnicities, they introduced stag­ pipes, electric companies to erect poles, and gering cultural diversity to the large cities of transit companies to lay iron rails. Local or out­ the United States. Glaab and Brown give some of-town entrepreneurs offered to pay large sums hint of the transformation: for these lucrative franchises, and their bribes sometimes corrupted city officials. The influx of immigrant.;; to the cities, particu­ Certain dictatorial political figures-"the larly during the decade of the 1880's when over bosses"-began to take control of many city Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 75

'governments. They got the job done, but in Glazier finds Pittsburgh so harmful that he the process they usually lined their pockets likens it to hell itself. with graft and kickbacks. By the turn of the Some profited greatly in this age of great century many city officials were as corrupt as economic expansion. Tremendo.us fortunes any organized crime figure. were made and urban industrial empires be· Outraged, citizens' groups demanded re­ came established. In 1892, the New York Times form. In 1880 the Committee of One Hundred published a list of 4,047 U.S. millionaires; in organized against a natural-gas monopoly and 1901,]. P. Morgan founded U.S. Steel, the its illicit connection to Philadelphia's govern­ first billion-dollar corporation; and "by 1910 ment. Other reform movements-in St. Louis, there were more millionaires in the United Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and New York-got States Senate alone than there were in the under way. Progress was slow, however, because whole nation before the Civil War" (Baltzell, the bosses had developed an efficient "ma­ 1964:110). chine" that extended its tentacles into all layers But times were not equally good for all. of government and neighborhood life. As the enormous mansion-retreats of the Another problem of the times was that ."robber-baron" industrialists rose across the ur­ large-scale immigration sparked an increas· ban fringe, the blight of the inner-city tene­ ingly bitter reaction against newcomers. It was ment became more and more conspicuous. not just their numbers. By 1900, immigrants With a steady stream of people entering the were more often from southern and eastern large cities of the North, property owners re­ Europe, more likely to be Roman Catholic or sponded to the rising demand for housing by Jewish than Protestant, and more likely to have making the most profitable use of building darker eyes, hair, and skin tone than whites of space. New York tenements, denounced as northe'rn and western European descent. "hideous" by Charles Dickens in 1842, had be­ Moreover, these newcomers often had man· come even worse by 1900, as designs cheap­ ners and dress that made them stand out as ened and more and more people moved into "different." These "less desirable" immigrants them. The word tenement now symbolized an added significantly to anti-city sentiment be­ airless, congested slum dwelling. By the turn of cause, even more than earlier arrivals, they the century, perhaps 35 percent of New York were overwhelmingly urban settlers. By 1910, City's population lived in such quarters, al­ in fact, over one-third of the inhabitants of the though the situation in most other industrial eight largest U.S. cities had been born abroad; cities was somewhat lnore favorable. Despite another one-third were second-generation periodic attempts at reform through legisla­ Americans. In sharp contrast, fewer than one tion, the urban housing problem remains a in ten rural Americ:;:ans w.ere foreign born at controversial issue to the present day (see this time (Glaab, 1963:176). Within the city, Chapter 12). people from "good stock" tried valiantly to get Quality-of-life problems in the rapidly away from the newcomers. As a result, the expanding industrial cities, unfortunately, were wealthier suburbs often had a decided anti­ not limited to housing. Health hazards were ethnic and racist tinge to them. great where high-density living was combined with inadequate sewerage and generally un­ The Quality of Life sanitary conditions. Through the end of the in the New Metropolis nineteenth century, toilet facilities were grossly inadequate for immigrant tenement dwellers. The industrialization of the city reinfDelaware River, into cities as simply horrendous. Take Willard which some 13 million gallons of sewage were Glazier's impressions of Pittsburgh in 1884, being dumped weekly (Marshall, 1969:150). presen ted in the next Looking Back box. The frequency, of epidemics was high. The 76 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

LOOKING BACK

Industrial Pittsburgh, 1884

By all means make your first ap­ and the very atmosphere looks dark. All ro­ proach to Pittsburgh in the mance has disappeared .... There is only a night time, and you will behold very busy city shrouded in gloom. The build­ . a spectacle which has not a par- ings, whatever their original material and allelon this continent. Darkness color, are smoked to a uniform, dirty drab; gives the city and its surround­ their smoke sinks, and mingling with the ings a picturesqueness which moisture in the air, becomes of a consistency they wholly lack by daylight. It which may almost be felt as well as seen. lies low down in a hollow of en­ Under a drab sky a drab twilight hangs over compassing hills, gleaming with the town, and the gas-lights, which are left a thousand points of light, burning at midday, shine out of the murla­ which are reflected from the rivers, whose wa­ ness with a dull, reddish glare. ters glimmer in the faint moonlight. ... In truth, Pittsburgh is a smoky, dismal city, Around the city's edge, and on the sides of at her best. At her worst, nothing darker, the hills which encircle it like a gloomy am­ dingier or more dispiriting can be imagined. phitheatre, their outlines rising,dark. against The city is in the heart of the soft coal region; the sky, through numberless apertures, fiery and the smoke from.her dwellings; stores, fac' lights stream forth, looking angrily and tories, foundries and steamboats, uniting, set­ fiercely up toward the heavens, while over all tles in a cloud over the narrow valley in which these settles a heavy pall of smoke. It is as she is built, until the very sun looks coppery though one had reached the outer edge of through the sooty haze. Her inhabitants are the infernal regions, and saw before him the all too busy to reflect upon the inconvenience great furnace of Pandemonium with all the or uncomeliness of this smoke. Work is the lids lifted. The scene is so strange and weird object of life with them. It occupies them that it will live in the memory forever. One from morning until night, from the cradle pictures, as he beholds it, the tortured spirits to the grave, [except] on Sundays, when, for writhing in agony, their sine'W)' limbs con­ the most part, the furnaces are idle, and the vulsed, and the very air oppressive with pain forges are silenL and rage ...... Failing a night approach, the traveler Source: Willard Glazier, Peculiarities of Amen'can Cities should reach the Iron City on a dismal day in (1884), quoted in Charles N. Glaab, The American City: A autumn, when the air is heavy with moisture, Documenlary History (Homewood, IL: Dorsey, 1963).

Chicago Times summed up tl,e problem with ap­ magnitude of odiousness. (cited in Glaab a!1d propriate bluntoess: Brown, 1967:165)

The river stinks. The air stinks. Peoples' cloth­ Of course, attempts were made to re:mclVe' ing, permeated by the foul atmosphere, many of these problems. Urban activists stinks . ... No other word expresses it so well as as] ane Addams, awarded a Nobel Prize stink. A stench means something finite. Stink the founding of Hull House (a setUelmeJ",' reaches the infinite and becomes sublime in the house) in Chicago (1889), attempted to Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 77

situation of immigrants and improve liv­ United States to continually absorb the "tired, conditions. But for decades the battle was hungry, and poor" of foreign states. Such reser­ The cities were growing uncontrollably. vations were laced with a considerable degree of ethnic prejudice as well. By lobbying hard, T,~n". Through 1950 anti-immigrationists were able to press the U.S. Congress in 1921 into passing a law limiting Between 1883imd 1900. Toronto annexed ad- the foreign influx, particularly from southern, " jaeent villages and towns and doubled its area, central, and eastern Europe. This was followed again doubling its size through further an­ by legislation in 1924 restricting immigration nexation by 1920. In 1930, Toronto's metro­ even further. politan area included the central city, four The ultimate irony of the quota system, towns (Leaside, Mimico, New Toronto, and however, was that it did not stop migration to Weston), three villages (Forest Hill, Long the cities, and it perhaps set the stage for even Branch, and Swansea), and five townships (Eta­ greater urban difficulties in the future. The bieoke, East York, North York, Scarborough, industrial machine that had been developing and York). Montreal annexed several cities, since the late nineteenth century simply towns, and villages on its outskirts in the early looked elsewhere for cheap labor and found twentieth century, thereby significantly ex­ Mrican Americans in the South all too eager panding its municipal boundary as well. to find a better way of life. Between 1920 and The rush to cities slowed down considerably 1929, more than 600,000 southern Mrican during World War I but resumed immediately Americans migrated to northern cities. By the afterward. One source of the new influx was end of the decade, Chicago's South Side and returning soldiers who, after "seeing the New York's Harlem had the largest concen­ world,"" 'no long:er were <;on~~,n~.t9 ~t.'lY at ho~e. trated black populations anywhere in the As a humorous popular song of the times world. In Hartford, Baltimore, Washington, asked: "How ya gonna keep' em down on the Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Detroit, the farm after they've seen Paree?" black population grew enormously. Soon The other source was renewed immigra­ racial tensions developed in many northern tion. Between 1870 and the start of World War cities, sometimes leading to riots, as in Detroit I, over 20 million foreign immigrants disem­ in 1925. barked on North American shores. The vast The next crisis happened with the stock majority of them becalI\e city dwellers. When market crash of 1929, which wiped out huge one adds to this the inmigration from the municipal investments, threw millions into des­ rural hinterland and natural population in­ titution, and made local public projects virtu­ crease by births, the shift is dramatic. The fol­ ally impossible to implement. Many cities lowing statistic indicates the magnitude of the became financially strapped to the point of change: In 1870 only 25 percent of the U.S. bankruptcy. Seeing possible salvation in Franklin population resided in cities; by 1920 the cen­ Roosevelt, 23 major cities supported the Dem­ sus reported that, for the first time, the urban ocratic Party in the 1932 election, thereby way of life was the most common-51 percent ensuring his election. The next year the may~ Were urban dwellers. ors of 50 cities met in Washington to found the From a low of110,000 in 1918 (the next-to­ U.S. Conference of Mayors and began lobbying last year of the war), other countries increased efforts in their own behalf. They were not dis­ their U.S.-bound human exports to 805,000 in appointed. The National Industrial Recovery 1921, over 222,000 of whom came from Italy Act appropriated $3.3 billion for much-needed alone (Parrillo, 1997:207). However, such mas­ public works and housing operations, and sub­ sive immigration was not to go on forever. sequent bills pumped billions more into hous­ Many ordinary Americans and political lead­ ing construction, highway construction, and ers became concerned about the ability of the other relief for the cities. A fateful corner had 78 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities been turned: As the thirties gave way to the for­ data, shown in Table 3-3, for major northern ties, flfties', and sixties, cities became more and cities between 1910 and 1996. Notice that all more dependent on the federal government. the cities in this table had become large me­ Despite many positive beneflts of this connec~ tropolises by 1910 and that each grew rapidly tion, it was also to have major drawbacks. in the following few decades. However, by 1950 that growth was slowing. By 1970 there was an actual decline in central-city populations and THE NORTH AMERICAN CITY by the 1990s, what could only be characterized TODAY: 1950 TO THE PRESENT as a full-scale centrakity retreat was under way. Many of these people, however, are not leav­ Today's U,S, cities are in the process of three ing the metropolitan region. They are moving major changes: (1) people and businesses still to the suburbs near the cities. Table 3-4 makes abandon the central cities, continuing a sub­ this clear by examining metropolitan area pop­ urbanization trend that began nearly 100 years ulations for selected cities across the continent, ago, a process aptly called decentralization; (2) including those examined in Table g.,3. With major population growth is occurring in cities few exceptions, suburbs are growing every­ in the South and West, the so-<:alled Sunbelt ex­ where and have been doing so for over 30 pansion; and (3) the work typically performed years. Why? in the central city is more and more oriented Ectmomic Consideratirms to white-collar jobs, high technology, and ser­ vices, as Canadian and u.s. cities adjust to the By about 1950, more and more businesses, par­ postindustrial era. ' ticularly in .industry and manufacturing, were moving away from the industrial. districts .of Decentralization central cities. The costs of refurbishing older buildings were high and, given high rents, ex- .

