Reviews
Absolutely essential reading for anyone trying to appreciate the achievements of Progressive reform—and its inadvertent consequences... A richly insightful book that will be read by anyone concerned about New York, public life, and the present state of American liberalism.
An enjoyable, highly readable, and very detailed account... An excellent text for students and researchers to better understand the often unique and always complex set of issues and actors that initiated, implemented, or thwarted urban planning efforts in New York City.
Building Gotham documents with an insightful and unbiased eye the roles played by businesses and government in erecting the modern city's buildings, tunnels, sewers, transportation system, and the like.
This well informed book... examines the origins of the various forms of planning New York City... [A] very exciting technical account... thorough and interesting.
Revell, a professor of public administration, pays particular attention to the army of experts—from engineers and architects to lawyers and financiers—who solved the enormous problems that initially had the 'ambitious experiment in collective living' teetering on the brink of disaster... the message distilled by Revell from his study of bygone New York—that 'outdated notions of individualism and local autonomy' can be detrimental to solving shared problems—is sure to strike a responsive chord.
Deeply researched, clearly written and argued... required reading for scholars of early twentieth-century New York City.
This fresh look at the origin of various forms of planning in New York City at the start of the twentieth century represents the 'new institutionalism' in history at its best. Revell's realism, balance, and sanity offer an antidote to recent scholarly nihilism about public action without romanticizing the roles of corporations, experts or elected officials. Building Gotham is powerful, nicely and imaginatively researched, and very well written.
Book Details
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Conceiving the New Metropolis: Expertise, Public Policy, and the Problem of Civis Culture in New York City
Part 1: Private Infrastructure and Public Policy
Chap
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Conceiving the New Metropolis: Expertise, Public Policy, and the Problem of Civis Culture in New York City
Part 1: Private Infrastructure and Public Policy
Chapter 1. "The Public Be Pleased": Railroad Planning, Engineering Culture, and the Promise of Quasi-scientific Voluntarism
Chapter 2. Beyond Voluntarism: The Interstate Commerce Commission, the Railroads, and Freight Planning for New York Harbor
Part 2: Public Infrastructure, Local Autonomy, and Private Wealth
Chapter 3. Buccaneer Bureaucrats, Physical Interdependence, and Free Riders: Building the Underground City
Chapter 4. Taxing, Spending, and Borrowing: Expanding Public Claims on Private Wealth
Part 3: Urban Planning, Private Rights, and Public Power
Chapter 5. City Planning versus the Law: Zoning the New Metropolis
Chapter 6. "They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair": Regional Planning and the Metropolitan DilemmaConclusion: "An almost mystical unity": Interdependence and the Public Interest in the Modern Metropolis
Appendix
Notes
Index