![NYC Mulberry Street 3g04637u](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/NYC_Mulberry_Street_3g04637u.jpg)
American urban history is the study of cities of the United States.
Local historians
Local may refer to:
Geography and transportation
* Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand
* Local, Missouri, a community in the United States
* Local government, a form of public administration, usually the lowest tier of administra ...
have always written about their own cities. Starting in the 1920s, and led by
Arthur Schlesinger, Sr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Sr. (; February 27, 1888 – October 30, 1965) was an American historian who taught at Harvard University, pioneering social history and urban history. He was a Progressive Era intellectual who stressed material cau ...
at Harvard, professional historians began comparative analysis of what cities have in common, and started using theoretical models and scholarly biographies of specific cities. The United States has also had a long history of hostility to the city, as characterized for example by Thomas Jefferson's
agrarianism and the
Populist movement
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against " the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term developed ...
of the 1890s. Mary Sies (2003) argues:
Historiography
American urban history is a branch of the
history of the United States and of the broader field of
Urban history
Urban history is a field of history that examines the historical nature of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization. The approach is often multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history, architectural history, urb ...
. That field of history examines the historical development of cities and towns, and the process of
urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly t ...
. The approach is often multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like
social history,
architectural history
The history of architecture traces the changes in architecture through various traditions, regions, overarching stylistic trends, and dates. The beginnings of all these traditions is thought to be humans satisfying the very basic need of shelt ...
,
urban sociology
Urban sociology is the sociological study of life and human interaction in metropolitan areas. It is a normative discipline of sociology seeking to study the structures, environmental processes, changes and problems of an urban area and by doin ...
,
urban geography
Urban geography is the subdiscipline of geography that derives from a study of cities and urban processes. Urban geographers and urbanists examine various aspects of urban life and the built environment. Scholars, activists, and the public have ...
business history, and even
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
.
Urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly t ...
and
industrialization were popular themes for 20th-century historians, often tied to an implicit model of
modernization, or the transformation of rural traditional societies.
In the United States from the 1920s to the 1990s many influential monographs began as one of the 140 PhD dissertations at Harvard University directed by
Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. (1888–1965) or
Oscar Handlin (1915–2011). Schlesinger and his students took a group approach to history, sharply playing down the role of individuals. Handlin added a focus on groups defined by ethnicity (that is Germans, Irish, Jews, Italians Hispanics etc.) or by class (working class or middle class). The Harvard model was that the urban environment, including the interaction with other groups, shaped their history and group outlook.
New urban history
The "new urban history" was a short-lived movement that attracted a great deal of attention In the 1960s, then quickly disappeared. It used statistical methods and innovative computer techniques to analyze manuscript census data, person by person, focusing especially on the geographical and social mobility of random samples of residents. Numerous monographs appeared, but it proved frustrating to interpret the results. Historian
Stephan Thernstrom, the leading promoter of the new approach, soon disavowed it, saying it was neither new nor urban nor history.
Overall urban history grew rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, stimulated by the surge of interest in social history. Since the 1990s, however, the field has been aging and has had much less attraction to younger scholars.
Claims for urban impact
Historian
Richard Wade has summarized the claims that scholars have made for the importance of the city in American history. The cities were the focal points for the growth of the West, especially those along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The cities, especially Boston, were the seed beds of the American Revolution. Rivalry between cities, such as between Baltimore and Philadelphia, or between Chicago and St. Louis, stimulated economic innovations and growth, especially regarding the railroads. The cities sponsored
entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...
, especially in terms of export and import markets, banking, finance, and the rise of the
factory system
The factory system is a method of manufacturing using machinery and division of labor. Because of the high capital cost of machinery and factory buildings, factories are typically privately owned by wealthy individuals or corporations who emplo ...
after 1812. The rapidly growing railroad system after 1840 was primarily oriented toward linking together the major cities, which in turn became centers of the wholesale trade. The railroads allowed major cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, and San Francisco to dominate ever-larger
hinterland
Hinterland is a German word meaning "the land behind" (a city, a port, or similar). Its use in English was first documented by the geographer George Chisholm in his ''Handbook of Commercial Geography'' (1888). Originally the term was associated ...
s.
The failure of the South to develop an urban infrastructure significantly weakened it during the Civil War, especially as its border cities of Baltimore, Washington, Louisville, and St. Louis, refused to join the Confederacy. The cities were fonts of innovation in democracy, especially in terms of building powerful political organizations and
machines
A machine is a physical system using power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromolecul ...
; they were also the main base for reformers of those machines. They became the home base for important immigrant groups, especially the Irish and the Jews. Cities were the strongholds of labor unions in the 19th and 20th centuries (although no longer so in the 21st century).
Historian Zane Miller argues that urban history was rejuvenated in mid-20th century by the realization that the cultural importance of the city went far beyond art galleries and museums. Historians began to emphasize "the importance of individual choices in the past and made the advocacy of lifestyle choices a hallmark of American civilization." It was the diversity of the city, and the support it provided for diverse lifestyles, that set it so dramatically apart from towns and rural areas. By the 1990s there was increased emphasis on racial minorities, outcasts, and gays and lesbians, as well as studies of leisure activities and sports history.
Intellectuals against the city
As Morton White demonstrated in ''The Intellectual versus the City: from Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright'' (1962), the overwhelming consensus of American intellectuals has been hostile to the city. The main idea is the Romantic view that the unspoiled nature of rural America is morally superior to the over civilized cities, which are the natural homes of sharpsters and criminals. American poets did not rhapsodize over the cities. On the contrary they portrayed the metropolis as the ugly scene of economic inequality, crime, drunkenness, prostitution and every variety of immorality. Urbanites were set to rhyme as crafty, overly competitive, artificial, and as having lost too much naturalness and goodness.
Colonial era and American Revolution
Historian
Carl Bridenbaugh
Carl Bridenbaugh (August 10, 1903 – January 6, 1992) was an American historian of Colonial America. He had an illustrious career, writing fourteen books and editing or co-editing five more, and he was acclaimed as a historian and teacher.
Caree ...
examined in depth five key cities: Boston (population 16,000 in 1760); Newport, Rhode Island (population 7500); New York City (population 18,000), Philadelphia (population 23,000); and Charles Town (Charlestown, South Carolina), (population 8000). He argues they grew from small villages to take major leadership roles in promoting trade, land speculation, immigration, and prosperity, and in disseminating the ideas of the Enlightenment, and new methods in medicine and technology. Furthermore, they sponsored a consumer taste for English amenities, developed a distinctly American educational system, and began systems for care of people meeting welfare.
The cities were not remarkable by European standards, but they did display certain distinctly American characteristics, according to Bridenbaugh. There was no aristocracy or established church, there was no long tradition of powerful guilds. The colonial governments were much less powerful and intrusive and corresponding national governments in Europe. They experimented with new methods to raise revenue, build infrastructure and to solve urban problems.
They were more democratic than European cities, in that a large fraction of the men could vote, and class lines were more fluid. Contrasted to Europe, printers (especially as newspaper editors) had a much larger role in shaping public opinion, and lawyers moved easily back and forth between politics and their profession. Bridenbaugh argues that by the mid-18th century, the middle-class businessmen, professionals, and skilled artisans dominated the cities. He characterizes them as "sensible, shrewd, frugal, ostentatiously moral, generally honest," public spirited, and upwardly mobile, and argues their economic strivings led to "democratic yearnings" for political power.
Colonial powers established villages of a few hundred population as administrative centers, providing a governmental presence, as well has trading opportunities, and some transportation facilities. Representative examples include Spanish towns of
Santa Fe, New Mexico,
San Antonio
("Cradle of Freedom")
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, and
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
, French towns of
and
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...
; Dutch towns of
New Amsterdam (New York City), and the Russian town of
New Archangel
russian: Ситка
, native_name_lang = tli
, settlement_type = Consolidated city-borough
, image_skyline = File:Sitka 84 Elev 135.jpg
, image_caption = Downtown Sitka in 1984
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(now Sitka). When their territory was absorbed into the United States, these towns expanded their administrative roles.
