{"product_id":"from-improvement-to-city-planning-9781439920855","title":"From Improvement to City Planning","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom Improvement to City Planning\u003c\/i\u003e emphasizes the ways people in nineteenth-century America managed urban growth. Historian Henry Binford shows how efforts to improve space were entwined with the evolution of urban governance (i.e., regulation)—and also influenced by a small group of advantaged families.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBinford looks specifically at Cincinnati, Ohio, then the largest and most important interior city west of the Appalachian Mountains. He shows that it was not just industrialization, but also beliefs about morality, race, health, poverty, and “slum” environments, that demanded an improvement of urban space. As such, movements for public parks and large-scale sanitary engineering in the 1840s and ’50s initiated the beginning of modern city planning. However, there were limitations and consequences to these efforts..\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany Americans believed that remaking city environments could also remake citizens. \u003ci\u003eFrom Improvement to City Planning\u003c\/i\u003e exam\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Binford’s fine and meticulous scholarship builds a compelling and important argument about the early decades of civic activism and planning in U.S. cities. Cincinnati is far less studied than other midwestern cities, but as Binford shows, it has a rich nineteenth-century historiography. His book shows how the physical and social fabric of the city were inextricably intertwined, neighborhood by neighborhood and block by block.”\u003c\/i\u003e—\u003cb\u003eCarl Abbott\u003c\/b\u003e, Emeritus Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, and author of \u003ci\u003eHow Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“An intellectual history as well as an urban history, \u003c\/i\u003eFrom Improvement to City Planning\u003ci\u003e demonstrates that Cincinnati was one of the most important cities west of the Appalachian Mountains during the nineteenth century. Binford effectively integrates issues of physical spatial management, evangelical religion, and applied science in the forms of new engineering and medical technologies. His argument is precise and distinctive and is sure to be influential. This important book has broad implications.”\u003c\/i\u003e—\u003cb\u003eTimothy Gilfoyle\u003c\/b\u003e, Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, and author of \u003ci\u003eA Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"In \u003c\/i\u003eFrom Improvement to City Planning\u003ci\u003e, Henry C. Binford offers a useful contribution to understandings of formative urban planning practices in the U.S., through an engaging narrative history of Cincinnati’s emergence as the ‘Queen City of the West.’ A significant strength of his account is the identification of two distinct periods in the ‘pre-history’ of American planning.... Binford’s insightful use of a broad range of historical sources allows him make a host of illuminating observations.\"\u003c\/i\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eHousing Studies\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Binford’s extensively researched book... is also a record of early concepts of public-private governance, character formation through moral influence, and 'improvement' played out within the expanding boundaries of the oldest, purely American big city in the United States.... [T]he book is clearly written...and would be a good introductory text on early U.S. urbanity.\"\u003c\/i\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eJournal of Urban Affairs\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"The book is engagingly written and informative about the urban history of the Old Northwest.... Binford’s emphasis on the long history of ecological approaches to urban governance is also a valuable contribution.... The book’s strength lies in its detailed portrayals of what, how, and who accomplished these feats in Cincinnati.\"\u003c\/i\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eJournal of American History\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Temple University Press,U.S.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49408322535767,"sku":"9781439920855","price":27.9,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781439920855.jpg?v=1730502437","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/from-improvement-to-city-planning-9781439920855","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}