If the first three eras of North American urban pansion wasn't always possible. Further, some I ii' history can be characterized as a time of "ur­ new assembly-line procedures required large, ban implosion," of ever~greater numbers of low-level structures rather than the multistory people converging on the central city itself, buildings characteristic of an ,earlier era. Con~ then the period since 1950 has seen the be­ cerns over rising crime rates, taxes, and traffic ginnings of a major "urban explosion," of peo­ congestion also played their part in a prolifera­ ple moving out from the core to the tion of new "industrial parks" in the outer urban surrounding regions. One indication of this areas. Workers often moved from the central' . decentralization can be seen in the census city to be near their relocated jobs. The result ~.

TABLE 3-3 Population of Selected U_S_ Northern Cities, 1910-1998 (in thousands)

1910 1930 1950 1970 1990 1998

Baltimore 588 805 950 906 736 646 Boston 671 781 801 641 574 555 Chicago 2,185 3,376 3,621 3,367 2,784 2,802 Cleveland 561 900 915 751 506 496 Detroit 466 1,569 1,850 1,511 1,028 970 New York 4,767 6,930 7,892 7,895 7,323 7,420 Philadelphia 1,549 1,951 2,072 1,949 1,586 1,436

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 79

Population of Selected Metropolitan Areas, 1980-1996

1996 Population Change Since 1980 Percent Change (in thousands) (in thousands) Since 1980

Baltimore 2,474 +279 +13 Boston 5,263 +114 +4 Chicago 7,734 +488 +7 Cleve1and-Lorain-Elvira 2,233 -'15 -2 Detroit 4,318 -70 -2 New York 8,643 +368 +4 Philadelphia 4,953 +172 +4 Southern Cities AtlaI1la 3,541 +1308 ·;..59 Birmingham 895 +80 +10 Dallas 3,048 +993 +48 Houston 3,792 +1039 +38 Miami 2,076 +450 +28 New Orleans 1,313 +9 Orlando 1,417 +612 +76 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater 2,199 +585 +36 Western Cities Los Angeles-Long Beach 9,128 +1651 +22 Pheenix-Mesa 2,747 +1147 +72 Portland-Vancouver 1,759 425 +32 Salt Lake City-Ogden 1,218 +308 +34 San Francisco 1,655 +166 +11 Seattle-Bellevue-Everett 2,235 +583 +35

&urce: u.S, Bureau of the Census.

was a growth in suburban population and a de­ industries and residential areas to spread cline in central-city population. widely across the metropolitan area. Similarly, cars and trucks provide far greater flexibility Technology in mobility and location than the rail trans­ As noted earlier, technological changes in en­ portation system that dominated the late nine­ ergy (steam power) and building techniques teenth century. This has been especially true (steel-frame skyscrapers) were important in the since the 1950s with the development of the creation of a centralized metropolis in the interstate highway system and the ubiquitous nineteenth cenrury, During the twentieth cen­ outer-city "loops" (usually converted into a tury the development of electric power, the 200- or 400-level of the two-digit in terstate widespread use of cars and trucks, the all-but­ highway number, such as Route 280 or Route universal telephone, and-mostrecently-com­ 476) surrounding most major cities. puter technology have been equally important As rail lines pushed out of the cities in ear­ in the decentralization of the urban area, lier decades, the first suburbs clustered around Unlike steam power, which must be used the stations. But motor vehicles made it possi­ within the immediate area of its production, ble to live in a far wider area while still having electric power can be transmitted over long access to the urban area as a whole. As late as distances. This makes it possible for both 1920, the average commute was still only, about 80 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

1.5 miles (B. Duncan, 1956). By 1960, however, available to veterans or to anyone else who this distance had grown to almost 5 miles could supply some assurance of their ability to (Hawley, 1971), and it is not uncommon today repay. Millions of veterans took the FHA and to travel 20 miles or more to work. the VA up on their offer and elected to build Taken together, these tethnological changes or buy new homes which, because of federal have changed the meaning of urban space. Be­ funding policies, were mostly built outside the cause we move more easily across space-in central city, in suburban tracts. minutes by car or milliseconds by telecommu­ The irony of this was that, like the immi­ nications-physical proximity is no longer as gration quota system, a well-meaning federal necessary to tie together all the activities within policy once again created major prOblems for the urban area. In fact, most of us who live cities down the line. As the white middle class in cities routinely think in terms of time ('We moved out to the separately incorporated sub­ live about 40 minutes from the airport") rather urbs, the cities lost even more of the tax base than distance; we may not even know how that departing industry was already erOding. many miles away the airport is. To add to the problem, the population that was left behind in the city core was increasingly Suburban Housing composed of minorities and the poor. As in­ Any consideration of urban decentralization dustry abandoned the central city, many of during the last 50 years must include recogni­ these people were unable to fmd jobs and went tion of the tremendous proliferation of new on public relief. Thus the city was faced with an housing, which is typically being constructed increasing demand for services and a shrink· farther from central cities. This process is ing ability to provide them. By the mid-I960s a linked to transportation options and began in true urban crisis-largely created by the de­ the late nineteenth cen tury, but got perhaps centralization phenomenon-was upon the its greatest push after World War II. At that country as a whole. Urban poverty was on the in­ time, millions of Americans returned from crease, minorities were justifiably angry over overseas to fmd their old neighborhoods in in­ their standard of living, services were getting creasing disrepair (in the war effort many worse, and many cities were facing bankruptcy. neighborhood maintenance projects had been The Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) shelved and the ability of private homeowners to maintain full upkeep was curtailed). In .As mentioned earlier, by 1910 decentralization many instances, returning white soldiers also was well under way in the United States. Cities OJ found minority groups, especially Mrican were growing well beyond their traditionale " Americans, living in or close to their former boundaries. In the cities of the North, homes. (Many Mrican Americans had mi­ ample, workers, unable to find adequate grated north during the war to operate the in­ ing in the central city, spilled over into dustrial machinery vacated by whites.) Finally, surrounding towns and small cities. To take like almost all Americans, these men wanted single case, Boston's workers began to settle their own place out of the congested city, a Wakefield and Lynn to the north, in Welles! place with a little more room where they could and Natick to the west, and in Quincy raise their kids in clean air and send them to Braintree to the south. While technically good schools, without fear of crime and other people were residents of their newly ad' _ . urban ills. This was, of course, the classic sub­ local communities, on another level thpuwf"f: urban dream. still clearly linked to Boston and What made its realization possible for mil­ sphere of influence. lions was the federal government. The Federal Noticing this trend, the U.S. Bureau Housing Authority and the Veterans Adminis­ Census was faced with a problem: tration made low-interest construction loans measure accurately the way cities were Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 81

YI>:I·o"rin:g .. If it merely counted the residents of Megalopolis and th£ Consolidated MetropOlitan city-in this case, Boston-it Statistical Area (CMSA) woullQ get a relatively small population coun t that would not reflect the fact that many of French geographer Jean Gotttnann was one of the people who lived in Braintree and Wake­ the first urbanists to look closely at the sprawl­ field were really tied to Boston in a funda­ ing urban regions and to note the linkages mental way. Consequently, the Census Bureau between many independent urban municipal­ decided to count not only the central city and ities. The first such area, which he called . its population in its surveys, but the sur­ "Megalopolis," was the unbroken urban region rounding towns and cities that were obviously that emerged along the eastern seaboard of tied to that central city as well. Thus was born the United States. It was dubbed the "BosWash the idea of the metropolitan area. corridor" by Gottmann. In Cityscape he de­ Since 1910 a series of terms have been used scribes this development. to designate such sprawling urban regions. The BosWash corridor was the first North From 1959 until 1983, the term standard metr(}­ American megalopolis, but not the last. Since politan statistical area (or SMSA) was employed. 1961, when Gottmann's seminal book was pub­ Then, in 1983, the Census Bureau introduced lished, other megalopolises have emerged-in the concept metropolitan statistical area (or MSA). Southern California ("SanSan") and across the An MSA is currently defined as including at northern Midwest from Chicago ("ChiGary") least one city with 50,000 or more inhabitants, to Cleveland ("CleveAk"). Once again, such the county or counties containing the city, and growth has not gone unnoticed by the Census any surrounding counties that have a high pop­ Bureau, which coined the term consolidated met­ ulation density and a large proportion of in­ ropolitan statistical area (or CMSA) to describe habitants commuting to and from the central these areas. By 2000, 18 CMSAs were recog­ nized as part of the urban landscape, including city. As of 2000, the Census Bureau recognized 273 MSAs within the United States, containing Dallas-Forth'Worm, Denver-Boulder-Greeley, roughly three-fourths of the total population. Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint, Houston-Galveston­ Brazoria, Miami-Fort lauderdale, Milwaukee­ The Torontv Metropolitan Area Racine, and Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton. In 1953, Toronto created a federated form of Nonmetropolitan Growth government unique to North America to deal with the metropolitan phenomenon. Going be-­ The decentralization of the U.S. population yond merely labeling a metropolitan area as has dispersed people outward from central such, this action created a consolidated gover­ cities notjust to nearby suburbs, but to the out­ nance system. The 13 municipalities of this met­ lying rural hinterland as well. Small towns and ropolitan areaJormed a 25-member, elected rural areas had steadily lost population for the Council of Metropolitan Toronto. Through first 70 years of this century. In the 1960s rural united effort the Council succeeded in estab­ America lost 2.8 million people, but during the lishing a common property assessment and tax 1970s, the trend reversed itself as rural areas rate to deal with such regional problems as gained 8.4 million people, up some 15.4 per­ water supply, sewage disposal, mass transit, cent. Between 1990 and 1996, the nonmetro­ school building needs, housing for the elderly, politan population increased by 3.4 million, a parks, and urban development. This metro­ 7.8 percent increase (U.S. Bureau of the Cen­ politan governance approach is found in many sus, 2000). European countries but is virtually nonexistent No doubt improved transportation and in the United States. Subsequently, the Coun­ communications are an important foundation cil was modified to include 33 members but of this change, and so tpo is the emergence from only six municipalities. of edge cities, to be discussed shortly. Yet 82 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

