North American Urban History: The Everyday Politics and Spatial Logics of Metropolitan Life
Journal article by Mary Corbin Sies; Urban History Review, Vol. 32, 2003
Journal Article Excerpt
North American Urban History: The Everyday Politics and Spatial Logics of Metropolitan Life. by Mary Corbin Sies Abstract At the start of the twenty-first century, North American urban history is flourishing. Compared to twenty-five years ago, the field has become more interdisciplinary and intellectually invigorating. Scholars are publishing increasingly sophisticated efforts to understand how the city as space intersects the urbanization process, as well as studies that recognize the full complexity of experiences for different metropolitan cohorts. A burgeoning literature connects the everyday cultural experiences of urban North Americans with larger social processes and issues of historical analysis. Such a rapidly evolving field defies attempts to summarize the state of its scholarship. This essay will therefore confine itself to a survey of five themes of recent scholarship on the urban history of Canada and the United States: social class and the city, housing studies, urban life and politics, city-suburb relationships, and race relations and the metropolis. These diverse bodies of literature challenge our common wisdom about how cities and suburbs work and inspire urbanists to approach their topics with fresh eyes, an interdisciplinary purview, and an open mind. Resume Au debut du [XX1.sup.e] siecle, l'histoire urbaine est un domaine en plein essor en Amerique du Nord. Ses aspects interdisciplinaires et intellectuellement stimulants sont maintenant plus affirmes qu'ils ne l'etaient 25 ans auparavant. Les chercheurs publient des etudes de plus en plus nuancees et complexes pour comprendre les recoupements entre l'espace de la ville et le processus d'urbanisation, ainsi que des etudes qui tiennent compte de la diversite de comportement des communautes qui composent la ville. Un nouveau courant litteraire est en train de naitre, qui relie l'experience du quotidien dans i'Amerique urbaine a des courants sociaux plus vastes et des questions de methodologie historique. Ce champ intellectuel se developpe de maniere si rapide qu'il est difficile d'en faire la synthese. Cet article se cantonne donc a l'examen de cinq thematiques recentes d'histoire urbaine au Canada et aux Etats-Unis_: les classes sociales et la ville, le logement, la vie citadine et politique, les relations entre la ville et la banlieue, et les relations entre races dans un contexte metropolitain. Ces diverses categories d'etudes remet. tent en cause des idees recues sur la maniere dont fonctionnent les milieux urbains et suburbains et incitent les specialistes en urbanisme a porter sur leurs sujets d'etude un regard neuf, interdisplinaire et tolerant. A quarter century ago, the study of North American urban history appeared to be in the doldrums. New generations of scholars pointedly overlooked the field's pioneering studies, practitioners of the new urban history questioned whether social history had made the field redundant, and scholars could be heard at professional meetings fretting about attracting the next generation to the field. (1) Early in the twenty-first century, however, the state of North American urban history could not look more different. Since the mid-1980s, scholars have taken urban history in new directions and the field has become more adventuresome and interdisciplinary. (2) Traditional themes, such as technology and the city, federal-city relations, and planning and housing remain vital while many new lines of inquiry have opened up, such as urban culture, race relations, and studies of the working class. (3) Long-standing subfields, such as urban politics and suburbanization, have taken startling turns, producing bold new challenges to previous scholarship. (4) Perhaps because the field has sometimes seemed in distress, urbanists have been prone to worry in print about the state of their art. (5) Indeed, the proliferation of so many lines of inquiry can be disconcerting. Raymond Mohl argued as early as 1988 that "the outpouring of scholarship has fragmented the field and created problems of comprehension and analysis." (6) More recently, Timothy Gilfoyle noted that such "multiple and perplexing views" are "emblematic of the interpretive confusion marking urban history since 1980." (7) In contrast to these positions, however, (argue that North American urban history has never been more intellectually invigorating than at present. Where some condemn the broad constructions of "urban" and characterize today's scholarship as lacking analytic rigor, I perceive increasingly sophisticated efforts to understand how the city as space intersects the urbanization process. (8) While some decry the loss of a single integrated interpretation, I salute studies that recognize the full complexity of experiences for different metropolitan cohorts. (9) To those scholars who criticize urban history's insularity, I point out the burgeoning literature that connects the everyday cultural experiences of urban North Americans with larger social processes and issues of historical analysis. (10)... |
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