The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West

Modern American West

by Carl Abbott

When the American West represented the country’s frontier, many of its cities may have seemed little more than trading centers to serve the outlying populace. Now the nation’s most open and empty region is also its most heavily urbanized, with eighty percent of Westerners living in its metropolitan areas. The process of urbanization that had already transformed the United States from a rural to an urban society between 1815 and 1930 has continued most clearly and completely in the modern West, where growth since 1940—spurred by mobilization for World War II—has constituted a distinct era in which Western cities have become national and even international pacesetters.

The Metropolitan Frontier places this last half-century of Western history in its urban context, making it the first comprehensive overview of urban growth in the region. Integrating the urban experience of all nineteen Western states, Carl Abbott ranges for evidence from Honolulu to Houston and from Fargo to Fairbanks to show how Western cities organize the region's vast spaces and connect them to the even larger sphere of the world economy. His survey moves from economic change to social and political response, examining the initial boom of the 1940s, the process of change in the following decades, and the ultimate impact of Western cities on their environments, on the Western regional character, and on national identity.

Today, a steadily decreasing number of Western workers are engaged in rural industries, but Western cities continue to grow. As ecological and social crises begin to affect those cities, Abbott’s study will prove required reading for historians, geographers, sociologists, urban planners, and all citizens concerned with America’s future.
 

Genres: History

244 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 1995

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bunch of crazy weird facts and little stories with absolutely no structure or point. And I mean none. He'll jump across ten cities and 30 years of history in five pages without any link or idea stringing them together. I should have known. This is not the first book where Abbott has done that.

Still, it's good to know the history behind the Johnson Space Center (Lyndon Johnson of course, along with Humble Oil and Rice University), to know that Elvis made a crappy movie about the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, the one that created the Space Needle(the movie was called "A Trip to the World's Fair, with Elvis!" or something like that), and that Austin was basically run by a clique of irate college students in the early 70s.

[Rodger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back when I was in college, one of my favorite classes was called the History of American Cities. This book was one of the texts. While scanning the assigned reading, I thought that this book was written rather like a novel rather than a textbook with cities as the characters. I kept this book to reread someday when I could read for enjoyment rather than cramming knowledge amidst other classes. So, nearly 20 years later, I decided to finally read this book for enjoyment.

While the book progresses in narrative format, it jumps around between dozens of cities. If the point of the book is to show the historical trends of cities, it does that in the first three chapters, but it swims back and forth through time as it chases topics in the rest of the book. Also, the chapters seemed to have multiple topics in them that aren't outlined well. The disadvantage of this is that after reading, it doesn't make for a good reference to go back, because ideas are lost in a narrative that covers a wide range of topics. Furthermore, the references to the then current day are now over 20 years outdated. I still enjoyed reading it.

[Elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

read it for a class.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typical outdated, theory based concepts and ideals about human settlement.