CITYSCAPE iten Boo. Megalopolis: The BosWash Corridor Thl The Northeastern seaboard of censuses, have very little, if anything, to do the United States is today the with agriculture. In terms of their interests Ag site of a remarkable develop­ and work they are what used to be classified rna; ment-an almost continuous as "city folks," but their way of life and the citi stretch of urban and suburban landscapes around their residences do not fit ing areas from southern New Hamp­ the old meaning of urban. gre shire to northern Virginia and In this area, then, we must abandon the 3-] from the Atlantic shore to the idea of the city as a tightly settled and orga­ tiVt Appalachian foothills .... nized unit in which people, activities, and eV( ... As one follows the main riches are crowded into a very small area we highways or railroads between clearly separated from its nonurban sur­ sid Boston and Washington, D.C., one hardly roundings. Every city in this region spreads loses sight of built-up areas, tightly woven res­ ont far and wide around its original nudeus; Mi idential communities, or powerful concen­ it grows amidst an irregularly colloidal mix­ .tic trations of manufacturing plants. Flying this ture of rural and suburban landscapes; it sh same route one discovers, on the other h:~:md:. melts on broad fronts with other mixtures, of that behind the ribbons of densely occupied somewhat similar though different texture, land along the principal arteries of traffic, belonging to the suburban neighboi'hoods of and in between the clusters of suburbs other cities, Such coalescence can be ob­ around the old urban centers, there still re­ served, for example, along the main lines of main large areas covered with woods and traffic that link New York City and Philadel­ brush alternating with some carefully culti­ phia. Here there are many communities that vated patches of farmland. These green might be classified as belonging to more than spaces, however, when inspected at closer one orbit. It is hard to say whether they are range, appear stuffed with a loose hut im­ suburbs, or "satellites," of Philadelphia or mense scattering of buildings, most of them New York, Newark, New Brunswick, or Tren­ residential but sonle of industrial character. ton. The latter three cities themselves have That is, many of these sections that look rural been reduced to the role of suburbs of New actually function largely as suburbs in the York City in many respects, although Trenton orbit of some city's downtown, ... belongs also to the orbit of Philadelphia .... i· Thus the old distinctions between rural This region indeed reminds one of and urban do not apply here any more. Even tie's saying that cities such as Babylon had a qUick look at the vast area of Megalopolis re­ compass of a nation rather than a city.... " veals a revolution in land use. Most of the people living in the so-called rural areas, and Sourt;e: Jean Gottmann, MegalopOlis (New York; still classified as "rural population" by recent eth Century Fund, 19(1), pp. 3, 5-7.

Americans moving to small towns or rural areas for a greater sense of security and re,ulirffil also may be reacting to the problems of cities the value of simpler living. Still, the in the same way that those moving to the sub­ moving to these areas are in no way urbs have done for decades: They are looking tionally rural. Most are well educated, Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 83

"sophisticalted tastes, and work in nearby cities. and the West has also come into preeminence. stores often spring up, supplying such Table 3-5 illustrates just how dramatic the as French wines and the New York Times change has been by comparing the raw popu­ Review. lation figures and national rankings for the ten largest U.S. cities in 1998. Although New York, 1; The Sunbelt Expansion Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit have man­ aged to stay in the top ten, all have lost signif­ ,: A glance back to Table 3-4 reveals the other icant population since 1950. If present trends . main trend that is affecting contemporary U.S. continue, only New York and Los Angeles eities. Although suburban population is grow­ may appear on the next list. In addition, seem­ ing everywhere, the table shows that it is ingly from nowhere, Houston, Dallas, San growing fastest in the South and West. Figure Diego, San Antonio, and, especially, Phoenix 3-1 drives home the point even moreeffec­ have leaped onto the top ten list. Why has this tively, showing that the population of virtually change occurred? every state below the Mason-Dixon Line and Snowbelt Debits/Sunbelt Assets west of the Rocky Mountains increased con­ siderably between 1990 and 1997. To begin with, the northern cities experienced Throughout U.S. history the Northeast and the strains of age, and businesses found costs Midwest regions and their cities dominated na­ and taxes rising to the point where many were tional affairs. No more. An immense power not willing to stay. Built around the cruder in­ shift has occurred; the South has risen again dustrial machinery of the nineteenth century,

FIGURE 3-1 State Population Changes (in percentages), 1990-1997 Source: u.s. Bureau of the Census. Accessed- at http//www.census.gov/population/estimates/s~ate/st90_99.gif

Md.

Population Growth Over_km 17% 9.7-17% CJ_0-9.6% Loss Hawaii 84 Chapter 3 The Development of North American .Cities

TABLE 3-5 The Ten largest U.S. Cities in 1996 Compared _"h Rank In '9~O (population in thou.ands)

1998 1950

Population Rank Population Rank

New York 7,420 I 7,892 Los Angeles 3,598 2 1,970 4 Chicago 2,802 3 3,621 2 Houston 1,787 4 596 14 Philadelphia 1,436 5 2,072 3 San Diego 1,221 6 334 28 Phoenix 1,198 7 107 96 San Antonio 1,\ 14 8 408 24 Dallas \,076 9 434 21 Detroit 970 10 1,850 5

NoW: Center city data on1r, ymrce: U.S. Bureau of the Census. these cities found their physical plants out­ Ho;;'" heating and electricity typically cost moded by newer, particularly "high-tech" in­ twice as mncb in the Snowbelt cities as in the dustry. Renovation was exorbitantly costly. City Sunbelt. Responding to such incentives, people streets were in disrepair. Services were declin­ head south or west. ing. Because of the financial burden they la­ The movement out of the North and Mid-; bored under, these cities could not offer tax . west is not only affecting whites. From Virginia:' breaks to businesses as liberally as they once to Texas (the states of the Old Conf"deracy),iI had. Energy costs were skyrocketing. Super­ the black population increased 19 highways (so vital to modern commerce) typi­ tween 1970 and 1980, as more than a cally did not terminate convenien tty in the more Mrican Americans moved in to the industrial area. Union pay scales made labor than moved out. This was the first major very expensive. versal of the northward black migration The Sun belt had few of these problems. tern since it began after the Civil War, With many cities industrialized only recently, trend is con tinning. The 1990 census they were able to build modern, cfficientplants 62 percent of all African Americans now linked easily to superhighways. With stronger in the Sunbelt. Black migration to the economies than their northern counterparts accelerated dramatically between 1990 due to booming population growth, they could 1996; seven of the 10 metropolitan areas offer substantial tax breaks to businesses. En­ gained the most black residents in this ergy costs were also much lower, A less union­ were in the South. But there is a c1ifferellce ized labor force was an added attraction to tween the earlier migration northward businesses, The result was that businesses by the present one southward. Previously, the thousands deserted the North and headed African Americans moving north were for the cities of the South and West. workers looking for any type of en1plo}'lTI Private citizens also enjoyed many benefits that would pay them more than the bare living in the South and West. Sunbelt cities are tence income they had earned in southern warmer, cheaper to live in, and offer more jobs. areas or cities. Today, most African NBC'" Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 85

migrating southward are of working age, and people-almost one in five Americans-live. about one-fIfth are college graduates, and thus This 18 percent produces more than its share they contrioute to the growth of the black mid­ (22 percent) of the nation's wealth, compared . die-class population in cities such as Atlanta, with the 54 percent produced by the South and Charlotte, and Washington, D.C. Another 7 West, which contain 57 percent of the total percent are aged 65 or older, moving south to population (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, retire (Frey, 1998). 1996). Nearly one-half of all investment capital Finally, many Sun belt cities have been per­ available nationwide in 1993 was concentrated mitted, by law, to annex new territory, as the in the Northeast, where bank assets of$1.4 tril­ northern cities once did before municipal lion accounted for 33 percent of the nation's boundaries became rigid. Because of this terri­ total bank assets (F.D.I.C., 1996). torial flexibility, Sunbelt economic and politi­ Why does this region still attractjob-creating cal boundaries are more congruent, and so far investments? With one-seventh of the U.S. pop­ these cities have been able to avoid the fInancial ulation on one-twentieth of the land mass, it is straits of northern cities, becoming urban re­ the nation's most concentrated market region. gions unto themselves. In contrast, most north­ Manufacturers in the BosWash corridor can eastern cities have the same boundaries that reach over half the U.S. and Canadian indus­ they had half a century ago and are surrounded trial firms and retail sales outlets within 24 by legally independent suburbs that wish no hours by truck. Also, the corridor states are, by part of the problems of the old central cities. air and sea, close to the 271 million people in The Sun belt cities are on a growth spurt that the European Communi ty countries. In addi­ resembles the one that Canadian and north­ tion, the ll-state region has the highest con­ ern U.S. metropolises underwent in the period centration of higher education institutions, between 1870 and 1950. They are reshaping sending 2.8 million students annually to 875 the face of urban North America. The process colleges and universities. Proximity to top col­ is feeding on itself. Business follows people; leges has influenced the location choices of people follow business. high technology fIrms. Massachusetts's famous California provides just one example. For Route 128 (now called "America's Technol­ decades, people moving to the so-called golden ogy Highway") is near MIT and Harvard. New land at the western edge of the continent Jersey-with only 3.3 percent of the nation's tended to settle in that state's coastal cities­ population-has laboratories along Route 1 San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San near Princeton University that do 9 percent Francisco-or their suhurbs. Many are still of the research and development work -in the doing so. However, in recent years the growth United States (Parrillo, Stimson, and Stimson, of California's inland cities has been nothing 1999:407). short of astounding. Growing as though there is no tomorrow are cities like Stockton, Bakers­ Sunhelt Debits field, Fresno, San Bernardino, ModestO, and Just as all is not negative in the Snowbelt, all is Sacramento. Once again, it is quality-of-life is­ not rosy in the Sunbelt. A 1995 FBI report in­ sues that seem behind the change. Housing dicated that reported crime in the Sun belt costs in coastal cities are astronomical, jobs are region was 35 percent higher than in the North­ scarce (especially those that pay well), and east and 21 percent higher than in the Midwest. smog and congestion are omnipresent. Inland, Pollution is increasing, water is running short . these problems are less intense. (particularly in the Southwest), and population Bos Wash Assets growth is just too great to absorb in manyareas. Many of tlle fast-growth cities have not yet de­ Despite the Sun belt expansion, the BosWash veloped adequate infrastructure systems (roads, megalopolis remains a major part of U.S. ur­ bridges, water and sewage systems) and the cost ban life. It is a region where almost 50 million of doing so is rising rapidly. 86 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