Numerous historians have explored the roles of working-class men, including slaves, in the economy of the colonial cities, and in the early Republic.
There were few cities in the entire South, and Charleston (Charles Town) and New Orleans were the most important before the Civil War. The colony of South Carolina was settled mainly by
planters
Planters Nut & Chocolate Company is an American snack food company now owned by Hormel Foods. Planters is best known for its processed nuts and for the Mr. Peanut icon that symbolizes them. Mr. Peanut was created by grade schooler Antonio Gentil ...
from the overpopulated
sugar island colony of
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate) ...
, who brought large numbers of African slaves from that island. As Charleston grew as a port for the shipment of rice and later cotton, so did the community's cultural and social opportunities. The city had a large base of elite merchants and rich planters.
The first theater building in America was built in Charleston in 1736, but was later replaced by the 19th-century Planter's Hotel where wealthy planters stayed during Charleston's horse-racing season (now the Dock Street Theatre, known as one of the oldest active theaters built for stage performance in the United States. Benevolent societies were formed by several different ethnic groups: the South Carolina Society, founded by French
Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...
s in 1737, the German Friendly Society, founded in 1766, and the Hibernian Society, founded by Irish immigrants in 1801.
The
Charleston Library Society was established in 1748 by some wealthy Charlestonians who wished to keep up with the scientific and philosophical issues of the day. This group also helped establish the
College of Charleston
The College of Charleston (CofC or Charleston) is a public university in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded in 1770 and chartered in 1785, it is the oldest university in South Carolina, the 13th oldest institution of higher learning in the Unit ...
in 1770, the oldest college in South Carolina, the oldest municipal college in the United States, and the 13th oldest college in the United States.
By the 1775 the largest city was Philadelphia at 40,000, followed by New York (25,000), Boston (16,000), Charleston (12,000), and Newport (11,000), along with Baltimore, Norfolk, and Providence, with 6000, 6000, and 4400 population. They too were all seaports and on any one day each hosted a large transient population of Sailors and visiting businessmen. On the eve of the Revolution, 95 percent of the American population lived outside the cities—much to the frustration of the British, who were able to capture the cities with their Royal Navy, but lacked the manpower to occupy and subdue the countryside. In explaining the importance of the cities in shaping the American Revolution, Benjamin Carp compares the important role of waterfront workers, taverns, churches, kinship networks, and local politics.
Historian
Gary B. Nash emphasizes the role of the working class, and their distrust of their betters, in northern ports. He argues that working class artisans and skilled craftsmen made up a radical element in Philadelphia that took control of the city starting about 1770 and promoted a radical Democratic form of government during the revolution. They held power for a while, and used their control of the local militia disseminate their ideology to the working class and to stay in power until the businessmen staged a conservative counterrevolution.
The new nation, 1783–1815
![GROWTH1850](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/GROWTH1850.JPG)
The cities played a major role in fomenting the American Revolution, but they were hard hit during the war itself, 1775–83. They lost their main role as oceanic ports, because of the blockade by the British Navy. Furthermore, the British occupied the cities, especially New York 1776–83, as well as Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston for briefer periods. During the occupations cities were cut off from their hinterland trade and from overland communication. The British departed in 1783, they took out large numbers of wealthy merchants, resuming their business activities elsewhere in the British Empire.
The older cities restored their economic basis. Growing cities included Salem, Massachusetts (which opened a new trade with China), New London, Connecticut, and especially Baltimore, Maryland. The Washington administration under the leadership of Secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton set up a national bank in 1791, and local banks began to flourish in all the cities. Merchant entrepreneurship flourished and was a powerful engine of prosperity in the cities.
Merchants and financiers of the cities were especially sensitive to the weakness of the old Confederation system. When it came time to ratify the much stronger new Constitution in 1788, all the nation's cities, North and South, voted in favor, while the rural districts were divided.
The national capital was at Philadelphia until 1800, when it was moved to Washington. Apart from the murderous Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793, which killed about 10 percent of the population, Philadelphia had a marvelous reputation as the "cleanest, best-governed, healthiest, and most elegant of American cities." Washington, built in a fever-ridden swamp with long hot miserable summers, was ranked far behind Philadelphia, although it did escape
yellow fever
Yellow fever is a viral disease of typically short duration. In most cases, symptoms include fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains – particularly in the back – and headaches. Symptoms typically improve within five days. ...
.
World peace only lasted a decade, for in 1793 a two-decade-long war between Britain and France and their allies broke out. As the leading neutral trading partner the United States did business with both sides. France resented it, and the
Quasi-War
The Quasi-War (french: Quasi-guerre) was an undeclared naval war fought from 1798 to 1800 between the United States and the French First Republic, primarily in the Caribbean and off the East Coast of the United States. The ability of Congress ...
of 1798–99 disrupted trade. Outraged at British impositions on American merchant ships, and sailors, the Jefferson and Madison administrations engaged in economic warfare with Britain
1807–1812, and then
full-scale warfare 1812 to 1815. The result was additional serious damage to the mercantile interests.
Not all was gloomy in urban history, however. Although there was relatively little immigration from Europe, the
rapid expansion of settlements to the West, and the
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...
of 1803, open up vast frontier lands. New Orleans and St. Louis joined the United States, and entirely new cities were opened in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Nashville and points west. Historian Richard Wade has emphasized the importance of the new cities in the Westward expansion in settlement of the farmlands. They were the transportation centers, and nodes for migration and financing of the westward expansion.
The newly opened regions had few roads, but a very good river system in which everything flowed downstream to New Orleans. With the coming of the steamboat after 1820, it became possible to move merchandise imported from the Northeast and from Europe upstream to new settlements. The opening of the
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...
made Buffalo the jumping off point for the lake transportation system that made important cities out of Cleveland, Detroit, and especially Chicago.
The first stage of rapid urban growth, 1815–1860
New York, with a population of 96,000 in 1810 surged far beyond its rivals, reaching a population of 1,080,000 in 1860, compared to 566,000 in Philadelphia, 212,000 in Baltimore, 178,000 in Boston (289,000 including the Boston suburbs), and 169,000 in New Orleans. Historian Robert Albion identifies four aggressive moves by New York entrepreneurs and politicians that helped it jump to the top of American cities. It set up an auction system that efficiently and rapidly sold imported cargoes; it organized a regular transatlantic packet service to England; it built a large-scale coastwise trade, especially one that brought Southern cotton to New York for reexport to Europe; it sponsored the Erie Canal, which opened a large new market in upstate New York and the Old Northwest.
The main rivals, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, tried to compete with the Erie Canal by opening their own networks of canals and railroads; they never caught up. The opening of the
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...
made Buffalo the jumping off point for the lake transportation system that made important cities out of Cleveland, Detroit, and especially Chicago. Manufacturing was not a major factor in the growth of the largest cities at this point. Instead factories were chiefly being built in towns and smaller cities, especially in New England, having waterfalls or fast rivers that were harnessed to generate the power, or were closer to coal supplies, as in Pennsylvania.
National leadership
America's financial, business and cultural leadership (that is, literature, the arts, and the media) were concentrated in the three or four largest cities. Political leadership was never concentrated. It was divided between Washington and the state capitals, and many states deliberately moved their state capital out of their largest city, including New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and California.
Academic and scientific leadership was weak in the United States until the late 19th century, when it began to be concentrated in universities. A few major research-oriented schools were in or close by the largest cities, such as
Harvard (Boston),
Columbia (New York),
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
(Philadelphia),
Johns Hopkins (Baltimore) and
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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. However, most were located in smaller cities or large towns such as Yale in New Haven, Connecticut; Cornell in Ithaca, New York; Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; University of Illinois in Urbana; University of Wisconsin in Madison; University of California in Berkeley, and Stanford in the village of Stanford, California.
Civil War
The cities played a major part in the Civil War, providing soldiers, money, training camps, supplies, and media support for the
Union war effort.
