American Urban Form: A Representative History

by Sam Bass Warner, Jr., Andrew Whittemore

An illustrated history of the American city's evolution from sparsely populated village to regional metropolis.American Urban Form--the spaces, places, and boundaries that define city life--has been evolving since the first settlements of colonial days. The changing patterns of houses, buildings, streets, parks, pipes and wires, wharves, railroads, highways, and airports reflect changing patterns of the social, political, and economic processes that shape the city. In this book, Sam Bass Warner and Andrew Whittemore map more than three hundred years of the American city through the evolution of urban form. They do this by offering an illustrated history of "the City"--a hypothetical city (constructed from the histories of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York) that exemplifies the American city's transformation from village to regional metropolis.

In an engaging text accompanied by Whittemore's detailed, meticulous drawings, they chart the City's changes. Planning for the future of cities, they remind us, requires an understanding of the forces that shaped the city's past.

Genres: History, Urbanism, Nonfiction, Sociology, School, The United States Of America, Architecture

194 pages, Paperback

First published February 24, 2012

About the author

Sam Bass Warner, Jr., is Visiting Professor of Urban History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another one of those kind of wonky books. If you're really into this subject matter, you'll love it.

Warner and Whittemore combine common elements of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York into a single hypothetical example, "The City," and chart its growth, both physically and demographically, from founding to present day. The written component is fascinating/enlightening, but made even better by Whittemore's incremental sketches, showing The City from a bird's-eye view in each of the major periods of its existence. A few sketches of its architecture, or street-level layout are also included, and supplement certain sections well.

If you're a big fan of this subject matter (the history of urban growth in the Northeastern United States), this is kind of a must read, in my opinion. Even if you're not into this sort of book, I think I'd recommend it anyway.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully illustrated exemplary look at east coast urban development. For anyone who is casually interested in the organic development of and character of north-eastern american cities, you could do far worse than this slim, accessible book.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is only good for its physical representations of the architectural evolution via drawings of urban areas in America. Without those, the book is just filled with horribly written history about a fictitious city that uses the history of 3 separate cities as its make up, which is an awful choice considering the 3 cities have very different histories and often the authors contradict their own ideas. The authors also often refer to people- African Americans and Native Americans as objects. Over-all terrible read, but great art/drawings.