Place, People, and Power in City Building in Postwar America

When urban studies scholars examine issues such as the public versus private in cities, boundary making and breaking, and how democratic citizenship is reinforced or undermined, they tend to avoid the agency of individuals. Instead, they attribute these characteristics to urban environments in general, as circumscribed by place and time. This essay argues for the importance of investigating agency in city building and city living and does so through probing the career of a pivotal figure in American urban renewal in the second half of the twentieth century, Edward J. Logue. Through tracing Logue's shifting strategies of urban redevelopment from New Haven in the 1950s to Boston in the 1960s to New York State and New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, new insights emerge. Urban renewal becomes a more improvisational and evolutionary approach to keeping post-World War II cities viable. Urban redevelopers have more complex and varied interactions with ordinary residents. And the concepts of the "public" and "boundaries" take on new significance. Rather than dismissing urban renewal, and urban renewers, with one condemning brush, this essay suggests that there is a great deal to be learned from both its successes and failures.

Agency (philosophy) · Citizenship · Cityscape · Civil engineering · Democracy · Economic growth · Economics · Gentrification · Haven · Improvisation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Redevelopment · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Urban planning · Urban politics · Visual arts · Engineering · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Public Administration · Urban Planning and Governance · Urban Studies · Urbanization and City Planning

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