Concrete and Clay : Reworking Nature in New York City

by Matthew Gandy

• ISBN13: 9780262572163
• ISBN10: 0262572168
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

In this innovative account of the urbanization of nature in New York City, Matthew Gandy explores how the raw materials of nature have been reworked to produce a "metropolitan nature" distinct from the forms of nature experienced by early settlers. The book traces five broad developments: the expansion and redefinition of public space, the construction of landscaped highways, the creation of a modern water supply system, the radical environmental politics of the barrio in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the contemporary politics of the environmental justice movement. Drawing on political economy, environmental studies, social theory, cultural theory, and architecture, Gandy shows how New York's environmental history is bound up not only with the upstate landscapes that stretch beyond the city's political boundaries but also with more distant places that reflect the nation's colonial and imperial legacies. Using the shifting meaning of nature under urbanization as a framework, he looks at how modern nature has been produced through interrelated transformations ranging from new water technologies to changing fashions in landscape design. Throughout, he considers the economic and ideological forces that underlie phenomena as diverse as the location of parks and the social stigma of dirty neighborhoods.

Author Biography

Matthew Gandy teaches geography at University College London.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Water, Space, and Power	p. 19
Water and the Nascent Civic Realm	p. 24
Engineering the Technological Sublime	p. 32
Urban Decay and the Hidden City	p. 52
Paranoid Urbanism	p. 60
Hydrological Transformations	p. 70
Symbolic Order and the Urban Pastoral	p. 77
Cultural Anxiety, Land Speculation, and Public Space	p. 81
Creating the Garden of a Great City	p. 87
Olmsted's Urban Vision: A Fragile Synthesis	p. 97
Olmsted Rediscovered: An Emerging Preservationist Ethic	p. 102
Emerald Dreams	p. 109
Technological Modernism and the Urban Parkway	p. 115
The Automobilization of the American Landscape	p. 118
Robert Moses and the Radiant City	p. 126
The Demise of Technological Modernism	p. 138
Fractured Cities	p. 147
Between Borinquen and the Barrio	p. 153
Landscapes of Despair	p. 156
Space, Identity, and Power	p. 162
Disarray in the 1970s	p. 177
The Power of Memory	p. 182
Rustbelt Ecology	p. 187
Across the Great Divide	p. 193
Pollution and the Politics of Resistance	p. 200
Reclaiming the Social Environment	p. 213
Trash Can Utopias	p. 221
Epilogue	p. 229
Notes	p. 235
Index	p. 327
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