In the North, discontent with the 1863
draft
Draft, The Draft, or Draught may refer to:
Watercraft dimensions
* Draft (hull), the distance from waterline to keel of a vessel
* Draft (sail), degree of curvature in a sail
* Air draft, distance from waterline to the highest point on a vesse ...
law led to riots in several cities and in rural areas as well. By far the most important were the
New York City draft riots
The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of white working-cla ...
of July 13 to July 16, 1863.
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholics are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland whose members are both Catholic and Irish. They have a large diaspora, which includes over 36 million American citizens and over 14 million British citizens (a quarter of the Briti ...
and other workers fought police, militia and regular army units until the Army used artillery to sweep the streets. Initially focused on the draft, the protests quickly expanded into violent attacks on blacks in New York City, with many killed on the streets.
A study of the small Michigan cities of Grand Rapids and Niles shows an overwhelming surge of nationalism in 1861, whipping up enthusiasm for the war in all segments of society, and all political, religious, ethnic, and occupational groups. However, by 1862 the casualties were mounting and the war was increasingly focused on freeing the slaves in addition to preserving the Union.
Copperhead Democrats called the war a failure and it became more and more a partisan Republican effort.
Confederacy
Cities played a much less important part in the heavily rural Confederacy. When the war started the largest cities in slave states were seized in 1861 by the Union, including Washington, Baltimore, Wheeling, Louisville, and St. Louis. The largest and most important Confederate city, New Orleans, was captured in early 1862, and Nashville in 1863. All these cities became major logistic and strategic centers for the Union forces. All the remaining ports were blockaded by the summer of 1861, ending normal commercial traffic, with only very expensive blockade runners getting through. The largest remaining cities were Atlanta, the railroad center which was destroyed in 1864, in the national capital in Richmond which held out to the bitter end.
The overall decline in food supplies, made worse by the inadequate transportation system, led to serious shortages and high prices in Confederate cities. When bacon reached a dollar a pound in 1864, the poor white women of Richmond, Atlanta and many other cities began to riot; they broke into shops and warehouses to seize food. The women expressed their anger at ineffective state relief efforts, speculators, merchants and planters. As wives and widows of soldiers they were hurt by the inadequate welfare system.
The eleven Confederate states in 1860 had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,500, 8,100, and 37,900, respectively); the eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. The number of people (as of 1860) who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's 1860 population.
Late 19th century growth
Street traffic
![The last of the Horse Drawn Carriages](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/The_last_of_the_Horse_Drawn_Carriages.JPG)
In a horse-drawn era, streets were unpaved and covered with dirt or gravel. However, they produced uneven wear, opened new hazards for pedestrians and made for dangerous potholes for bicycles and for motor vehicles. Manhattan alone had 130,000 horses in 1900, pulling streetcars, wagons, and carriages, and leaving their waste behind. They were not fast, and pedestrians could dodge and scramble their way across the crowded streets. Small towns continued to rely on dirt and gravel, but larger cities wanted much better streets, so they looked to wood or granite blocks.
In 1890, a third of Chicago's 2000 miles of streets were paved, chiefly with wooden blocks, which gave better traction than mud. Brick surfacing was a good compromise, but even better was
asphalt
Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...
paving. With London and Paris as models, Washington laid 400,000 square yards of asphalt paving by 1882, and served as a model for Buffalo, Philadelphia and elsewhere. By the end of the century, American cities boasted 30 million square yards of asphalt paving, followed by brick construction.
In the largest cities, street railways were elevated, which increased their speed and lessened their dangers. Street-level trolleys moved passengers at 12 miles per hour for 5 cents a ride (with free transfers), They became the main transportation service for middle class shoppers and office workers until they bought automobiles after 1945 and commuted from more distant suburbs in privacy and comfort.
The working-class typically walked to nearby factories and patronized small local stores. Big-city streets became paths for faster and larger and more dangerous vehicles, the pedestrians beware. Underground subways were a solution, with Boston building one in the 1890s followed by New York a decade later.
The new West
After 1860, railroads pushed westward into unsettled territory. They built service towns to handle the needs of railroad construction and repair crews, train crews, and passengers who ate meals at scheduled stops. Gunfights and disorder characterized the
railhead
In the UK, railheading refers to the practice of travelling further than necessary to reach a rail service, typically by car. The phenomenon is common among commuters seeking a more convenient journey. Reasons for railheading include, but are ...
towns that were the target of major
cattle drive
A cattle drive is the process of moving a herd of cattle from one place to another, usually moved and herded by cowboys on horses.
Europe
In medieval central Europe, annual cattle drives brought Hungarian Grey cattle across the Danube River ...
s from Texas. The violence was often exaggerated in
dime novel
The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S. popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions. The term ''dime novel'' has been used as a catchall term for several different but related forms, r ...
s.
In most of the South, there were very few cities of any size for miles around, and this held for Texas as well. Railroads arrived in the 1880s and they shipped the cattle out; cattle drives became short-distance affairs. However the passenger trains were often the targets of armed gangs.
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
's economy before 1870 had been rooted in mining; it then grew by expanding its role in railroads, wholesale trade, manufacturing, food processing, and servicing the growing agricultural and ranching hinterland. Between 1870 and 1890, manufacturing output soared from $600,000 to $40 million, and the population grew by a factor of 20 times to 107,000. Denver had always attracted miners, workers, whores and travelers. Saloons and gambling dens sprung up overnight. The city fathers boasted of its fine theaters, and especially the Tabor Grand Opera House built in 1881.
By 1890, Denver had grown to be the 26th largest city in America, and the fifth-largest city west of the Mississippi River. The boom times attracted millionaires and their mansions, as well as hustlers, poverty and crime. Denver gained regional notoriety with its range of bawdy houses, from the sumptuous quarters of renowned madams to the squalid "cribs" located a few blocks away.
Business was good; visitors spent lavishly, then left town. As long as madams conducted their business discreetly, and "crib girls" did not advertise their availability too crudely, authorities took their bribes and looked the other way. Occasional cleanups and crack downs satisfied the demands for reform.
With its giant mountain of copper,
Butte, Montana was the largest, richest and rowdiest
mining camp
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...
on the frontier. It was an ethnic stronghold, with the Irish Catholics in control of politics and of the best jobs at the leading mining corporation
Anaconda Copper. City boosters opened a public library in 1894. Ring argues that the library was originally a mechanism of social control, "an antidote to the miners' proclivity for drinking, whoring, and gambling." It was also designed to promote middle-class values and to convince Easterners the Butte was a cultivated city. Appreciative crowds filled the large, upscale "Belasco" opera house for full-scale operas and top-name artists.
Skyscrapers and apartment buildings
![The Dakota 1880s](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/The_Dakota_1880s.jpg)
In Chicago and New York, new inventions facilitated the emergence of the skyscraper in the 1880s—it was a characteristic American style that was not widely copied around the world until the late 20th century. Construction required several major innovations, the elevator, and the steel beam. The steel skeleton, developed in the 1880s, replaced the heavy brick walls that were limited to 15 or so stories in height. The skyscraper also required a complex internal structure to solve difficult issues of ventilation, steam heat, gas lighting (and later electricity), and plumbing. Urban housing involved a wide variety of styles, but most of the attention focused on the tenement house for the working class, and the apartment building for the middle class.
The apartment building came first, as middle-class professionals, businessmen, and white-collar workers realized they did not need and could scarcely afford single-family dwellings of the type that low land costs in the towns permitted. Boarding houses were inappropriate for family; hotel suites were too expensive. In smaller cities, there were many apartments over stores and shops, usually occupied by proprietors of small local businesses. The residents paid rent, and did not own their apartments until the emergence of cooperatives in New York City in the 20th century, and condominiums around the country after World War II. Turnover was very high, and there was seldom was a sense of neighborhood community.
Starting with the Stuyvesant luxury apartment house that opened in New York in 1869, and
The Dakota in 1884, affluent tenants discovered that full-time staff handled the upkeep and maintenance, as well as security.