Augmenting the population pressure is the in the Sunbcit are rnountlng_ I-Ijspar,ics often influx of hundreds of thousands of Hispanics are subjected to the same abusive treatment and Asians. San Antonio. now the nation's visited on African Americans in many cities eighth largest city, was the first with a Hispanic and, in an earlier era, on Irish, Italian, and Jew­ majority, but large Hispanic enclaves exist in ish immigrants in the North. Housing prob­ every major city from Houston to Los Angeles. lems also have become acute. Many Hispanic Some immigrants cross into the United States barrios in southwestern cities are beginning to illegally in an attempt to escape the extreme resemble the impoverished slums of the De­ poverty of their homeland (Chapter 13) and veloping World (Chapter 13). to take part in the rich American Dream. The Other difficulties are developing. In the Immigration and Naturalization Service ap­ inland California cities mentioned earlier, the prehended 1.6 million illegal aliens in 1996, effects of rapid change and overcrowding are but an estimated 150,OOO-the vast majority in already beginning to show. Too few weU-paying the Southwest-elude detection each year jobs are being created to keep up with the ris­ (Parrillo, 1997:533). Typically, these aliens, ing number of people seeking them. When the many of whom are unable to speak English, welfare rolls began to swell with unemployed, have taken or have been forced into the worst disgruntled citizens initiated several state ref­ jobs in the urban economy-the jobs that re­ erendums against illegal aliens and affirmative quire long hours at low wages, with virtually no action policies. On another front, the great in­ job security or chance for advancement, and crease in automobile and industrial exhaust involving dirty, physically punishing tasks continues to create air pollution problems. Of under generally poor working conditions. the 40 metropolitan areas failing to meet air On another level, cultural and racial ten­ quality standards for carbon monoxide in 1995, sions between Hispanics and white Americans more than half were in the Sun belt (Dewar,

Snowhelt cities such as Minneapolis-St. Paul! unlike sunbelt Cities! have high density land use. The tight clustering of buildings-and therefore a closer proximity of shops, offices, and restaurants! not to mention apartment residences-places more activities within walking distance and therefore more crowds, congestion, and reliance on mass transit. Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 87

In Stockton, Fresno, and other inland reacted in desperation to their poverty, lash­ there has been an ever-incre~sing bar­ ing out at our white-dominated society. of calls to city officials from residents en­ Dozens ofU .S. cities experienced such riots )\'ragi'ng these cities to put limits on growth in the 1960s. The National Advisory Commis­ they do not become "another San Jose sion on Civil Disorders studied 75 of these vi­ another LA." (Lindsey, 1986:A14), olent outbreaks and warned that the United The pattern is nothing new, Throughout States was "moving toward two societies, one American history people have come to black, one white-separate and unequal." Part for the amenities they offered-jobs, ed­ of this problem showed itself in changing dem­ 'ucatic)ll, the arts, and so on, When the cities ographics. The central city was literally falling have become tOo crowded, a large percentage apart, and whites and the affluent were leav­ 'of people have moved on to what they perceive ing for the suburbs. Industry was close behind as greener pastures-the suburbs, the Sunbelt, as old factories became obsolete. Left in the anyplace where the streets are safer, the smog decay were those who had little choice-the less oppressive, the cost ofliving lower, the jobs trapped and the poor, many of them minori­ ·'more plentiful. In time, these areas too begin ties, increasingly embittered as the American to deteriorate as the "secret" of more com~ Dream passed them by. It looked like the end fortable living gets around and others descend of the city as we knew it, and many doubted on the area, California and other Sunbelt states that North American cities would ever rise are now beginning to experience this declining­ again. In stark contrast, Canadian cities dealt quality-of-life problem, Tbe question is: Where with their problems more effectively, causing will we go, now that our older inner suburbs U.S. urbanist]ane]acobs to refer to Toronto­ and our Sun belt cities are experiencing the by the 1960s a cosmopolitan city with a distinct same deterioration and overload that the Snow­ racial-ethnic mix-as "a city that works." belt cities experienced not sO very long ago? In many cities today-despite the 1992 Los Perhaps the answer is not to move at all but, Angeles riot that left 58 people dead, 4,000 in­ rather, to attend to the problems of the city as jured, and over $1 billion in property dam­ they arise, Perhaps the urban core and all the age-the contrast with the earlier picture of amenities it has to offer could be salvaged if older U.S. cities in disrepair is nothing short we were more attentive and less willing to pick of amazing. All over the United States, ,new up stakes and move the moment difficulties urban construction is in progress-from Pitts­ arise. Interestingly, this regeneration of the burgh to Seattle, from New York to Phoenix. downtowns has begun to happen in many Office towers are multiplying almost as fast as cities, from Seattle and Portland in the West to contractors can build them. Many residential Boston and Baltimore in the East. areas of the city are being totally transformed as young urban prOfessionals-the "yuppies"­ move in, renovate old buildings or'settle into THE COMING new apartment complexes. Although many OF THE POSTINDUSTRIAL CITY older cities, particularly smaller ones, are still hurting, the urban economy is alive once Almost 40 years ago, it looked as though our more. In most areas of the country, a true central cities were in an irreversible process of urban renaissance is under way as U.S. cities self-destruction. One evening, one of the en­ complete a shift to a postindustrial economy. during images of the mid-1960s was presented on the television news. On the screen behind Deterioration and Regeneration CBS reporter Walter Cronkite was the White House. Swirling all around it was thick black Since the mid-nineteenth century, U.S. cities smoke. Washington was in the throes of a had been industrial machines. They were the l0- major riot, as thousands of poor minorities cation of factories and their associated support 88 Chapter 3 The Development' of North American Cities

,

.r (

This night mosaic photographed from space illustrates the urban concentrations r of people in the United States more dramatically than could any artist or cartographer. The electric lights easily reveal where to find a megalopolis or metropolis and how much of the land is nonurban. industries, By and large, the people who worked city's most important trait, as we will discuss in in those industries lived in the city. But all that detail in Chapter 7, is its ability to cen tralize Changed. As cities became more congested, and concentrate human affairs. Cities allow more affluen t people moved to the suburbs, more efficient and intense activity in all areas leaving declining neighborhoods in their wake. of social existence: politics, religion, the art., With time, factories too fell into disrepair. and sciences, as well as the economy. Equally important, in the last few decades trans­ In the late 1960s, as central cities deterio­ portation services improved, making it more ef­ rated Qr, worse, went up in smoke, scholars, ficient for industries to locate outside of the politicians, and nearly everyone else wrung central city on interstate loops. Together, as we their hands and wondered what could be done, have seen, these processes produced a city ap­ One voice suggested that nothing need be parently rotting at the core, populated less and done: With time the city would save itself. That less by the rich and more and more by minori­ voice belonged to Edward C, Banfield, whose ties and the poor. book The Unheavenly City (an obvious reference But, as these last two chapters have shown, to Cotton Mather's wish for a "heavenly city" cities are remarkably resilient human creations in the seventeenth century) created an enor~ with a built-in facility for regeneration because mousstir, The book, published in 1970, was con- ... they are so vital to human life. Probably the t~oversial because of its basically conservative; :,' Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 89

that the city was too powerful an eco­ are being supplied by other firms in the United nomic machine to remain down and out States, Korea, and Japan. Taking a more flexi­ for long. Allow enough time and new busi­ ble approach, firms decide which parts of the nesses and people would see that they could production process they can perform prof­ get back into the central city and enjoy its itably themselves and which would be more ef­ great communicative advantages cheaply. ficiently done by others (Prokesch, 1985). They could buy up that land, renovate those But such changes, which are happening all deteriorated factories, houses, and apartment over the country, have important implications complexes, and thus avail\themselves of the for the city: On the one hand, U.S. companies city's many benefits. no longer require as many blue-collar workers To some, Banfield's "do nothing" approach or as many buildings geared to heavy industrial to urban destitution seemed callous and production. On the other hand, these corpo­ mean-spirited, and they roundly criticized rations, which play so large a role in our urban him. And yet, almost three decades later, many scene, have created more white-collar jobs­ of his predictions have come to pass. Cities jobs that depend on regular contact with other across the nation are in the midst of a rejuve­ corporations, whether in the U.S. or abroad. nation, and with little help from the federal Naturally, many of the people employed by government. The postindustrial city has ar­ these postindustrial, high-tech industries want rived, and recent research suggests strongly to live near their work and, while some (par­ that a general economic revitalization is under ticularly those with families) continue to com­ way (Teaford, 1990). mute from the suburbs, many have opted to The reasons for this turnaround are two: (1) live in the central city. lllustrating this trend in the growth of white-collar businesses tied to the past several decades has been the process new technol(>gy, especially the use of micro- ' of gentrification, in which white-collar profes­ compUters;' and (2) a major shift in the way sionals have moved iI)ttL,'and transformed many industries do business. Regarding the older, decaying neighborhoods of many cities. growth of high-technology businesses, such or­ ganizations were more than happy to take over, The Future renovate, or rebuild the structures left by de­ parting heavy industry. They needed the cen­ The postindustrial city will likely dominate tral city location to maximize their efficiency. Nortb America's future, but what form will it :uss in Many corporations are in the midst of a rad­ take? Two trends are occurring simultaneously, tralize ical transformation, changing their structure and it is uncertain which will prevail in the allow and operations. In the nineteenth century, twenty-first century. One trend is the appear­ areas major industries believed in a "beginning-to­ ance of edge cities, discussed more fully in le arts end" process. That is, they oversaw and con­ Chapter 4. It is the evolution of edge cities on trolled their product from raw material to the fringe of older urban areas in the past two :terio~ finished marketable item. This was true of most decades that helps explain the previously men­ olars, of the "giants,'; such as the Carnegie Corpora­ tioned increases in population in nonmetro­ vrung tion (steel) and the Ford Motor Company politan areas. Garreau suggests that North done. (which even went so far as to raise sheep for Americans have reinvented the city in the past ,d be its cars' upholstery fabric!). two decades and that these new urban ag­ , That Now all that is changing. Big industries are glomerations are now the future. Numbering vhose divesting themselves of parts of their opera­ over 200 in Canada and the United States, rence tions that are no longer profitable and are con­ these edge cities with their malls and office . city" tracting out important products to other firms parks now dominate the nation's retail trade enor- or to foreigo companies. Thus, General Elec­ and office facilities. 5 con­ tric no longer makes microwave ovens or the .The second trend is the revitalization of lative ice makers that go into its refrigerators; these older cities, a significant proc:::ess that shows no 90 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

