San Antonio College Library

Since the 1950s and the advance of urban renewal, local governments and urban policy have focused heavily on the central business district. However, such development has all but ignored the inner-city neighborhoods that continue to struggle in the shadows of high-rise America. This analysis of urban neighborhoods in the United States from 1960 to 1995 presents fifteen essays by scholars of urban planning and development. Together they show how urban...

Looks at the new partnerships between public officials and private entrepreneurs that have helped revitalize the downtown areas of many American cities, and presents studies of big-city malls in Boston, St. Paul, Seattle, and San Diego.

"In his latest book Jonathan Barnett explores the new realities and opportunities for the design of the metropolitan region. Architect, teacher, and urban designer, Barnett cites specific examples from around the country demonstrating how bypassed areas in the old city can become real estate opportunities, how new types of zoning can facilitate development at metropolitan edges without destroying the landscape, and how metropolitan planning can repair...

"In the 1930s, two iconic American cities, Atlanta and Chicago, demolished their slums and established some of this country's first public housing. Six decades later, these same cities also led the way in clearing public housing itself. Vale's groundbreaking history of these "twice-cleared" communities provides unprecedented detail about the development, decline, and redevelopment of two of America's most famous housing projects: Chicago's Cabrini-Green...

In Design After Decline, Brent D. Ryan reveals the fraught and intermittently successful efforts of architects, planners, and city officials to rebuild shrinking cities following mid-century urban renewal. With modern architecture in disrepute, federal funds scarce, and architects and planners disengaged, politicians and developers were left to pick up the pieces. In twin narratives, Ryan describes how America's two largest shrinking cities, Detroit...

"Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. This book is a lively critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia - characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots - and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course...

In less than a generation, the dominant image of American cities has transformed from one of crisis to revitalization. Poverty, violence, and distressed schools still make headlines, but central cities and older suburbs are attracting new residents and substantial capital investment. In most accounts, native-born empty nesters, their twenty something children, and other educated professionals are credited as the agents of change. Yet in the past decade,...

"Comeback Cities shows how innovative, pragmatic tactics for ameliorating the nation's urban ills have produced results beyond anyone's expectations, reawakening America's toughest neighborhoods. In the past, big government and business working separately were unable to solve the inner city crisis. Rather, a blend of public-private partnerships, grassroots nonprofit organizations, and a willingness to experiment characterize what is best among the...