Sleuthing the Urban Mystery

As a subdiscipline urban history has traditionally focused on solving the “problem” of the city. Since its first flowering during the “urban crisis” of the 1960s to the present, one scholar after another has attempted to detect the sources of urban wrongs and finger who was responsible. Among the commonly identified culprits have been capitalism and the private pursuit of wealth, the automobile, urban renewal, and that bête noire of New York City, Robert Moses and his expressways. John D. Fairchild’s The Mysteries of the Great City is very much within this tradition, with the author promising to shed light on the crime that has preoccupied so many earlier historians. Geographer Larry R. Ford’s Cities and Buildings, however, is not so gloomy. He, too, investigates what happened to the city, but less judgmental in tone, he revels in unraveling the mystery. Ultimately, he proves a more effective sleuth, offering the reader better clues to understanding the city and its development.

Fairfield begins his study by asserting that the woes of urban America are not natural consequences of the inevitable and irresistible forces of economic, social, and technological change. Instead, he postulates that the American city is the product of “conscious, political decisions” and contends that “human design plays a decisive role in urban development” (p. 3). Underlying the conscious political decisions that molded the city, according to Fairfield, were two contrasting traditions in urban thought and reform. Most prominent in the nineteenth century was the republican tradition. As exemplified in the writings and actions of Frederick Law Olmsted and Henry George, this republican tradition challenged the urban status quo in an effort to further political and economic equality and achieve a more humane and just city. It did not accept the economic and social order as an inevitable given. Instead, Olmsted and George sought to better the urban world by offering an alternative economic and social vision.

The contrasting realist tradition supposedly dominated the early twentieth century. Its chief theorist was Robert E. Park, the principal figure in the Chicago school of urban sociology. Park and like-minded urban planners, corporate leaders, and good-government advocates sought to adjust the city to what they perceived as the natural consequences of urbanization and industrialization. According to Fairfield, the realists sought to make the best of the situation whereas the republicans had endeavored to change it. Fairfield discusses the realist predilections of the emerging city planning profession and the unwillingness of its practitioners during the 1920s to challenge the underlying social and economic system. Urban planners charted the course of new highways, sponsored zoning ordinances, and drafted master plans which facilitated the accumulation of capital, a goal that Fairfield frowns upon. Encouraging them and offering theoretical support were Park and his University of Chicago colleagues. They were social scientists explaining the status quo; they were not utopians drawing blueprints for a better option.

Fairfield perceives some resurgence of the republican tradition during the New Deal. The National Resource Planning Board’s report on cities, released in 1937, presented a radical manifesto for change reminiscent of the nineteenth-century reformers. Yet realism remained the prevailing tradition among twentieth-century planners, and it would determine urban design. Clearly preferring the republican alternative, Fairfield identifies Robert Park and those he influenced as the culprits in his mystery.

This discussion of the realist tradition deserves praise. Fairfield offers an intriguing analysis of the Chicago School and demonstrates a strong command of the historical literature on America’s cities. Moreover, his account is clearly written; one has no problem following his argument. He further should be commended for tackling a big question. This is not a limited case study focusing on one phenomenon in one city. Instead, Fairfield draws on examples...