{"product_id":"the-creative-destruction-of-manhattan-19001940-historical-studies-of-urban-america","title":"The Creative Destruction of Manhattan  1900-1940 (Historical Studies of Urban America)","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinner of the 2001 Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.  \"Itll be a great place if they ever finish it \" O. Henry wrote about New York City. This laconic remark captures the relentlessly transitory character of New York  and it points toward Max Pages synthetic perspective. Against the prevailing motif of a naturally expanding metropolis  Page argues that the early-twentieth-century city was dominated by the politics of destruction and rebuilding that became the hallmark of modern urbanism.  The oxymoron \"creative destruction\" suggests the tensions that are at the heart of urban life: between stability and change  between particular places and undifferentiated spaces  between market forces and planning controls  and between the \"natural\" and \"unnatural\" in city growth. Page investigates these cultural counterweights through case studies of Manhattans development  with depictions ranging from private real estate development along Fifth Avenue to Jacob Riiss slum clearance efforts on the Lower East Side  from the elimination of street trees to the efforts to save City Hall from demolition.  In these examples some New Yorkers celebrate planning by destruction or marvel at the domestication of the natural environment  while others decry the devastation of their homes and lament the passing of the citys architectural heritage. A central question in each case is the role of the past in the shaping of collective memorywhich buildings are preserved? which trees are cut down? which fragments are enshrined in museums? Contrary to the popular sense of New York as an ahistorical city  the pastas recalled by powerful citizenswas  in fact  at the heart of defining how the city would be built.  Beautifully illustrated and written in clear  engaging prose  The Creative Destruction of Manhattan offers a new way of viewing the development of the American city.  \"An excellent  multifaceted analysis of the process of urban development-not the inevitability of development but the choices individuals  organizations  and developers made that transformed Manhattan. The politics of place was  Max Page convincingly argues  an ongoing battle to define and thereby control the evolving shape of the city.\"David Schuyler  author of Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing 1815-1852  \"Max Page transcends the usual dichotomy between those who glorify destruction for the sake of change and those who would avoid both at all cost. The sizeable borderland between architecture and preservation reveals new dimensions about science and history  innovation and memory  the cities that have been  and those yet to come.\"Gwendolyn Wright  author of The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism  \"A sober  humane explanation of how and why New York City became a place of continuous rebuilding. . . . For real or armchair New Yorkers  the whole package is a treat.\"Kirkus Reviews\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44964128358453,"sku":"ByrdShop_0226644685","price":33.19,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780226644684.jpg?v=1770450192","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-creative-destruction-of-manhattan-19001940-historical-studies-of-urban-america","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}