When America Became Suburban

Acknowledgments

197 Ack n ow l ed g m e n t s The origins of this book extend back to one of the first courses I took in graduate school at Cornell University. Wonderfully stimulating and informative, the course was co-taught by Bill Goldsmith and Allan Feldt and focused on theories of urban and regional development. For many years, my research addressed other themes, but the knowledge that these two engaging teachers and scholars imparted lingered. In the mid-1980s, I became fascinated by redevelopment and gentrification and directed my energies to ideas learned in that course. My book Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities, which discussed how troubled cities were publicly represented, began a quest for a more satisfactory understanding of postwar urban development in the United States and, specifically, of the decline of the industrial cities. Eric Lampard’s writings (which I had encountered first in that graduate course) were central to this quest. A fellowship at the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers University sensitized me to cultural perspectives. A visiting professorship at UCLA, intermittent teaching at the University of Helsinki, research trips to Johannesburg, and numerous international experiences broadened my perspective on cities of the United States. I benefited greatly from the seminar that Thomas Bender ran from 1997 to 2001 at New York University ’s International Center for Advanced Studies. Too few pages exist to list all of my intellectual debts. Bob Lake and Daphne Spain deserve special thanks for their extraordinary efforts—each a perceptive reader whose critical remarks were both daunting and useful. Bob Fishman, Iris Young, and Larry Bourne 198 Acknowledgments offered helpful advice, as did audiences at presentations at the University of Toronto, Rutgers University, and the meetings of the Urban History Association and the Society for American City and Regional Planning History. Simona Goldin provided research assistance in the early stages of the project and enabled me to build a historical database of U.S. cities . Nebahat Tokatli, before that, gathered data on Camden, as Linda Potter did for Philadelphia. Initially planned as case studies within the text, the two cities did not survive to the final version. Nonetheless, that research added immensely to my understanding of urbanization. The book would not have been possible without the Urban Archives at Temple University and the libraries at New York University, Columbia University, Rutgers University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pennsylvania. I thank Jason Weidemann, his assistant Heather Burns, Laura Westlund, and the rest of the very capable production staff at the University of Minnesota Press for their assistance and patience. Kathy Delfosse’s editorial skills and numerous queries—greatly appreciated— significantly improved the text. Finally, and once again, I thank Debra Bilow for her caring and for patience that I too seldom acknowledge. ...