The Nature of Cities

This engaging and well-written work challenges the notion that cities were seen as 'unnatural' places during the early years of the twentieth century, when the United States was transitioning from an agrarian to an urban society and the professions of social science, urban planning, and real estate were being developed... To understand that policies that led to the bulldozing of neighborhoods in the name of "urban renewal" in the 1960s and 1970s had their origins in theories first espoused in the opening decades of the twentieth century relating to forest and field resource management reminds us that there may well be unintended consequences for seemingly benign theories, models, and approaches promoted today.

Light explores how ecological ideas such as 'climax,' 'blight,' and 'conservation' transferred from the natural sciences to the emerging fields of urban sociology, geography, and economics during the 1920s and were eventually adopted by urban professionals during the 1930s and 1940s. Most importantly, she argues that these ideas—which saw cities as closed ecological communities that, like farms and forests, could be managed scientifically—significantly shaped local and national urban-renewal policy in postwar America... This book makes an important contribution to the study of twentieth century American cities.