How cities won the West : four centuries of urban change in western North America / Carl Abbott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Abbott, Carl, 1944-

Series:

Histories of the American frontier

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cities and towns--West (U.S.)--History.

Cities and towns.

Cities and towns--West (U.S.)--Growth.

Cities and towns--Canada, Western--History.

Cities and towns--Canada, Western--Growth.

Metropolitan areas--West (U.S.)--Growth.

Metropolitan areas.

Metropolitan areas--Canada, Western--History.

History.

Growth.

West (U.S.)--Economic conditions.

West (U.S.).

West (U.S.)--Social life and customs.

Western Canada.

Physical Description:

x, 347 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 2008.

Summary:

Cities Rather Than Individual pioneers have been the driving force in the settlement and economic development of the western half of North America. Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, western urban centers served as starting points for conquest and settlement. As these frontier cities matured into metropolitan centers, they grew from imitators of eastern culture and outposts of eastern capital into independent sources of economic, cultural, and intellectual change.

From the Gulf of Alaska to the Mississippi River and from the binational metropolis of San Diego-Tijuana to the Prairie Province capitals of Canada, Carl Abbott explores the complex urban history of western Canada and the United States. The evolution of western cities from stations for exploration and military occupation to contemporary entry points for migration and components of a global economy reminds us that it is cities that "won the West." And today, as cultural change increasingly moves from west to east, Abbott argues that the urban West represents a new center from which emerging patterns of behavior and changing customs will help to shape North America in the twenty-first century.

Contents:

Introduction: All roads lead to Fresno

Outposts of empires

Building a West of cities, 1840-1940

Across the wide Mississippi

The first Pacific century

Inland empire cities

Garden cities

Smokestack frontiers

Money in the air

Cities of homes

Water, power, progress

The metropolitan West since 1940

Wars and rumors of war

Progress and prejudice

The politics of diversity

Reshaping the metropolis

Transnational urbanism

The long arm of the metropolitan West

Conclusion: Urban frontiers.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-334) and index.

ISBN:

9780826333124

0826333125

OCLC:

226038185