One of the best examples of' an urban renaissance occurring in many North American cities is New York Git~/s Times Square., Oncenl;ie::joc.ate:-Df.'sieazy porn stores and theaters and other seedy enterprises, it has undergone a facelift that is more than cosmetic. New hotels, theaters, and family-oriented businesses now dominate the area. sign of stopping. More people, not fewer, are A public-private partnership, forged by city taking on the yuppie lifestyle, even as a new government and business leaders in the century begins. Since edge cities do not offer 1980s, breathed new life into the city. Perha.oi; the residential ambience that young adults the linchpin of the revitalization was can fmd in a central city's brownstone houses, restoration of Cleveland's famous but loft apartments, cozy restaurants and shops, doned landmark-the Terminal Tower the upgrading of many older city neighbor­ mercial complex-into a rail transit STanOI"' hoods continues. In addition, the office build­ multilevel shopping center with upscale ing boom in many cities persists, to meet the tional '$tores, an II-screen movie theater, needs of postindustrial corporations (Zipp Ritz-Carlton hotel, and several high-rise and Cook, 1999). . buildings. The complex has created over Cleveland is a good example. In the 1960s permanentjobs and contributes more and 1970s, this Ohio premier city was a symbol million in taxes to the city treasury (G'reeng\ of urban despair. Severe social prOblems ex­ and Solomon, 1994:65). ploded into race riots in 1966 and 1968. Pol­ Tourist attractions include the <;~·.torv ~ lution was thick in the air and, in 1969, the and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cuyahoga River actually burned for days be­ land Indians' new baseball stadium, cause of the pollutants it contained. Cleve­ Cedar Point amusement park with its land's heavy industry was dying, its middle class coaster rides (Herbert, 1996:72). \'\IJppies was fleeing to the suburbs, and, by 1979, the turned abandoned warehouses city was on the verge of financial collapse. apartments. City residents can enjoy Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 91

trendy restaurants along the Cuyahoga urban neighborhoods improve, unemploy­ where one can sit on the patios while ment rates and welfare dependency among the and pleasure boats navigate the river. To unskilled remain high. the city's loss of its former industrial base, Brian Berry (1985) sees postindustrial cities eveland's leaders have rediscovered its wa­ as increasingly characterized by two labor mar­ and made waterside development and kets, which, in turn, foster two dramatically an important part of their economic unequal lifestyles-that of tlle well-paid white­ (Holusha, 1985:BI2). collar professional and that of the low-paid Strate:gyi's exactly the right word. As the na- service' worker. Berry sees little reason for central cities regenerate, many are en­ short-term optimism; on the contrary, the in­ in a type of competition reminiscent equities between the two lifestyles probably will interurban competition of the mid­ become worse. Also pessimistic is Anthony when North American cities were grow­ Downs, who, along with Katherine Bradbury . ing by leaps and bounds. An increasing and Kenneth Small (1982; Downs, 1985), con­ number of urban governments are hiring mar­ cluded that the decline of the U.S. city was all keting professionals whose job it is to spiff up but irreversible for the foreseeable future. the city's image so that it can attract more busi­ Downs and his associates designed a computer nesses and tourists. simulation that pumped into Cleveland. every­ thing it seemed to need to reverse its inner-city The Human Cost problems-more jobs, better housing, im­ of Economic Restructuring proved transportation, the merging of city and county governments, and the restraint of sub­ It is clear that the postindustrial process is not urban growth. Such improvements were much benefiting all of th" city's residents. As gentri­ more than Cleveland could ever hope for re­ fication progresses',"the poorer residents of alistically. Even so, all the simulated improve­ many city neighborhoods are simply displaced. ments only slowed the process of central city Unable to pay the rising rents, they have to decay. In other words, as Berry (1985) phrases find somewhere else to live. Similarly, the fact it, the postindustrial city has "islands of renewal that a few areas of our cities have become in seas of decay." Postindustrialism and the havens for the afflue!)t has done little to windfall of the urban upper classes may be change the very poorest areas of those cities: flashy and hopeful on the surface but, in real­ New York still has its Harlem and South Bronx, ity, these. "improvements" may not penetrate Chicago its South Side, Los Angeles its Watts. far beyond a small, favored group. Even more worrisome, the postindustrial econ­ In conclusion, the above account makes omy is exacerbating the plight of the city's clear that the postindustrial city is essentially poor and unskilled. the product of economic forces. Gentrification John Kasarda (1988) reports that this occu­ is all well and good as far as it goes, but it is de­ pational restructuring is creating a "skills mis­ cidedly not a change that benefits all. match" as our cities become ever more white Historically, then, the North American city collar. The cities' gradual shift away from man­ is a dynamic process that extends from its ori­ ufacturing and goods processing has elimi­ gins-those five communities "hacked out of nated many of the blue-collar jobs that were the wilderness" in the seventeenth ~entury­ the first step up for millions of unskilled mi­ to the present configuration-much larger and grants and immigrants. The rising skill re­ still embroiled in rapid and significant change, quirements of today's urban job market, as decentralization, the growth of the Sunbelt, demanding educated employees able to work and postindustrialization unfold. All these with words and numbers in information­ changes can be seen in the case study that processing jobs, puts these new jobs out of closes this chapter, an analysis of North Amer­ reach for the urban poor. Thus, even as some ica's world ,city, New York. 92 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

published in the city. Many of these groups have clustered together in such well-known districts as Chinatown, Harlem, Spanish Har­ lem, Little Italy, and the Lower EastSide. Fifth, Jim said everything was in New York. Jim said other New York districts are world-famous: that he was happy, just standing in Grand Cen­ Wall Street (finance), Madison Avenue (ad­ tral Station, catching scraps of people's conver­ vertising), the garment district (center of the sations. Jim said he would not mind standing all nation's clothing industry), Central Park (ar­ day on Sixth Avenue where they had the joke guably the greatest urban park in the world) , shops and the Orange Drinks, just watching the Fifth Avenue (for fashionable shopping and crowds go by.Jim said he would not mind stand­ living), Greenwich Village (a longtime bo­ ing all day in Radio City. where th~ French and British shops and the travel offices were, and hemian, student, and counterculture enclave), the evergreens at Christmas and the tulips and Broadway (center of the most vibrant in the spring and where the fountains sprayed theater district in the world). Sixth, New ceaselessly around Mr. Manship's golden boy York is also a key center of the arts, music, and where exhibition fancy skaters salved their and publishing. egos in the winter. If he grew tired of skaters, At street level New York abounds with Jim said he would n'ot mind standing and staring crowds, traffic, musicians, panhandlers-mul­ up and up, watching the mass of buildings cut tiple sights and sounds bombard the senses. In­ into the sky. deed, the fIrst experience of New York City is -J~hn P. Marquand, So Littk one many carry with them all their lives. On - Time (1943) another level the city is deceptive. Its very size tricks us into thinking things are ot~er.than Through almost all American history, New they are, something that the Urban Living box· York has been the Great U.S. City. It symbol­ reveals about that grandest of illwiion makers, izes the United States to the world and, in Radio City Music Hall. many ways, reveals the rest of the world to the One cannot escape, however, the great con­ United States. New York not only represents tradictions, contrasts, and inconsistencies of the distinctive course of North American urban New York life. The city is home to the richest history, it is a timeless display of what urban life and poorest of North Americans. Some of is all about. Here are just a few of the features the worst social problems stand, literally, in the that make it so outstanding. shadow of the proudest cultural achievements. First, New York is huge, an enormous con­ Wealthy beyond belief in the private sectors, centration of population. Over 7 million peo­ New York was on the verge of bankruptcy in ple live within the city limits, and almost three the 1970s. Inevitably, perhaps, New York is the times that many reside in the urban region most loved and most hated city in the United that sprawls outward around the city. Second, States. Say outsiders, "A nice place to visit, ' it has the nation's greatest concentration of but ... I wouldn't want to live there." Even business and fmance: More than one-fIfth New Yorkers boast about how awful it is-but of the largest U.S. corporations have head­ most probably would never live anywhere else. ,; quarters in Manhattan, and a huge percent­ In short, if something is to be found at all, it . age of all stocks and bonds are traded there; in is to be found in New York. It is a world city" addition, it is a major location for most inter­ par excellence. ' national businesses located in North America. New York, always at the center of U.S. Third, it is the largest U.S. port and has dom­ has a varied history. Since its changes serve inated American commerce since the early illustrate the themes of North American 1800s. Fourth, it is a mosaic of virtually every history generally, we shall look briefly race and ethnic group in the world-over 50 velopment during each of the four phases different foreign-language newspapers are cussed in this chapter. Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 93

URBAN LIVING

New York's a Stage

I'll tell you an old joke that steps, getting more and more lost and more will sum up Radio City Music and more frantic. Just as his need became in­ · Hall for you. It seems a man and tolerably urgent, he pushed open a heavy · his wife went to the Music Hall door and found himself on a small street one Sunday afternoon, arriving lined with houses, trees and shrubs. There toward. the end of the film. was no one in sight and the man relieved him­ When it ended, the house lights self in the bushes. came up for a few minutes be- All this had taken time, and it took him ad­ · fore the stage show and the man ditional time to work his way back up to his rose, murmuring to his wife: own floor and locate his own aisle and sec­ "I'm going to the men's room." tion. By the time he finally reached his seat, He located an exit on his floor--orches­ the stage show had ended and the movie had tra, loge, mezzanine, balcony or second bal­ begun again. The man slid into his seat whis­ cony-but he couldn't find a men's room on pering to his wife: "How was the stage show?" it. He descended a staircase and looked on the To which his wife replied: "You ought to next floor and couldn't find a men's room know. You were in it." and descended another staircase. He walked along corridors and pushed open doors, he Source: Helene Hanff, Apple of My Eye (New York: Double­ went along dark passages and up and down day, 1978), p. 129.