The less-lavish middle-class apartment buildings provided gas lighting, elevators, good plumbing, central heating, and maintenance men on call. Boston contractors build 16,000 "Triple-Deckers" Between 1870 and 1920. They were modern well-equipped buildings with a single large apartments on each floor. Chicago built thousands of apartment buildings, with the upscale ones close to the lake, where it was warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. In every city, apartment buildings were built along the paths of the street railways, for the middle-class tenants rode the streetcar to work, while the working class saved a nickel each way and walked.
The working class crowded into tenement houses, with far fewer features and amenities. They were cheap and easy to build, and filled up almost the entire lot. There were typically five story walk-ups, with four separate apartments on each floor. There was minimal air circulation and sunlight. Until the reforms of 1879, New York tenements lacked running water or indoor toilets. Garbage pickup was erratic until late in the 19th century. Rents were cheap for those who could endure the dust, clutter, smells and noises; the only cheaper alternatives were squalid basement rooms in older buildings. Most of the tenements survived until the urban renewal movement of the 1950s.
Lure of the metropolis
Jeffersonian America distrusted the city, and rural spokesmen repeatedly warned their young men away. In 1881 ''The Evening Wisconsin'' newspaper warned cautious boys to stay on the farm. As paraphrased by historian Bayrd Still, the editor painted a grim contrast:
Pure milk, wholesome water, mellow fruit, vegetables, and proper sleep and exercise are lacking in the city; and the "dense centers of population are unfavorable to moral growth as they are to physical development." Sharpness and deception characterize the city merchant, mechanic, and professional man as well. How different is the situation of the "sturdy farmer removed from the dust and smoke and filth and vice of the crowded city. ... Content in his cottage ... why should he long for the fare and follies of the madding crowd in the Gay Metropolis?
The response came from a Milwaukee newspaper editor in 1871, who boasted that the ambitious young man could not be stopped:
The young man in the country no sooner elects for himself his course, than he makes for the nearest town. Scarcely has he grown familiar with his new surroundings, when the subtle attractions of the remoter city begin to tell upon him. There is no resisting it. It draws him like a magnet. Sooner or later, it is tolerably certain, he will be sucked into one of the great centers of life.
Reformers
Historians have developed an elaborate typology of reformers in the late 19th century, focusing especially on the urban reformers.
The
Mugwumps
The Mugwumps were Republican political activists in the United States who were intensely opposed to political corruption. They were never formally organized. Typically they switched parties from the Republican Party by supporting Democratic ...
were reform-minded Republicans who acted at the national level in the 1870s and 1880s, especially in 1884 when they split their ticket for Democrat Grover Cleveland. The "Goo Goos" were the local equivalent: the middle-class reformers who sought "good government" regardless of party. They typically focused on urban sanitation, better schools, and lower trolley fares for the middle-class commuters. They especially demanded a nonpolitical civil service system to replace the "spoils of victory" approach by which the winners of an election replaced city and school employees.
They often formed short-lived citywide organizations, such as The Committee of 70 in New York, the Citizens' Reform Association in Philadelphia, the Citizens' Association of Chicago, and the Baltimore Reform League. They sometimes won citywide elections, but were rarely reelected. Party regulars laughed at them for trying to be independent of the political party machines by forming nonpartisan tickets. The ridicule included suggestions that the reformers were not real men: they were sissies and "mollycoddles".
By the 1890s, when historians call "structural reformers" were emerging; they were much more successful at reform, and marked the beginning of the
Progressive era
The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...
. They used national organizations, such as the
National Municipal League
The National Civic League is an American nonpartisan, non-profit organization founded in 1894 with a mission to advance civic engagement to create equitable, thriving communities. The League envisions a country where the full diversity of communi ...
, and focused on broader principles such as honesty, efficiency, economy, and centralized decision-making by experts. "Efficiency" was their watchword, they believed one of the problems with the machines was that they wasted enormous amounts of tax money by creating useless patronage jobs and payoffs to mid-level politicians.
Social reformers emerged in the 1890s, most famously
Jane Addams
Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage ...
Enter large complex network of reformers based at
Hull House
Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House (named after the original house's first owner Cha ...
in Chicago. They were less interested in civil service reform or revising the city charter, and concentrated instead on the needs of working class housing, child labor, sanitation and welfare. Protestant churches promoted their own group of reformers, mostly women activists demanding prohibition or sharp reductions in the baleful influence of the saloon in damaging family finances and causing family violence.
Rural America was increasingly won over by the prohibitionists, but they rarely had success in the larger cities, where they were staunchly opposed by the large German and Irish elements. However, the
Women's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization, originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program ...
became well organized in cities of every size, and taught middle-class women the techniques of organization, proselytizing, and propaganda. Many of the WCTU veterans graduated into the woman's suffrage movement. Moving relentlessly from West to East, became the vote for women in state after state, and finally nationwide in 1920.
School reform was high on the agenda, since local machine politicians used the jobs in the contracts, promote the party interest, rather than the needs of the students. After examining late 19th century reform movements in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco and Chicago, historian
David Tyack concludes that "what the structural reformers wanted to do, then, was to replace a rather mechanical form of public bureaucracy, which was permeated with 'illegitimate' lay influence, with a streamlined 'professional' bureaucracy in which lay control was carefully filtered through a corporate school board.
Sanitation and public health
Sanitary conditions were bad throughout urban America in the 19th century. The worst conditions appeared in the largest cities, where the accumulation of human and horse waste built up on the city streets, where sewage systems were inadequate, and the water supply was of dubious quality. Physicians took the lead in pointing out problems, and were of two minds on the causes. The older theory of contagion said that germs spread disease, but this theory was increasingly out of fashion by the 1840s or 1850s for two reasons. On the one hand it predicted too much— microscopes demonstrated so many various microorganisms that there was no particular reason to associate any one of them with a specific disease. There was also a political dimension; a contagious theory of disease called for aggressive public health measures, which meant taxes and regulation the business community rejected. Before the 1880s, most experts believed in the "
Miasma theory" which attributed the spread of disease to "bad air" caused by the abundance of dirt and animal waste. It indicated the need for regular garbage pickup. By the 1880s, however, European discovery of the germ theory of disease proved decisive for the medical community, although popular belief never shook the old "bad air" theory. Medical attention shifted from curing the sick patient to stopping the spread of the disease in the first place. It indicated a system of quarantines, hospitalization, clean water, and proper sewage disposal. Dr
Charles V. Chapin
Charles Value Chapin (January 17, 1856 – January 31, 1941) was an American pioneer in public health research and practice during the Progressive Era. He was superintendent of health for Providence, Rhode Island between 1884 and 1932. He es ...
(1856–1941), head of public health in Providence Rhode Island, was a tireless campaigner for the germ theory of disease, which he repeatedly validated with his laboratory studies. Chapin emphatically told popular audiences germs were the true culprit, not filth; that diseases were not indiscriminately transmitted through the smelly air; and that disinfection was not a cure-all. He paid little attention to environmental or chemical hazards in the air and water, or to tobacco smoking, since germs were not involved. They did not become a major concern of the public health movement until the 1960s. The second stage of public health, building on the germ theory, brought in engineers to design elaborate water and sewer systems. Their expertise was welcomed, and many became city managers after that reform was introduced in the early 20th century.
20th century
In the era 1890–1930, the larger cities were the focus of national attention. The skyscrapers and tourist attractions were widely publicized. Suburbs existed, but they Were largely bedroom communities for commuters to the central city. San Francisco dominated the West, Atlanta dominated the South, Boston dominated New England. Chicago, the nation's railroad hub, dominated the Midwest, New York City dominated the entire nation in terms of communications, trade, finance, as well as popular culture and high culture. More than a fourth of the 300 largest corporations in 1920 were headquartered in New York City.
Progressive era: 1890s–1920s
During the
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...
a coalition of middle-class reform-oriented voters, academic experts and reformers hostile to the political machines introduced a series of reforms in urban America, designed to reduce waste and inefficiency and corruption, by introducing scientific methods, compulsory education and administrative innovations.
