Place and prosperity : how cities help us to connect and innovate / William Fulton ; [foreword by Rick Cole].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fulton, William B., 1955- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociology, Urban--United States.

Sociology, Urban.

Urban economics.

City planning--United States.

City planning.

Cities and towns--United States.

Cities and towns.

Physical Description:

xxv, 187 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington : Island Press, 2022.

Summary:

There are few more powerful questions than, "Where are you from" or "Where do you live?" People feel intensely connected to cities as places and to other people who feel that same connection. In order to understand place -- and understand human settlements generally -- it is important to understand that places are not created by accident. They are created in order to further a political or economic agenda. Better cities emerge when the people who shape them think more broadly and consciously about the places they are creating. In "Place and Prosperity," urban planning expert William Fulton takes an engaging look at the process by which these decisions about places are made, how cities are engines of prosperity, and how place and prosperity are deeply intertwined. Fulton has been writing about cities over his forty-year career that includes working as a journalist, professor, mayor, planning director, and the director of an urban think tank in one of America's great cities. "Place and Prosperity" is a curated collection of his writings with new and updated selections and framing material. Though the essays in this book are in some ways personal, drawing on Fulton's experience in learning and writing about cities, their primary purpose is to show how these two ideas -- place and prosperity -- lie at the heart of what a city is and, by extension, what our society is all about. Fulton shows how, over time, a successful place creates enduring economic assets that don't go away and lay the groundwork for prosperity in the future. But for urbanism to succeed, all of us have to participate in making cities great places for everybody. Because cities, imposing though they may be as physical environments, don't work without us. Cities are resilient. They've been buffeted over the decades by White flight, decay, urban renewal, unequal investment, increasingly extreme weather events, and now the worst pandemic in a century, and they're still going strong. Fulton shows that at their best, cities not only inspire and uplift us, but they make our daily life more convenient, more fulfilling -- and more prosperous. -- Amazon.com.

Contents:

Introduction

Part 1: Place. The making of an urbanist ; The thinning metropolis ; The garden suburb and the new urbanism ; The autocratic citizen of Philadelphia ; Having no car but plenty of cars ; Tom Hayden's cars ; Talk city ; Why I'm scared to walk in Houston ; My favorite street

Part 2: Prosperity. Romancing the smokestack ; Company town ; The case for subsidizing the Mermaid Bar ; Korkin versus Florida ; Houston, we have a gentrification problem

Part 3: The promised land. The long drive ; The California attitude ; The not-so-reluctant metropolis ; Living the 2 percent life ; My Los Angeles

Conclusion: On the morning after the pandemic.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Albert M. Greenfield Memorial Fund.

Other Format:

Print version: Fulton, William B., 1955- Place and Prosperity.

ISBN:

1642832502

9781642832501

OCLC:

1286367646