The Colonial Era settlement,which later became known as Wall Street. In 1638, a ferry service to Breukelen New York was the earliest of the five major colo­ (later Brooklyn) began and the first settlers nial settlements. Henry Hudson entered the reached Staten Island. New Yorkers initiated a river later named for him in the early autumn weekly market in 1648, and the first lawyer . of 1609 on an expedition financed by the began practice in 1650. Dutch East India Company. Other explorers In 1653 a charter granted by Holland al­ skirted the area in subsequent years and, by lowed the town to organize a local governmen t 1624, a small settlement, based primarily on featuring a mayor and a city council. "When the the fur trade, was permanently in place on the first survey was completed in 1656, the "city" southern tip of Manhattan Island. Peter Minuit had about 1,000 people living in 120 houses arrived from Holland in 1626 as the settle­ on 17 irregularly placed streets. Within a few ment's first director general. In that same year years, some of the streets were stone-covered he reached the world-famous agreement with and a greater measure of security was provided the resident natives to trade ownership of the by a town-watch (the earliest direct ancestor of island for $24 worth of trinkets. New York's police force). Outside of town to New Amsterdam, the center of the Dutch the north were farms the Dutch called "bow­ New Netherlands, prospered in the decades eries." This area, the point at which the irreg­ that followed: Houses were built and farmland ular streets end (at about Houston Street was cultivated. A row of logs was put in place today), was long known as "The Bowery." A for protection along the northern edge of the farming village called Haarlem was established 94 Chap'e, 3 ,ne Development of North American Cities much farther up the island in 1658, at the end Growth and ExpiWSion of a long dirt road known as "Broadway." The first]ews arrived in the 1650s, estab­ By 1800 the city's population surpassed 60,000. lishing a long tradition that was to influence The growth of New York during this second pe­ the city's history, and the first Quakers settled riod continued to be spectacular. The popula­ in the city in 1657. An English fleet anchored in tion exceeded 96,000 by 1810 and 202,000 by 1664 and gained control of the town, renaming 1830. Yet this was only a hint of things to come. the settlement New York in honor of Charles Earlier, in 1792, a group of traders had met in II's brother, James, the Duke of York. The Eng­ the Wall Street area and planned what was to lish commander continued a policy of religiou. become the New York Stock Exchange, In 1807 freedom for all groups, reaffirming the tra­ the city approved its famous grid plan for street dition of religious tolerance initiated by the development. In 1825 the Erie Canal was com­ Dutch. Millions in later years would be drawn pleted, linking the Hudson with the Great to this city where it was possible to worship Lakes and giving New York a long-sought trade and to express oneself as one chose. advantage over its East Coast urban competi­ In 1680, New York City began its climb to tors. With direct access to the North American economic preeminence when it gained a mo­ heartland, in the next few decades the city be­ nopolyon the sifting of flour for export. Docks came the economic center of the United States, multiplied, trade prospered, and support husi­ In 1838 overseas steamship service began, nesses of all sort, became established. The pop­ establishing a connection with Europe that ulation grew steadily; from 4,000 in 1703, New truly opened immigration. In 1840, for exam­ York grew to 7,000 in' 1723, and passed the ple, over 50,000 people arrived in New York 10,000 mark in 1737. The first newspaper ap­ harbor'from abroad; and most settled in the peared in 1725; a stagecoach link to Philadel­ city. In 1846, the first telegr.iph Ii",; between phia started in 1730; and the New York Puhlic New York and Philadelphia began operation. Library opened in 1731. In 1848, a five-story factory (also a sign of As this growth occu,red, New York, like the things to come) opened its doors. Urban trans­ other colonies, was beginning to resent ever portation improved with the introduction of more sharply the British impositions on trade. In the rail-mounted horseear in 1850. This made 1765 the English government instituted the "suburbanization" of the upper island more Stamp Act, placing a levy on all transactions. The feasible by establisbing a fare-a nickel-that cDlonisl< bitterly opposed it. Swayed, Parliament was within financial reach of most New York-·, repealed the act in 1766, causing a New York ers; In 1853, New York basted the nation'sflfsl' group dubbed Ule "Sons of Liberty" to huild a "expo," symbolic of tbe grand optimism triumphant "Liberty Pole" in the city. The British bynow was part of the city's character. In took stmng offense, an altercation followed, and the plan for one of the greatest of urban some Dfthe Sons of Liberty were kllled. This was marks-Central Park-was onnr<,ven the first blood of the American Revolution. the park itself was not su'bstantiailly c'~~~~'~~l When the revolution hegan, New York was until after the Civil War). In 1 , occupied by the British for seven years. The still officially consisting of only M:m!'''''''' war drove many New Yorkers temporarily out Island, the city boasted a population of the city, reducing its population by several 814,000, with another 250,000 nearby in thousand from a peak of 21,500. However, with lyn, Staten Island, and Jersey City. the end of the war, the city leapt once more to life. George Washington was inaugurated as The Great Metropolis Emerges the first president of the United States in the Federal Hall at the corner of Wall and Nassau After the .Civil War, which temporarily; Streets and, for a year thereafter (1790), New its growth, New York matured as a great' York served as the U.S. capital. tropolis. An unprecedented surge in the Chapter 3 The Deve.lopment of North American Cities 95

TABLE 3-6 Population of New York City, by Borough, 1870-1996 (in thousands)

1870 1900 1930 1960 1996

New York City 1,476 3,437 6,929 .7,782 7,382 Borough Manhattan 942 1,850 1,867 1,695 1,534 Bronx 37 201 1,265 1,425 1,194 Brooklyn 419 1,167 2,560 2,627 2,274 Queens 45 153 1,079 1,810 1,981 Richmond (Staten Island) 33 67 158 222 399

Note: The five boroughs wert;: not officially incorporated as New York City until 1898. Soune: The Public Purpose, accessed at http;//publicpurpose.com/dm-nyc.httn on April 17, 2000. population occurred between 1870 and 1930, [David] Yes, East and West, and North and dwarfing all previous gains. Table 3-6 shows South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the that New York City as a whole qUintupled its equator, the crescent and the cross-how population in the six decades after 1870. How­ the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! (Zangwill, 1919:1&4-185). ever, until January 1898, the five boroughs re­ mained legally separate municipalities. Theperiod between 1870 and 1920 was an As amazing as it sounds, by 1890 four out of era of extensive foreign immigration to the five people living in the New York area were United States, and New York was the major either born abroad or had foreign-born par­ port of disembarkation for the entire country. ents (Glaab and Brown, 1967). New York,like Some nationalities arrived in huge numbers. other American m.etropolises of the era, For example, Chinatown began to take form began. to take on a characteristic "ethnic in 1884; Italian immigration intensified after mosaic" pattern of settlement, as described by 1885; and Jews began to make their way social reformer Jacob Riis in the Looking through the Ellis Island immigratiori facility to Back box. the Lower East Side in large numbers after This process of racial and ethnic mixture, 1890. Many of these new urbanites went di­ however, has produced as much of a "pressure rectly to work in industries that produced items cooker" as a "melting pot." Indeed, the gen­ such as garments and shoes. The excitement eral economic opportunity New York provided of arrival in New York is revealed in these com­ during this period must be contrasted with the ments by David Quizano, a Russian Jewish tensions that turned groups against each other, immigrant, and Vera Revendal, his Christian wages that were often appallingly low, and liv­ sweetheart, in Israel Zangwill's 1908 play The ing conditions that were highly unfavorable to Melling Pot: generations of immigrants. Although citywide residential density in 1890 was aboUl 60 peo­ [David] There she lies, the great Melting Pot­ ple to an acre, in immigrant areas densities listen! Can't you hear.the roaring and the bub­ reached alarming levels-as much as seven bling? There gapes her mouth [he points times greater. The frightful concentration con­ east]-the harbor where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour tinued to increase to almost 750 persons per in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a acre-about 12 times the city average-in 1898 seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek (Glaab and Brown, 1967). Today, the density and Syrian,-black and yellow- of central Manhattan has fallen to about 100 [VeralJew and Gentile- persons per acre. 96 Chapter 3 Tne Development of North American Cities

LOOKING BACK

The Crazy-Quilt Pattern of New York, 1890

A map of [New York], colored the old Africa of Thompson Street pushing to designate nationalities, would the black of the negl'O rapidly uptown . show more stripes than the skin . . . the Russian and Polish Jew, having over­ of a zebra, and more colors run the district between Rivington and Divi­ than any rainbow.... [G] reen sion Streets, east of the Bowery, to the point of for the Irish prevailing in the suffocation, is filling the tenements of the old West Side tenement districts, Seventh Ward to the river front. ... Between and blue for the Germans on the dull gray of the Jew, his favorite color, and , the East Side .... [I]ntermin­ the Italian red, would be seen squeezed in gled ... would be an odd variety on the map a sharp streak of yellow, marking of tints that would give the whole the narrow boundaries of Chinatown .... Dots the appearance of an extraordinary crazy­ and dashes of color here arid there would quilt. From down in the Sixth Ward ... the show ... the Finnish sailors ... the Greek ped- red of the Italian would be seen forcing its way lars ... and the Swiss .... And so on to the northward along the line of Mulberry Street to end of the long register, all toiling together ,:th~quartn ofthe French pU!1'I~_'2n Bb:cker in the galling fetters of the tenement. Street and South Fifth Avenue:,. ,-On the source.:Jacob ~ J{6ilt~:Qth!r If~ljLives (New_YQr~: lj;~l. West Side, the red would be seen overrunning and Wang, 1957), pp_ 1&-20. Originally published in'IB90.

