Imaging the City: Continuing Struggles and New Directions

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IMAGING THE CITY: CONTINUING STRUGGLES AND NEW DIRECTIONS Lawrence J. Vale and Sam Bass Warner Jr., eds. This book explores urban image making from the civic boosterism of medieval cities to the iconic imagery of Las Vegas and Times Square, from place marketing to MTV. In the tradition of Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City, urban historians, geographers, city planners, architects, and cultural commentators examine the multiple influences on how individuals understand and organize their experience of cities. Richly illustrated, these essays analyze the creation of urban imagery from the signature skyscrapers of Kuala Lumpur to the re-creation of the South Bronx and the use of city images in film, literature, television, and on the Internet. Contributors explore the role of heritage landscapes, city ratings, travel guides, public art, and urban spectacles in imaging the city. Vale and Warner show urban planners, civic boosters, and lovers of cities how physical design, media, culture, and imagination combine to produce the images through which we know our cities. Contents Introduction: Cities, Media, and Imaging Sam Bass Warner Jr. and Lawrence J. Vale Part One. STRUGGLES OVER CITY IMAGES Image Construction in Premodern Cities Julian Beinart Place Marketing: Using Media to Promote Cities Briavel Holcomb From Flames to Flowers: The Role of Planning in Re-imaging the South Bronx Eugenie Ladner Birch Re-imaging the Rust Belt: Can Cleveland Sustain the Renaissance? Patricia Burgess, Ruth Durack, and Edward W. Hill Skyscraper Competition in Asia: New City Images and New City Form Larry R. Ford The Images of Commonplace Living in Modern City-Regions Judith A. Martin and Sam Bass Warner Jr. Part Two. RESPONSES TO THE OVERWHELMING CITY Tales of Manhattan: Mapping the Urban Imagination through Hollywood Film Henry Jenkins Image Renewal: Polemic and Presentation in the Urban Theory of Rem Koolhaas and Leon Krier Sandy Isenstadt Antiurbanist City Images and New Media Culture Thomas J. Campanella Part Three. NEW IMAGES AND NEW IMAGE MAKERS Narrative Places and the New Practice of Urban Design Dennis Frenchman The City in Cyberspace Anne Beamish Urban Images on Children’s Television Lawrence J. Vale and Julia R. Dobrow Urban Counter-images: Community Activism Meets Public Art Deborah Karasov Ephemera, Temporary Urbanism, and Imaging J. Mark Schuster Rating Place-Ratings John de Monchaux New Public Realms: Re-imaging the City-Region Lawrence J. Vale APPENDIX City Imaging: A Bibliographic Essay Lawrence J. Vale LAWRENCE J. VALE is associate professor and associate head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is devoted to interpreting the history, politics, and sociology of urban design. He is the author of three books and numerous articles examining government-sponsored environments, including Architecture, Power, and National Identity (1992) and From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (2000). His work has been recognized with the Spiro Kostof Book Award for Architecture and Urbanism (1994), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1995), the Chester Rapkin Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (1997), a Place Research Award from the Environmental Design Research Association and the journal Places (1999), and the Best Book in Urban Affairs prize from the Urban Affairs Association (2000). SAM BASS WARNER JR. is an urban historian best known for his writing on the history of American urban development: The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City; The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (winner of the Bancroft Prize in 1968); and Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston 1870–1900. He is currently a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and was formerly William Edwards Huntington Professor of History at Boston University and Jack Meyerhoff Professor of Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. He is also past president of the Urban History Association. His most recent book is Greater Boston: Adapting Regional Traditions to the Present (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).