The pace was set in Detroit Michigan, where Republican mayor
Hazen S. Pingree first put together the reform coalition.
Many cities set up municipal reference bureaux to study the budgets and administrative structures of local governments. Progressive mayors were important in many cities, such as
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
(especially Mayor
Tom L. Johnson);
Toledo, Ohio
Toledo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, United States. A major Midwestern United States port city, Toledo is the fourth-most populous city in the state of Ohio, after Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and according ...
; Jersey City, New Jersey;
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
;
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...
;
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
; and many other cities, especially in the western states. In
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
, Governor
Frank Lowden
Frank Orren Lowden (January 26, 1861 – March 20, 1943) was an American Republican Party politician who served as the 25th Governor of Illinois and as a United States Representative from Illinois. He was also a candidate for the Republican pres ...
undertook a major reorganization of state government. Wisconsin was the stronghold of
Robert La Follette
Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette Sr. (June 14, 1855June 18, 1925), was an American lawyer and politician. He represented Wisconsin in both chambers of Congress and served as the 20th Governor of Wisconsin. A Republican for most of his ...
, who led a wing of the Republican Party. His
Wisconsin Idea
The Wisconsin Idea is a public philosophy that has influenced policy and ideals in the U.S. state of Wisconsin's education system and politics.
In education, emphasis is often placed on how the Idea articulates education's role for Wisconsin ...
used the state university as a major source of ideas and expertise.
One of the most dramatic changes came in
Galveston, Texas, where a devastating hurricane and flood overwhelmed the resources of local government. Reformers abolished political parties in municipal elections, and set up a five-man commission of experts to rebuild the city. The Galveston idea was simple, efficient, and much less conducive to corruption. If lessened the Democratic influences of the average voter, but multiplied the influence of the reform minded middle-class.
The Galveston plan was quickly copied by many other cities, especially in the West. By 1914 over 400 cities had nonpartisan elected commissions.
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater D ...
Had its great flood in 1913, and responded with the innovation of a paid, non-political
city manager, hired by the commissioners to run the bureaucracy; mechanical engineers were especially preferred.
Urban planning
The
Garden city movement
The garden city movement was a 20th century urban planning movement promoting satellite communities surrounding the central city and separated with greenbelts. These Garden Cities would contain proportionate areas of residences, industry, and ...
was brought over from England and evolved into the "Neighborhood Unit" form of development. In the early 1900s, as cars were introduced to city streets for the first time, residents became increasingly concerned with the number of pedestrians being injured by car traffic. The response, seen first in Radburn, New Jersey, was the Neighborhood Unit-style development, which oriented houses toward a common public path instead of the street. The neighborhood is distinctively organized around a school, with the intention of providing children a safe way to walk to school.
The Great Depression
Urban America had enjoyed strong growth and steady prosperity in the 1920s. Large-scale immigration had ended in 1914, and never fully resumed, so that ethnic communities have become stabilized and Americanized. Upward mobility was the norm, in every sector of the population supported the rapidly growing high school system. After the stock market crash of October 1929, the nation's optimism suddenly turned negative, with both business investments and private consumption overwhelmed by a deepening pessimism that encouraged people to cut back and reduce their expectations. The economic damage to the cities was most serious in the collapse of 80 to 90 percent of the private sector construction industry. Cities and states started expanding their own construction programs as early as 1930, and they became a central feature of the New Deal, but private construction did not fully recover until after 1945. Many landlords so their rental income drained away and many went bankrupt. After construction, came the widespread downturn in heavy industry, especially manufacturing of durable goods such as automobiles, machinery, and refrigerators. The impact of unemployment was higher in the manufacturing centers in the East and Midwest, and lower in the South and West, which had less manufacturing.
One visible effect of the depression was the advent of
Hooverville A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and was widely blamed for it. ...
s, which were ramshackle assemblages on vacant lots of cardboard boxes, tents, and small rickety wooden sheds built by homeless people. Residents lived in shacks and begged for food or went to soup kitchens. The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee, who referred sardonically to President
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
whose policies he blamed for the depression.
Unemployment reached 25 percent in the worst days of 1932–33, but it was unevenly distributed. Job losses were less severe among women than men, among workers in nondurable industries (such as food and clothing), in services and sales, and in government jobs. The least skilled inner city men had much higher unemployment rates, as did young people who had a hard time getting their first job, and men over the age of 45 who if they lost their job would seldom find another one because employers had their choice of younger men. Millions were hired in the Great Depression, but men with weaker credentials were never hired, and fell into a long-term unemployment trap. The migration that brought millions of farmers and townspeople to the bigger cities in the 1920s suddenly reversed itself, as unemployment made the cities unattractive, and the network of kinfolk and more ample food supplies made it wise for many to go back. City governments in 1930–31 tried to meet the depression by expanding public works projects, as president Herbert Hoover strongly encouraged. However, tax revenues were plunging, and the cities as well as private relief agencies were totally overwhelmed; by 1931 men were unable to provide significant additional relief. They fell back on the cheapest possible relief, soup kitchens which provided free meals for anyone who showed up. After 1933 new sales taxes and infusions of federal money helped relieve the fiscal distress of the cities, but the budgets did not fully recover until 1941.
The federal programs launched by Hoover and greatly expanded by president Roosevelt's
New Deal used massive construction projects to try to jump start the economy and solve the unemployment crisis. The alphabet agencies ERA, CCC, FERA, WPA and PWA built and repaired the public infrastructure in dramatic fashion, but did little to foster the recovery of the private sector. FERA, CCC and especially WPA focused on providing unskilled jobs for long-term unemployed men.
The Democrats won easy landslides in 1932 and 1934, and an even bigger one in 1936; the hapless Republican Party seemed doomed. The Democrats capitalized on the magnetic appeal of Roosevelt to urban America. The key groups were low-skilled ethnics, especially Catholics, Jews, and blacks. The Democrats promised and delivered in terms of beer, political recognition, labor union membership, and relief jobs. The city machines were stronger than ever, for they mobilize their precinct workers to help families who needed help the most navigate the bureaucracy and get on relief. FDR won the vote of practically every group in 1936, including taxpayers, small business and the middle class. However the Protestant middle class voters but turned sharply against him after the recession of 1937–38 undermined repeated promises that recovery was at hand. Historically, local political machines were primarily interested in controlling their wards and citywide elections; the smaller the turnout on election day, the easier it was to control the system. However, for Roosevelt to win the presidency in 1936 and 1940, he needed to carry the electoral college and that meant he needed the largest possible majorities in the cities to overwhelm the out state vote. The machines came through for him. The 3.5 million voters on relief payrolls during the 1936 election cast 82% percent of their ballots for Roosevelt. The rapidly growing, energetic labor unions, chiefly based in the cities, turned out 80% for FDR, as did Irish, Italian and Jewish communities. In all, the nation's 106 cities over 100,000 population voted 70% for FDR in 1936, compared to his 59% elsewhere. Roosevelt worked very well with the big city machines, with the one exception of his old nemesis,
Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It became the main loc ...
in Manhattan. There he
supported the complicated coalition built around the nominal Republican
Fiorello La Guardia
Fiorello Henry LaGuardia (; born Fiorello Enrico LaGuardia, ; December 11, 1882September 20, 1947) was an American attorney and politician who represented New York in the House of Representatives and served as the 99th Mayor of New York City fro ...
, and based on Jewish and Italian voters mobilized by labor unions.
In 1938, the Republicans made an unexpected comeback, and Roosevelt's efforts to purge the Democratic Party of his political opponents backfired badly. The conservative coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats took control of Congress, outvoted the urban liberals, and handed the expansion of New Deal ideas. Roosevelt survived in 1940 thanks to his margin in the Solid South and in the cities. In the North the cities over 100,000 gave Roosevelt 60% of their votes, while the rest of the North favored the GOP candidate Wendell Willkie 52%-48%.
