Description
Book SynopsisIn Design After Decline, Brent D. Ryan chronicles the fraught and intermittently successful rebuilding of Detroit and Philadelphia in recent decades, concluding that small-scale strategies must give way to a revived combination of innovative urban design and social planning.
Trade Review"A great read, a valuable contribution to current planning discourses on shrinking cities. This is a book that will be noticed not only in the United States but also abroad." *
Journal of the American Planning Association *
"Brent D. Ryan has produced a well-written and well-researched narrative about the development of many older American cities. Especially, the case studies about Detroit and Philadelphia are as interesting to read as they are well documented." *
Journal of Housing and the Built Environment *
"
Design After Decline is an important addition to the study of urbanism 'after the fall.' Ryan brings to this surprisingly little-researched topic an impressive expertise in planning as well as a belief in the social impact of good urban design. As he shows, the many failures and few hard-won victories of late twentieth-century urbanism must be understood if we are to recover a genuine American urbanism in the course of the twenty-first century." * Robert Fishman, University of Michigan *
Table of ContentsPreface
Chapter 1. "The Burden Has Passed": Urban Design After Urban Renewal
Chapter 2. Shrinkage or Renewal? The Fate of Older Cities, 1950-90
Chapter 3. "People Want These Houses": The Suburbanization of Detroit
Chapter 4. "Another Tradition in Planning": The Suburbanization of North Philadelphia
Chapter 5. Toward Social Urbanism for Shrinking Cities
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
