The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Emi Higashiyama Savannah, Georgia, may not be the most obvious place to look for a decades-long battle over city planning, but recent developments over the Civic Center proved to be a contest that revived old feuds and started new ones. […]
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This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by David Bruno During the mid to late twentieth century, shopping centers in America served as community cornerstones, providing communal spaces and establishing national social and cultural connections based on mutual shopping experiences and product consumption. Weakening regional differences and contributing […]
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This piece is an entry in our Eighth Annual Graduate Student Blogging Contest, “Connections.” by Andrew Allio The camera pans along the street, highlighting the abandoned buildings. Midway down the block, a bulldozed lot is littered with broken concrete, plywood, and other construction debris. It is May 9, 1967, and Ben Williams of KPIX News […]
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Rose, Mark H. and Roger Biles. A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2022. Reviewed by David Goodwin As public concern over the COVID-19 pandemic shifts from a guiding fear to a collective memory, American urban centers struggle to reimagine and restructure themselves to an […]
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This is the second entry in our Metropolis of the Month for November 2023, Washington D.C. By Kyla Sommers In response to the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, African Americans took to the streets in more than one hundred American cities. The rebellions in Washington, DC, resulted in […]
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The seventh entry in this year’s Graduate Student Blogging Contest is by Bridget Laramie Kelly, who won last year’s blogging contest. In this year’s entry, she writes about how a historic Black suburb was perceived by wealthier white residents as a “stumbling block” in the way of protecting and increasing property values. To see all […]
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Picturing Urban Renewal is a history of urban renewal from the bottom up. The urban renewal story typically is told from the perspective of politicians and urban planners. This website gives voice to displaced residents and business owners, community activists, reporters, gentrifiers, and construction workers, as well as to politicians and planners. The goal of […]
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David Hochfelder, PhD Associate Professor History Department, University at Albany, SUNY Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My current research is on the history of urban renewal, in particular, a public/digital history of urban renewal in New York State we’re calling Picturing Urban Renewal. I and my two colleagues, Ann Pfau and […]
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Francesca Russello Ammon Associate Professor of City & Regional Planning and Historic Preservation Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania @AmmonFrancesca When and where was your first UHA conference? In fall 2006, I presented my first UHA paper at the conference at the University of Arizona. It was a wonderful opportunity to present on a […]
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Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of articles during April that examine the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past seven decades. The series, titled Justice and the Interstates, opens up new areas for historical inquiry, while also calling on policy makers and the transportation and urban planning professions to […]
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The Metropole 