With the start of full-scale war mobilization in the summer of 1940, the economies of the cities rebounded. Even before Pearl Harbor, Washington pumped massive investments into new factories and funded round-the-clock munitions production, guaranteeing a job to anyone who showed up at the factory gate. The war brought a restoration of prosperity and hopeful expectations for the future across the nation. It had the greatest impact on the cities of the West Coast, especially Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
Economic historians led by Price Fishback have examined the impact of New Deal spending on improving health conditions in the 114 largest cities, 1929–1937. They estimated that every additional $153,000 in relief spending (in 1935 dollars, or $1.95 million in year 2000 dollars) was associated with a reduction of one infant death, one suicide, and 2.4 deaths from infectious disease.
21st century
![LYNX Car 104 at TremontStation](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/LYNX_Car_104_at_TremontStation.jpg)
During the beginning of the 21st century, many cities in the South and West experienced significant growth in terms of population. This was trend that continued from the late 20th century where a lot of growth occurred in cities in the
Sunbelt region. Texas in particular has experienced a tremendous amount of growth in the 21st century so far as the state with the largest population jump, with cities like
Austin,
San Antonio
("Cradle of Freedom")
, image_map =
, mapsize = 220px
, map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = United States
, subdivision_type1= State
, subdivision_name1 = Texas
, subdivision_t ...
,
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
,
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...
, and many of their suburbs constantly being ranked as the fastest-growing cities in the country.
Other cities in the South that have experienced significant population growth recently include
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
,
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
,
Tampa,
Orlando
Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures re ...
,
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...
,
Nashville,
Charlotte
Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...
, and
Raleigh
Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeas ...
. Western cities have experienced lots of growth as well, with cities like
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
,
Phoenix
Phoenix most often refers to:
* Phoenix (mythology), a legendary bird from ancient Greek folklore
* Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the United States
Phoenix may also refer to:
Mythology
Greek mythological figures
* Phoenix (son of Amyntor), a ...
,
Riverside,
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
,
Portland, and
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
seeing a great influx of new residents. Smaller cities in the Southern and Western states have seen a large amount of population growth too, including
Charleston,
Myrtle Beach
Myrtle Beach is a resort city on the east coast of the United States in Horry County, South Carolina. It is located in the center of a long and continuous stretch of beach known as "The Grand Strand" in the northeastern part of the state. Its ...
,
Savannah,
Cape Coral
Cape Coral is a city located in Lee County, Florida, United States, on the Gulf of Mexico. Founded in 1957 and developed as a planned community, the city's population has grown to 194,016 as of the 2020 Census, a rise of 26% from the 2010 Census ...
,
Sarasota
Sarasota () is a city in Sarasota County on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The area is renowned for its cultural and environmental amenities, beaches, resorts, and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The city is located in the sou ...
,
Ogden,
Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...
,
Boise
Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown area' ...
, and more.
There are exceptions in the Southern and Western states though to this trend of cities having a large influx of new residents with places like
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
,
Memphis
Memphis most commonly refers to:
* Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt
* Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city
Memphis may also refer to:
Places United States
* Memphis, Alabama
* Memphis, Florida
* Memphis, Indiana
* Memp ...
,
Albuquerque
Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...
, and
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
experiencing a slow growth in population, especially compared to other nearby areas. Some areas in the South and West have even seen population loss including
Montgomery,
Jackson
Jackson may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Jackson (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the surname or given name
Places
Australia
* Jackson, Queensland, a town in the Maranoa Region
* Jackson North, Qu ...
, and parts of the
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
like
Marin County.
The San Francisco area, while overall still experiencing a decent population growth rate, has areas experiencing little to no growth and has more residents leaving than any other U.S. city due to the high cost of living in the region. Meanwhile, cities in the
Rust Belt
The Rust Belt is a region of the United States that experienced industrial decline starting in the 1950s. The U.S. manufacturing sector as a percentage of the U.S. GDP peaked in 1953 and has been in decline since, impacting certain regions an ...
, such as
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...
,
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
,
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
,
Buffalo,
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
, and
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, have experienced negative or stagnant growth in terms of population too.
[Mark Peters, Jack Nicas. "Rust Belt Reaches for Immigration Tide", The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2013, A3.] Many people from these locations are moving to the booming cities in the Southern and Western states.
Starting in the late 20th century and continuing into the 21st century, many cities across the country began creating new public transportation systems. After many public transportation systems, such as streetcars, were scrapped in cities starting in the 1950s, the automobile dominated America's urban transportation network. However, many cities, especially in the 21st century, have started creating new, rebuilding, or expanding public transportation systems to help combat problems like traffic congestion and air pollution from all of the commuting vehicles.
Many cities have added new light rail systems, such as Phoenix's
Valley Metro Rail
Valley Metro Rail (styled as METRO) is a light rail line serving the cities of Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa in Arizona, USA. The network, which is part of the Valley Metro public transit system, began operations on December 27, 2008. In , the sys ...
or Charlotte's
Lynx Blue Line
The Lynx Blue Line is a light rail line in Charlotte, North Carolina. Opened in 2007, it was the first rail line of the Charlotte Area Transit System, and the first major rapid rail service of any kind in the state. The 26-station, line extend ...
. Other cities have heavily expanded their already existing transportation networks with new lines, such as the
Expo Line that opened in 2012 in Los Angeles. Modern streetcars have been built in various cities across America recently as well, including the
Atlanta Streetcar and the
Dallas Streetcar. Some cities though have rebuilt their heritage streetcars in the 21st century, such as Tampa with its
TECO Line Streetcar
The TECO Line Streetcar is a heritage streetcar transit line in Tampa, Florida, run by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transportation Authority (HART), owned by the city of Tampa, and managed by Tampa Historic Streetcar, Inc. It connects Downtown ...
that opened in 2002.
New commuter rail systems have been built in a bunch of cities too like Orlando's
Sunrail
SunRail is a commuter rail system in the Greater Orlando, Florida, area. Services began on May 1, 2014. The system comprises 16 stations along a former CSX Transportation line connecting Volusia County and Osceola County through Downtown Orland ...
or Seattle's
Sounder Commuter Rail
Sounder commuter rail is a commuter rail service operated by BNSF on behalf of Sound Transit. Service operates Monday through Friday during peak hours from Seattle, Washington, north to Everett and south to Lakewood. In , the system had a ride ...
. Overall though, public transportation has been an important issue for 21st century American cities, and as a result there has been a large amount of focus on building or expanding various public transportation systems within urban areas.
See also
*
History of Boston
The written history of Boston begins with a letter drafted by the first European inhabitant of the Shawmut Peninsula, William Blaxton. This letter is dated 7 September 1630 and was addressed to the leader of the Puritan settlement of Charlestown ...
*
History of Chicago
Chicago has played a central role in American economic, cultural and political history. Since the 1850s Chicago has been one of the dominant metropolises in the Midwestern United States, and has been the largest city in the Midwest since the 1 ...
*
History of Cleveland
The written history of Cleveland began with the city's founding by General Moses Cleaveland of the Connecticut Land Company on July 22, 1796. Its central location on the southern shore of Lake Erie and the mouth of the Cuyahoga River allowed it ...
*
History of Detroit
Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan, was settled in 1701 by French colonists. It is the first European settlement above tidewater in North America., p. 56. Founded as a New France fur trading post, it began to expand during the 19 ...
*
History of Los Angeles
The history of Los Angeles began in 1781 when 44 settlers from central New Spain (modern Mexico) established a permanent settlement in what is now Downtown Los Angeles, as instructed by Spanish Governor of Las Californias, Felipe de Neve, and auth ...
*
History of New York City
The written history of New York City began with the first European explorer, the Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. European settlement began with the Dutch in 1608.
The "Sons of Liberty" campaigned against British authority in New York Ci ...
*
History of Philadelphia
The city of Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn in the English Crown Province of Pennsylvania between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Before then, the area was inhabited by the Lenape people. Philadelphia quickly grew into an imp ...