Sometimes, when immigrants mixed, the re­ nearly $200 million in funds from the city trea­ sults were explosive. One area of midtown, sury and garnered even more from kickback, from about West 15th Street to West 50th Street and payoffs. Finally exposed by the New York: along Eighth, Ninth, and ,Tenth Avenues, was Times in 1871, Tweed was arrested and bnJUjl:hl! home to blacks and whites of different ethnic to trial. So confident was he that he groups. During the work week trouble was min­ acquitted that he imal, but on weekends in the summer, when to an allegatio!l abouthaUl!htiilv~i::~~~r;~~,~~~~;~~6j n much drinking and carousing occurred, vio­ funds, "What are ya gonna do it?" lent fighting often broke out between groups. confidence was misplaced. He went to jail So intense were the confrontations that police 1872. Nevertheless, extensive graft in city nicknanled the area "Hell's Kitchen." ernment continued to plague the city until Governing this incredible and growing mass into this century. of people was difficult, at best. City Hall be­ Certain physical changes linked to came increasingly corrupt as interest groups ogy contributed to the growth of the vied with one another for contracts, favors, and ing this period as well. In 1881, the patronage. The greatest symbol of corruption Bridge opened, and remains, along in New York's history was that of political boss Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, William "Boss" Tweed. In 1870, by means of $1 the world's most beautiful. It was foll""'~1 million in bribes to the New York State legisla­ 1903 by the Williamsburg Bridge and ture and other groups, Tweed and his gang by the first tunnel under the Hudson, were able to gain complete political control connecting the city to New Jersey over the city. It is estimated that they stole 1906, the Pennsylvania Railroad also . Chapter 3 The Deve!opment of North American Cities 97

the Hudson, establishing major rail Before the Depression stalled construction M,;port in the heart of Manhattan at· Penn of office buildings, New York witnessed the Subways soon followed. People now completion of three famous architectural in­ live far from midtown and still reach novations that survive to the present day. The !;F

Until the advent of suburban shopping malls in the 1950s and 1960s, cities were the shopping Meccas for almost everyone. By car, bus, and train, shoppers from the outlying towns would come. to the city for all kinds of goQPs, for that was where the best and biggest storEis,-vyith t~e widest selections/,-were. Here, in Chicago in 1909, pedestrians stop to gaze at one of the display.windows of Marshall field's department store. 98 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities \ monumental architecture would spur both busi_ York region rej;!.ined only about a th~rd of the ness and culture to new heights, and it has come 770,000 jobs it lost. The numb(;J":s renee! deep remarkably close to fulfilling that somewhat naive structural problems in this metropolitan re:­ goal. It is surely the parent of eyery large scale gion, especially the concentration of the com­ urban complex every American downtown has pany headquarters of 112 of the nation's top built since-from Atlanta's Peachtree Center to Hartford's Constitution Center to San Fran­ 500 corporations. Many large businesses con­ cisco's Embarcadero Center-and it is no insult tinue to shrink as corporate America merges, to say that Rockefeller Center still remains far downsizes, and lays off workers. The merger of and away the finest such development ever built Chase Manhattan and Chemical Bank, for ex­ (1979:168-169). ample, eliminated about 12,000 jobs (Johnson and Lueck, 1996). New York Today But major cities like New York are constantly changing. Just as the city has been repeatedly New York? It'll be a great place if they ever fin­ remade throughout its history by immigration, ish it. so too have its economic fortunes rebounded -Short-story writer O. Henry despite the "gloom and doom" experts who sound the city's death knell. Certainly New By the 1950s New York had grown from being York City'S future looked grim after the de­ a metropolis to being the center of that vast parture of half a million jobs between 1969 and urban region that Jean Gottmann called a 1975 and the loss of $1.5 billion in yearly tax megalopolis. The U.S. census places the city at revenues. That problem was made even worse the heart of a-vast.metropolitan statistical area by mounting costs, including higher city pay­ covering some 4,00.0 squar~ miles'with'som'e-,,'; roll expenses, and also by s()cial service pro­ 20 million people. To illustrate the point an­ grarris" necessitated by tile· presence of large other way, nearly one American in every thir­ numbers of poor and unemployed people. teen lives in the New York MSA. Taken together, these factors brought New York From another perspective, however, this to the brink of bankruptcy in the famous fi­ incredible region is a product of the decen­ nancial crisis of 1975. Simply put, the city could tralization that has affected so many cities in no longer pay for its employees and programs. contemporary America. Bridges, highways, Although the financial crisis of North Amer­ tunnels, cars, costs, congestion-all have led ican cities is a focus of attention in Chapter 9,<: to a rapid move away from the city itself. Be­ suffice it to say here that this crisis was in tween 1970 and 1980, New York City lost over ways preCipitated by decentralization, 860,000 people (a loss greater than the entire has been rampant across the nation. f"\1~",c;n central city population of San Francisco!). dustrial cities 'l'ith limited . However, between 1980 and 1990, New York tion, such as New York, Cleveland, gained 251,000 inhabitants, due primarily to watched in near helplessness as their flD.an<:ia an influx of immigrants. In the first halfof the .base moved away. 1990s, New York lost one-tenth of its existing Still, New York and the other cities population, but that number was almost com­ and, despite the recession of the late 1980s pletely offset by immigration and natural pop­ early 1990s, they have worked their way ulation increase by 1995 (Perez-Pena, 1996). to fmancial solvency. Partially back, at And the city is back for many of the Ecoomnic Restructuring sons that Boston, Baltimore, and other Not only have some residents disappeared; so are corriing back: The postindustrial too have many jobs. While the nation as a is remaking New York. New positions whole recovered all the jobslost"in the reces­ trained professional workers, mLrti.culat! sion of the late 1980s and early 1990s in one the information-processing year of recovery from 1992 to 1993, the New tors, are available, along with 100Nel·-p,LyinLg Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 99

in the service sectors of food, delivery, and city's economic vitality (Lueck, 1995;Johnson tourism. Parts of the city, such as midtown and Lueck, 1996). and the financial district of lower Manhattan, The 10 percent postindustrial workers in the thrive as white~collar service centers where information sector have a considerable impact business professionals can remain in close on urban lifestyle. Throughout the city one can contact with one another, have lunch,' and so­ find clubs, coffee bars, chic shops, and trendy cialize after work at a wide variety of places restaurants springing up, and attendance at catering to their- tastes. concerts, museums, theaters, sports contests, As in other cities, the proportion of people and special events has risen as well. Rental who work in postindustrial jobs is smaIl-per­ housing is scarce and expensive, especially in haps on the order of 10 percent. Many people Manhattan. Typical rents for nonluxury apart­ .ar~ working in the service 'sector in restaurants, ments in 1999 were $2,000 to $3,000 a month hotels, retail stores, or as public employees (p0- in Manhattan. A two-bedroom apartment in lice, fire, transit, sanitation, social services). any "desirable" location (such as the Upper Manufacturing still plays a role, though. About East Side or parts of the West Side) costs from 280,000 manufacturing jobs remain in busi­ $3,000 to $5,000 per month. To this frequently nesses like apparel and printing, but a surpris­ is added a "finder's fee "-usually two or three ing number of new industrial enterprises have months' rent paid to the person who procures materialized, especially in computer software, the apartment for the renter. And once-inex­ video production, recycling, and cargo ship­ pensive lofts now sell on average for $700,000 ping. A 1996 study issued by the Urban Re­ (Hevesi, 1999:RE 1). search Center at New York University said that Upgrading the City the average young manufacturing company in New York has op.ly three employees, and nearly Construction is omnipresent. In the 1970s, the 41 percent of these businesses are owned by twin towers of the World Trade Center in immigrants, compared with 12 per~entna­ Lower Manh~ttan boo~ted both the image and tionwide. These 10,000 small companIes range economy of the city. In the 1980s, it was the from older industries employing new methods construction of Battery Park City, a $1.5 bil­ of production, especially in garment manu­ lion, 92-acre commercial and residential com­ facturing, to the high-technology loft shops of plex that is home to the New York Mercantile software makers in lower Manhattan and niche Exchange, the Commodity Exchange, and manufacturers serving immigrant neighbor­ American Express. Newly completed, there are hoods (Johnson, 1996). 2,000 apartments in eight buildings, a Ritz­ Tourism has soared, partly encouraged by Carlton and an Embassy Suites hotel, four ferry the city's plummeting crime rate. Its 1996 total slips, and a 15-screen multiplex theater (Dun­ crime index for violent and property crimes lap, 1999). The site also includes a museum, put New York 47th among the nation's largest parks, plazas, playgrounds, public arts, and 75 cities (FBI, 1997). Retail sales are up, helped schools. At125th Street in Harlem, the neigh- . in part by the opening in Manhattan of several borhood's first supermarket, the New Harlem suburban chain stores. More feature films and USA shopping center and cinema multiplex, television series are now shot in the city than at and the renovation of the Apollo Theatre have any time since the 1950s. In 1994, a record improved the physical environment and qual­ high 157 movies were filmed in New York. A ityoflife (Pristin, 1999). In lower Harlem, the steady increase in air passenger arrivals, hotel completion of 3,500 new apartments in reha­ occupancy, attendance at Broadway shows, bilitated buildings has revitalized commercial ti~ket sales at tourist attractions like the Em­ activity along 116th Street west of Malcolm X ~lIt ~tiltc Buildin\5 and the Statue of Liberty, . Boulevard. Perhaps, though, the most dramatic and hiring of addlnonal thousil.nds of restau­ symbol of New York's revival is construction in rant workers, offer further testimony to the the South Bronx. The image of the South 100 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

New York City's famous skyline! seen here from the southern end oiMa~h'atla·n at Battery Park, with the World Trade Center looming above the towering skyscrapers and New York Harbor! is recognizable worldwide. Entry point for tens of millions of immigrants for centuries and a major tourist at1;raction for hundreds of millions! it is today ,a world city in business and commerce, culture! and as home to the Unit.ed Nations.

Bronx as a lawless, burned-out, drug-infested expressways have been reclaimed as mid-rise area where rampant crime inspired· the movie apartment houses. Fort Apache, the Bronx no longer rings true 'There has been no more dramatic revival (Oser, 1994; Purdy, 1994). of a community in the country," says Paul S. In a city full of surprises, few are as striking Grogan, the president of the Local Initiatives as the contrast between the 20-year-old image Support Corporation, which aids housing of the burned-out South Bronx and today's re­ groups nationwide. "It's particularly dramatic ality after what officials call the nation's largest because the South Bronx went so far down, urban rebuilding.effoft. With more than $1 bil­ down to rubble. If it were more widely known lion in public dollars trained on the South what happened to the South Bronx, it could Bronx since 1986, 19,000 apartments have he a symbol of the possibility of revival." been refurbished and more than 4,500 new Even though the wave of development has houses have been built for working-class home swept through the South Bronx, large stretches, buyers. More than 50 abandoned buildings particularly the Mott Haven section, have that once stood like rotten te,eth along major been left behind, and there, the ravages of arteries like the Cross Bronx and Major Deegan crime, drugs, and decay continue unabated. Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities 101

