Saving America’s Cities’ Book Jacket
LISTEN TO LIZ ON NPR’S “ALL THINGS CONSIDERED” TALKING ABOUT THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AND MASS CONSUMPTION, NOVEMBER 30, 2021:
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/181873
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/29/1059861668/why-americans-buy-so-much-stuff
And a longer offshoot of the NPR discussion, can be found here on Keepingdemocracyalive.com’s radio broadcast of January 18, 2022.
A consumers republic was born at the end of the second world war. And though it was genuinely intended to be a tide lifting all boats, it has increased economic inequality and created isolation where public space once was central. On this show Harvard history professor and author Lizabeth Cohen talks about her book on the undermining of the public sector and the politics of mass consumption. The Consumers Republic came from top down, now she says change must come from the bottom up. Click https://bit.ly/3FyqaSk to listen to the podcast.
INTERVIEW, FALL 2021, WITH LIZABETH COHEN BY ROBERT CHILES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, HOST OF PODCAST “Empire State Engagements,” Sponsored by the New York State Museum:
SAVING AMERICA’S CITIES HAS WON THE BANCROFT PRIZE IN AMERICAN HISTORY FOR 2020!
https://library.columbia.edu/about/news/libraries/2020/2020-03-17_2020_bancroft_prize_winners.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/arts/bancroft-prize-history.html
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/lizabeth-cohen-bancroft-prize
In twenty-first century America, some cities are flourishing while others are struggling. But all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. City governments have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good.
It wasn’t always this way. For three decades after World War II, even as national priorities promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents and jobs into the suburbs.
In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning Harvard historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approaches to the urban crisis in New Haven, Boston, and all over New York State tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize solutions to entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer and sometime critic of both Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, Logue saw government responsibility for renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal.
Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy. There is no denying that neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes motivated by progressive goals, such as the economically and racially diverse “New Town in Town” of Roosevelt Island in New York City. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness. It is not just the history of the postwar city—it also aims to open up new possibilities for public action in our own time.
READ AN OP-ED BY LIZ ON NEW HAVEN’S URBAN RENEWAL, PUBLISHED IN THE NEW HAVEN REGISTER, FEBRUARY 15, 2020: https://www.nhregister.com/opinion/article/Opinion-New-Haven-s-renewal-as-seen-by-those-15056915.php
READ AN INTERVIEW WITH LIZ ABOUT THE BOOK IN THE HARVARD GAZETTE, OCTOBER 16. 2019:
READ AN EXCERPT IN PUBLIC SEMINAR, PUBLISHED BY THE NEW SCHOOL:
http://www.publicseminar.org/essays/public-seminar-excerpt-and-interview-lizabeth-cohen/
READ AN EXCERPT FROM CITYLAB, PUBLISHED BY THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE:
READ AN EXCERPT IN LITERARY HUB:
https://lithub.com/the-midcentury-battle-to-save-americas-cities-from-crisis/