*
History of Pittsburgh
The history of Pittsburgh began with centuries of Native American civilization in the modern Pittsburgh region, known as "Dionde:gâ'" in the Seneca language. Eventually, European explorers encountered the strategic confluence where the Alleghe ...
*
Suburb
*
Urban history
Urban history is a field of history that examines the historical nature of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization. The approach is often multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history, architectural history, urb ...
*
Urbanism
Urbanism is the study of how inhabitants of urban areas, such as towns and cities, interact with the built environment. It is a direct component of disciplines such as urban planning, which is the profession focusing on the physical design and ...
*
Local history
Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context, often concentrating on a relatively small local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history. Local history is not merely national history writ small ...
: United States
*
:Timelines of cities in the United States
Notes
Further reading
Surveys
* Boehm, Lisa Krissoff, and Steven Hunt Corey. ''America's Urban History'' (2014); University textbook
see websiteDetailed bibliography online it pages 351-78* Bridenbaugh, Carl. ''Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625-1742'' (1938)
* Bridenbaugh, Carl. ''Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743-1776'' (1955)
* Brownell, Blaine A. and Goldfield, David R. ''The City in southern history: The growth of urban civilization in the South'' (1977)
* Conn, Steven. ''Americans against the City: Anti-urbanism in the Twentieth Century'' (Oxford University Press, 2014)
* Douglass, Harlan Paul. ''1000 city churches: Phases of adaptation to urban environment'' (1926
online free
* Friss, Evan. ''The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s'' (University of Chicago Press, 2015). x, 267 pp.
* Glaab, Charles Nelson, and A. Theodore Brown. ''History of Urban America'' (1967)
* Goldfield, David R. and Blaine A. Brownell. ''Urban America: A History''(2nd ed. 1990)
* Goldfield, David R. ed. ''Encyclopedia of American Urban History'' (2 vol Sage, 2007); comprehensive coverage; 9401pp
* Kirkland, Edward C. ''Industry Comes of Age, Business, Labor, and Public Policy 1860-1897'' (1961) esp 237-61
* McDonald, John F. ''Urban America: Growth, Crisis, and Rebirth'' (ME Sharpe, 2007).
* McDonald, John F. ''Postwar urban America: Demography, economics, and social policies'' (Routledge, 2014).
* McKelvey, Blake. ''The urbanization of America, 1860-1915'' (1963), 390ppy
* McKelvey, Blake. ''The Emergence of Metropolitan America, 1915-1960'' (1968), 320pp
* Miller, Zane I. ''Urbanization of Modern America: A Brief History'' (2nd ed. 1987)
* Monkkonen, Eric H. ''America Becomes Urban: The Development of U.S. Cities and Towns, 1780-1980'' (1990), 336pp
* Rubin, Jasper. "Planning and American Urbanization since 1950." in Craig E. Colten and Geoffrey L. Buckley, eds. ''North American Odyssey: Historical Geographies for the Twenty-first Century'' (2014): 395-412
*
Schlesinger, Arthur M. ''The rise of the city: 1878-1898'' (1933), A social history
Online review
* Shumsky, Neil Larry, ed. ''Encyclopedia of Urban America'' (2 vol ABC-CLIO, 1998); comprehensive coverage, 970pp.
* Still, Bayrd. "Patterns of Mid-Nineteenth Century Urbanization in the Middle West," ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' (1941) 28#2 pp. 187–20
in JSTOR* Taylor, George Rogers. "The Beginnings Of Mass Transportation In Urban America." ''Smithsonian Journal of History'' (1966) 1#2 pp 35–50; 1#3 pp 31–54; partly reprinted in Wakstein, ed., ''The Urbanization of America'' (1970) pp 128–50; Covers 1820-1960
*
Teaford, Jon C. ''Cities of the Heartland: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Midwest'' (1993)
* Teaford, Jon C. ''The Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America'' (2006)
* Teaford, Jon C. ''The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900'' (1984)
* Wade, Richard C. ''The Urban Frontier - Pioneer Life In Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, And St. Louis'' (2nd ed. 1976)
Environment & public health
* Cain, Louis P. "Sanitation in Chicago: A Strategy for a Lakefront Metropolis," ''Encyclopedia of Chicago'' (2004
online* Crane, Brian D. "Filth, garbage, and rubbish: Refuse disposal, sanitary reform, and nineteenth-century yard deposits in Washington, DC." ''Historical Archaeology'' (2000): 20–38
in JSTOR
* Devienne, Elsa. "Urban renewal by the sea: Reinventing the beach for the suburban age in postwar Los Angeles." ''Journal of Urban History'' 45.1 (2019): 99-125
online
*
Duffy, John. ''The sanitarians: a history of American public health'' (1992)
* Eu, Rachel. "Sunlight and Gaslight: Mapping Light in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York City." ''Journal of Urban History'' 48.2 (2022): 243-264.
* Frost, Lionel. "Water technology and the urban environment: water, sewerage, and disease in San Francisco and Melbourne before 1920." ''Journal of Urban History'' 46.1 (2020): 15-32
online* Hochfelder, David, and Douglas Appler. "Introduction to special issue on urban renewal in smaller cities." ''Journal of Planning History'' 19.3 (2020): 139-143.
* Larsen, Lawrence H. "Nineteenth-Century Street Sanitation: A Study of Filth and Frustration," ''Wisconsin Magazine of History'' (1969) 52#3 pp. 239–24
in JSTOR* Melosi, Martin V. ''Garbage in the cities: refuse reform and the environment'' (2004)
* Mohl, Raymond A. "Poverty, pauperism, and social order in the preindustrial American City, 1780-1840." ''Social Science Quarterly'' (1972): 934–948
in JSTOR* Rosenberg, Charles E. ''The cholera years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866'' (1962)
* Strach, Patricia, Kathleen Sullivan, and Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués. "The garbage problem: Corruption, innovation, and capacity in four American cities, 1890–1940." ''Studies in American Political Development'' 33.2 (2019): 209-233.
City histories
* , The standard scholarly history, 1390pp
* Homberger, Eric. ''The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City's History'' (2005)
* ; second edition 2010
* McComb, David G. ''The City in Texas: A History'' (University of Texas Press, 2015) 342 pp.
*Pierce, Bessie Louise. ''A History of Chicago from Town to Ciry 1848-1871 Vol II'' (1940)
**Pierce, Bessie Louise. ''A History of Chicago, Volume III: The Rise of a Modern City, 1871-1893'' (1957
excerpt* Reiff, Janice L., Ann Durkin Keating and James R. Grossman, eds. ''The Encyclopedia of Chicago'' (2004), with thorough coverage by scholars in 1120 pages of text, maps and photos
it is online free* Shortridge, James R. ''Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822-2011'' (University Press of Kansas; 2012) 248 pages; historical geograph
excerpt and text search* Shortridge, James R. ''Cities on the Plains: The Evolution of Urban Kansas'' (2004
Excerpt
Black history
* Davis, D. F., et al. "Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century." ''Urban History Review'' (1977) 6#1 pp. 99–10
in JSTOR* De Graaf, Lawrence B. "The city of black angels: Emergence of the Los Angeles ghetto, 1890-1930." ''Pacific Historical Review'' 39.3 (1970): 323–352
in JSTOR* Godshalk, David Fort. ''Veiled Visions: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the Reshaping of American Race Relations'' (2006)
online* Goings, Kenneth, and Raymond Mohl, eds. ''The New African American Urban History'' (Sage Publications, 1996), 10 articles by scholars
* Green, Adam. ''Selling the race: Culture, community, and black Chicago, 1940-1955'' (2007).
* Grossman, James R. ''Land of hope: Chicago, black southerners, and the great migration'' (1991).
* Hornsby, Jr., Alton, ed. ''Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia'' (2 vol 2011
excerpt
* Ince, Anthony, Thomas Borén, and Ilda Lindell. "After riots: Toward a research agenda on the long-term effects of urban unrest." ''Journal of Urban Affairs'' (2021): 1-18
online
* Kusmer, Kenneth L., and Joe W. Trotter, eds. ''African American Urban History Since World War II'' (U. University of Chicago Press, 2009).