Nevertheless, the progress is extraordinary decades, but their greatest impact has been,in considering the.free-fall of the 1970s.· Between New York (such as Times Square), where their 1970 and 1980, the population of the South numbers, size, and 'financial clout dwarf those Bronx plunged by more than 40 percent as of BlDs elsewhere. BlDs are seU:taxing districts over 300,000 people left. In the next decade, set up to clean, patrol, and upgrade their the slide ended as the area gained about 26,500 neighborhoods, providing services that were people (Purdy, 1994). once the sole responsibility of city government. Other signs of an urban renaissance are Cities, faced with budget problems, have wel­ found everywhere. They range ill scale from comed the privatizing of municipal services. massive residential enclaves like Queens West Once a majority of owners in a designated area and Riverside South, both loosely modeled agree, they work out a plan for services, which after Battery Park City, to the Starbucks-style must be approved by the City Council. Tbe city cafes that have sprouted up all over. The trans­ then collects an annual assessment (above the formation of 42nd Street, once the center of property taxes) from all property owners and sex and sleaze, into a family entertainment cen­ turns the money over to the district. The re­ ter with Disney as the linchpin, is simply amaz­ sulting services and improvements-new side­ ing. The trendy restaurants on 57th Street and walks, signs, street lights, planters, wastebaskets, the renovation of Penn Station and Grand flags and banners, street sweepers, and un­ Central Terminal with upscale shopping malls armed up.iformed security patrols~have re­ are other positive signs. duced crime, cleaned up streets, and restored Creation or restoration of parks offers an­ a sense of pride among merchants and the other example of the improvement in the qual­ public (Lueck, 1994; Dickerson, 1999:1). ity of life in New York. The city is using rents Ownging PIY/Julatioo colleqed from the State Department ofTran,s­ portation for some riverfront piers to create The exodus of people and firms has had a waterfront parks elsewhere. At Pier 25 in marked effect on the city's character and for­ TriBeCa, for example, there is now a modest tunes. Most of the outward movement has recreation area with miniature golf, volleyball, been by whites and the more affluent (al­ and a children's playground. Similar restora­ though many of the most affluent seem to re­ tions at Pier 45 at Christopher Street and Pier main ensconced in their wealthy enclaves on 64 in Chelsea have made these areas available Central Park West, Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, for recreation as well (A. Jacobs, 1995). The and the Upper East Side). Since the end of success of the 1992 transformation of Bryant World War II, over 3 million whites have left Park-once an unsafe, sequestered area for the central-city area. They have been replaced drug dealers-into one of New York's busiest by minority migrants and immigrants. In 1950 public spaces, where thousands go day and the population of the five boroughs was 87 night for lunch, concerts, outdoor movies, percent white, 9 percent black, and 3 percent or simply to mingle, has surprised even mem­ Hispanic. By 2000 the city's profile shifted to bers of the city's Planning Commission. It about 35 percent non'Hispanic white, 26 per­ has become a "hot spot" for young adults, cent black, 29 percent Hispanic, and 10 percent serving-in an odd manifestation of a small­ Asian (Sachs, 1999). town tradition-as Manhattan's town square Although m,any minorities work in the il).­ (B. Weber, 1995). formation-processing and service sectors, un­ On another front, over 40 Business Im­ employment and poverty are high within the provement Districts, or BlDs, had been estab­ city's African- and Hispanic-American com­ lished in virtually every section of the city, from munities. In 1999, the Community Service So­ Harlem to Brighton Beach, by 1995, with more ciety of New York reported that 1.9 million planned. More than 1,200 have been created in New York City residen~about 24 percent­ cities across North America in the last two were poor in 1998. Poverty was highest among 102 Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

URBAN LIVING

In. Praise of New York

Much of the rest of the country the reality of New York is more complicated sees New York as one gigan­ than its symbolic imagery. tic agglomeration of social ills: . . . New York ... is not only a vast and vastly crime, poverty, racial hatred, important city, but the city par excellence, the mismanaged and corrupt gov­ prototypical cosmopolis of our age .... Every ernment-not to mention dirt, urban experience [that people] have had be­ pollution, and traffic conges­ fore has been, in a way, an anticipation of New tion of virtually metaphysical di­ York .... Wherever skyscrapers reach upwards mensions .... And yet, despite toward the clouds, wherever masses of all this, New York City continues cars stream back and forth over steel-girded to be a magnet and even an ob­ bridges, wherever heterogeneous crowds pour ject oflove, sometimes fierce love. People, e& through subways, underground concourses, pecially young people, continue to come in or cavernous lobbies encased in glass-there large numbers, irresistibly drawn to the city is a bit of New York. ... The mystique of New by expectations of success and excitement. York City is, above all, the mystique of mod­ And New Yorkers themselves, although they, ern urban life, concentrated there more mas­ too, freq1,!ently share the negative views of .siyelythall allywhere else.. " their own city, nevertheless continue to' be in-" .,·f· explicably, perhaps dementedly, attached to Saurce: Peter Berger, "In Praise of New York," excerpted that putative cesspool of perdition in which from (',ommentary, February 1977 by permission; all rights they reside. Such ambivalence suggests that reserved.

Hispanic residents at 36 percent; 34 percent of lower-income status, tired of their urban New York's children were poor (double the na­ lifestyle but not of the city. Investing his life sav­ tional rate), as were 22 percent of the city's el­ ings and adding faith, determination, and hard derly. In 1999, about 830,000 residents were on work, he has helped revitalize part of a run­ welfare (www.cssny.org). down neighborhood that only a few years ago In the midst of the difficulties, some con­ seemed hopelessly lost. Whether moving into tinue to try to improve thei'r lives, placing their new housing improved by others or employing faith in an improving neighborhood. David "sweat equity" to upgrade a run-down dwelling, Garcia, a hotel maintenance worker, lived iJ). a surprising number of lower-income New Spanish Harlem all his life. Now, standing out­ Yorkers have been successful in similar efforts. side his two-family home on a street in the Mor­ Their combined efforts are giving a much­ risania section where new homes share space needed facelift to some of the city's worst with old, decrepit buildings, he has his own neighborhoods. place and some rental income to help pay his And so New York goes on, with its successes mortgage. "This is a dream," he says with a big and failures, its ability to symbolize simulta­ smile. "Wouldn't you want to own your own neously all that is great and tragic about all home rather than live in the projects with cities. To many, New York is the quintessential ten thousand other people?" Mr. Garcia is one city, as Peter Berger suggests in the Urban Liv­ of many new-style New York homeowners of ing box. If New York fails, in some sense cities Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities

everywhere fail, but if it succeeds, it offers enabled many to escape to streetcar suburbs. hope for all. Consequently, cities began to spread over the countryside. Losing revenue because of this ex­ odus, and greatly hampered by the Depression, cities. began to depend on federal assistance. SUMMARY Mter World War II, decentralization accel­ erated. More and more people and businesses The development of North American cities has departed the old central city, leaving the been, in its own way, as dynamic and varied as innermost area increasingly populated by the that of European cities. Neither Canada nor poor and minorities (unable to escape because the United States began as an urban nation; in of poverty or prejudice) and by service­ fact, that idea would have been anathema to oriented or professional businesses. Huge met­ many of either country's founders. Neverthe­ ropolitan regions became more the norm, re­ less, in three and a half centuries, that is what placing earlier central-city cores. both have become. In the older Snowbelt cities of the United The process of urbanization began just as States, decentralizatiQll had particularly disas-... European feudalism was breathing its last. trous results. "When the cities lost people and Begunas a place of religious and political free­ businesses, billions in tax and sales revenues and dom, the new colonies rapidly established hundreds of thousands ofjobs were lost as well. themselves as major trading centers. By 1700, Many cities faced a continual threat of bank­ coastal villages were becoming bustling towns. ruptcy. The South and West, however, experi­ By the late eighteenth century, these small enced an urban boom. Sun belt cities were the cities began to develop into major urban 'areas. direct beneficiaries of northern cities' problems . They traded up and down the coast and with with their old industrial systems, poor inner-city Europe and became rich by establishing links transportation for products, and deteriorating with t)Ie vast and rich heartland of the country. services. The Sunbelt cities builtnew plants, sur­ Inlartd cities appeared. By the middle of the rounded by efficient superhighways; they pro­ nineteenth century, industrialization was trans­ vided good or brand-new service systems, and forming the northern cities of the Unite? they offered lower costs-particularly for en­ States and, to some degree, their Canadian and ergy and labor. Some Sun belt cities were able newer midwestern counterparts, into manu­ to expand their physical boundaries-for ex­ facturing centers. The South, still operating on ample, in Texas, one of the states with greatest the "small city" pattern associated with agri­ urban expansion, suburbs were annexed almost culture, fell behind. With victory for the North, as fast as they appeared, thus keeping the tax the Civil War effectively ended the small- versus and bu.siness base within the city jurisdiction .. large-city "debate" in the United States. In a contemporary trend that may turn out to Mter 1870, North American cities, particu­ be the most important of all, North American larly in the North, the Midwest, and Lower cities are rapidly developing a postindustrial Canada, exploded into metropolises of millions. economy based on high technology, white­ Trade and industry were the driving wheels be­ collar jobs, and services. As a result, in recent hind this development. More and more jobs years cities have been rebuilding the deterio­ generated more and more wealth. Drawn to this rating office and housing stock left from earlier opportunity, millions came from abroad, re­ decades and improving many other amenities sulting in the ethnic-racial-religious mosaic that that defioe the quality of urban life. Older cities characterizes so many North American cities. once in the throes of economic disaster are re­ With this influx carne great problems, particu­ bounding, although problems clearly remain, larly in the United States. Quality of life began particularlywitil the poorer residents. Serving as to deteriorate, and poverty and exploitation be­ white-collar service centers, these cities have at­ came rampant. New technological advances tracted young, relatively affluent professionals Chapter 3 The Development of North American Cities whose presence has had great impact. Another World, North Arr.ericans have not bu~h Cotton trend is the formation of edge cities on the Mather's hoped-for "Heavenly City." Never­ fringes of established metropolitan areas. the less, there are signs that cities are re- The evidence suggests that all three trends- juvenating, if only partially, as we begin the decentralization, the move to the Sunbelt, and twenty-first century. Whether this rebuilding the growth of a postindustrial economy-will process will continue or whether the North continue in force into the next century. As a American version of the urban experiment result, northern cities such as New York will will come, as it did in the late 1960s and early continue to adapt to a changing economic 1970s, to resemble Edward Banfield's "Un­ structure and a new population. Meanwhile, heavenly City" more than likely will depend the Sunbelt picture is not as rosy as it once was. on the decisions made by the people living The population boom, in many instances, has in these cities in the next decade. If we con­ been too much to cope with, crime rates are tinue to see the'city as something to "use," but high, and racial tensions are on the rise as not something to be collectively concerned Hispanics move up from Mexico and Latin about, the outlook probably is not very bright. America and Mrican Americans move. back to If, on the other hand, we see the city as a the South. Furthermore, even in cities where . human creation and thus subject to under­ postindustrialization is in full sway, there is no standing and human control, then we might indication that the new-found wealth of the few be justified in being more optimistic about who are participating in this lifestyle will spread the outcome. to the urban population a, a whole. On the con- Chapters 2 and 3 have provided an overview I trary, it appears that the gap between the urban of the long path that cities have followed from rich and poor is widening~ notltlss~ning.,. ".,". tJu:ir Q~igins thousands of years ago until a . few decades ago. The new patterns of urban', and suburban development are significantly CONCLUSION different and so widespread that they clearly will be important factors for the foreseeable It seems evidenL that in the three centuries future. In the next chapter we will examine since urbanization took hold in the New these newest components of urban life.