* Kusmer, Kenneth L. ''A ghetto takes shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930'' (1978).
* Levesque, George A. ''Black Boston: African American life and culture in urban America, 1750–1860'' (Routledge, 2018).
* Osofsky, Gilbert. "A Decade of Urban Tragedy: How Harlem Became A Slum." ''New York History'' 46#4 (1965): 330–355
in JSTOR* Osofsky, Gilbert. ''Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890-1930'' (1971).
* Osofsky, Gilbert. "The Enduring Ghetto." ''Journal of American History'' 55.2 (1968): 243–255
in JSTOR
* Pittman, Cassi. "“Shopping while Black”: Black consumers’ management of racial stigma and racial profiling in retail settings." ''Journal of Consumer Culture'' 20.1 (2020): 3-22
online
* Rabinowitz, Howard N. ''Race relations in the urban South, 1865-1890'' (1978).
* Spear, Allan H. ''Black Chicago: The making of a Negro ghetto, 1890-1920'' (1967).
* Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. ''Race for profit: How banks and the real estate industry undermined black homeownership'' (UNC Press Books, 2019).
*
Taylor, Quintard. ''The forging of a black community: Seattle’s central district from 1870 through the civil rights era'' (2011).
* Trotter, Joe, Earl Lewis, and Tera Hunter, eds. ''The African American urban experience: perspectives from the colonial period to the present'' (Springer, 2004).
* Trotter, Joe William. ''Black Milwaukee: The making of an industrial proletariat, 1915-45'' (University of Illinois Press, 1985).
** Trotter Jr, Joe William. "Black Milwaukee: Reflections on the Past Twenty Years." ''Journal of Urban History'' 33.4 (2007): 562-567.
* Young Jr, Alford. ''From the Edge of the Ghetto: African Americans and the World of Work'' (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
Historiography
* Reps, John. ''The Making of Urban America'' (1965)
* Abbott, Carl. "Urban History for Planners," ''Journal of Planning History,'' (2006) 5#4 pp 301–313
* Biles, Roger, and Mark H. Rose. "Tribute to Raymond A. Mohl, 1938–2015." Journal of Urban History 41.3 (2015): 360–367
online* Ebner, Michael H. "Re-Reading Suburban America: Urban Population Deconcentration, 1810-1980," ''American Quarterly'' (1985) 37#3 pp. 368–38
in JSTOR*Engeli, Christian, and Horst Matzerath. ''Modern urban history research in Europe, USA, and Japan: a handbook'' (1989
in GoogleBooks* Frisch, Michael. "American urban history as an example of recent historiography." ''History and Theory'' (1979): 350–377
in JSTOR* Gillette Jr., Howard, and Zane L. Miller, eds. '' American Urbanism: A Historiographical Review'' (1987
online* Glasser, Ruth. "The farm in the city in the recent past: thoughts on a more inclusive urban historiography." ''Journal of Urban History'' 44.3 (2018): 501–518.
* Goings, Kenneth, and Raymond Mohl, eds. ''The New African American Urban History'' (Sage Publications, 1996), 10 articles by scholars
* Hammack, David C. "Elite Perceptions of Power in the Cities of the United States, 1880-1900: The Evidence of James Bryce, Moisei Ostrogorski, and Their American Informants." ''Journal of Urban History'' 4.4 (1978): 363-396.
* Hoover, Dwight W. "The Diverging Paths of American Urban History." ''American Quarterly'' (1968): 296–317
in JSTOR* Keating, Ann Durkin. "Chicagoland: More Than the Sum of Its Parts" ''Journal of Urban History'' 30##2 (2004) pp 213–30. doi.org/10.1177/0096144203258353
* Lees, Lynn Hollen. "The Challenge of Political Change: Urban History in the 1990s," ''Urban History,'' (1994), 21#1 pp. 7–19.
* McManus, Ruth, and Philip J. Ethington, "Suburbs in transition: new approaches to suburban history," ''Urban History,'' Aug 2007, Vol. 34 Issue 2, pp 317–337
*
McShane, Clay. "The State of the Art in North American Urban History," ''Journal of Urban History'' (2006) 32#4 pp 582–597, identifies a loss of influence by such writers as Lewis Mumford, Robert Caro, and Sam Warner, a continuation of the emphasis on narrow, modern time periods, and a general decline in the importance of the field. Comments by Timothy Gilfoyle and Carl Abbott contest the latter conclusion.
*Mohl, Raymond A. "The History of the American City," in William H. Cartwright and Richard L. Watson Jr. eds., ''Reinterpretation of American History and Culture'' (1973) pp 165–205, overview of historiography
* Montoya, María E. "From Homogeneity to Complexity: Understanding the Urban West." ''Western Historical Quarterly'' 42.3 (2011): 344–348
in JSTOR* Nickerson, Michelle. "Beyond Smog, Sprawl, and Asphalt: Developments in the Not-So-New Suburban History," ''Journal of Urban History'' (2015) 41#1 pp 171–180. covers 1934 to 2011. DOI: 10.1177/0096144214551724.
* Rabinowitz, Howard N., and James Michael Russell. "What Urban History Can Teach Us About the South and the South Can Teach Us About Urban History." ''Georgia Historical Quarterly'' (1989) 73#1 pp. 54–6
in JSTOR* Schlesinger, Arthur M. "The City in American History," ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' (1940) 27#1 pp. 43–6
in JSTORinfluential manifesto calling for an urban interpretation of all of American history
* Seligman, Amanda I. "Urban History Encyclopedias: Public, Digital, Scholarly Projects." ''Public Historian'' (2013) 35#2 pp: 24–35.
* Sies, Mary Corbin. "North American urban history: the everyday politics and spatial logics of metropolitan life." ''Urban History Review'' 32.1 (2003): 28–42
online* Stave, Bruce M., ed. ''The making of urban history: Historiography through oral history'' (1977), interviews with leading scholars, previously published in ''Journal of Urban History''
*
Anthologies of scholarly articles
* Callow, Alexander B., Jr., ed. ''American Urban History: An Interpretive Reader with Commentaries'' (3rd ed. 1982) 33 topical essays by scholars
* Chudacoff, Howard et al. eds. ''Major Problems in American Urban and Suburban History'' (2004)
* Corey, Steven H., and Lisa Krissoff Boehm, eds. ''The American Urban Reader: History and Theory'' (2010); 36 essays by expert
see website* Goldfield, David. ed. ''Encyclopedia of American Urban History'' (2 vol 2006); 1056 pp
excerpt and text search* Handlin, Oscar, and John Burchard, eds. ''The Historian and the City'' (1963)
* Holli, Melvin G. and Peter D. A. Jones, eds. ''Biographical Dictionary of American Mayors, 1820-1980: Big City Mayors'' (1981), essays by scholars on the most important mayors of Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and St. Louis.
* Shumsky, Larry. ''Encyclopedia of Urban America: The Cities and Suburbs'' (2 vol 1998)
* Wakstein, Allen M., ed. ''The Urbanization of America: An Historical Anthology'' (1970) 510 pp; 37 topical essays by scholars
Primary sources
* Glaab, Charles N., ed. ''The American city: a documentary history'' (1963) 491pp; selected primary documents
* Jackson, Kenneth T. and David S. Dunbar, eds. ''Empire City: New York Through the Centuries'' (2005), 1015 pages of excerpt
excerpt* Pierce, Bessie Louise, ed. ''As Others See Chicago: Impressions of Visitors, 1673-1933'' (1934)
* Still, Bayrd, ed. ''Mirror for Gotham: New York as Seen by Contemporaries from Dutch Days to the Present'' (New York University Press, 1956
online edition
External links
H-URBAN, daily email discussion group on urban history*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20150312054102/http://uha.udayton.edu/ The Urban History Association''Journal of Urban History''
{{US history
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*
Economic history of the United States
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