Debunking the Mythical Discourse Surrounding Public Housing: Part IV of the UHA 2012

In ToM's final installment of its 2012 UHA coverage, our correspondents present a detailed report regarding one of the conference's perpetually most popular subjects: public housing. With a packed house in attendance, the UHA’s six roundtable presenters provided a coherent and compelling argument against prevailing myths regarding public housing.  Considering the success of documentaries like The Pruitt Igoe myth in recent years, new interpretations of public housing’s legacy have come to the fore. Leading figures in urban housing including Kenneth Jackson and Alexander Von Hoffman among others attended, making for a lively post presentation discussion.   From Le Corbusier influenced …

Steel Towns, Motor Cities, and Cuban Refugees: Part III of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the third installment of ToM's four part coverage of the 2012 UHAs.  You'll detect a clear bias in favor of aged/renewed rust belt cities with a flourish of transnationalism at the end via the Cuban Revolution and post WWII Miami.  If you missed Part I click here and for Part II here. Panel – Rust Belt Cosmopolitanism Joshua Akers – Settling the City: Urban Homesteading and the Construction of Markets in Detroit “It stands out on the highway like a creature from another time/ It inspires the babies’ questions for their mothers as they ride/ But no one stopped to think about the babies or how they would survive/ We almost lost Detroit, this time.” - …

Crime in the City and the Curious Case of Philadelphia: Part II of the 2012 UHA

"Is their such a thing as Philadelphia exceptionalism?" asked one observer at this year's UHA.  Undoubtedly, over the past two UHA's (2010, 2012), Philadelphia has enjoyed the attentions of more than a few historians. With this in mind, ToM correspondents provide a glimpse at some of the work being done on the City of Brotherly Love.  Crime and policing emerged as another area of increased interest at this year's conference.  San Francisco's Chinatown, New York's Washington Heights, and yes, West Philadelphia provide case studies focusing on crime's influence on political mobilization, urban renewal, race relations and community activism. For part I of ToM's 2012 UHA coverage click …

Impending Hurricanes, Alternative Sexualities, and Tourism – Part I of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the 2012 Urban History Conference.  Hurricane Sandy loomed over the event like depression in a Tim Burton film, and ToM's editors and contributors send our best wishes to everyone on the Eastern seaboard. Much like our 2010 coverage, we did our best to cover an array of topics but inevitably the conference’s size and density placed limits on our correspondents. Nonetheless, ToM's endeavored to bring you several snapshots from the conference. Consider these imagistic academic instagrams rather than a comprehensive take on the event itself. Part I – Sex and the City   Panel - The Sexual City in the Americas: Tourism, Migration, and Race in Mexico City, Miami, and New …

Richmond City Nights: Part IV of the 2012 Policy History Conference

Welcome to ToM’s final installment on the 2012 Policy History Conference.  The life of graduate students and professors means that our correspondents sometimes lag a bit, like so many things in academia.  For our fourth post, anti-freeway movements and the role of the university in the economy and public life serve as PHC standard bearers. If you missed our earlier installments they can be read here: Part I Part II Part III Margaret O’Mara, All the World’s a Campus: Master Planning, Politics, and the University as Model City, 1950-2012  In this fascinating paper, Margaret O’Mara attempts to reframe the history of the so-called entrepreneurial university.  In her …

Richmond City Nights: Part III of the 2012 Policy History Conference

In part III of ToM's coverage of the 2012 Policy History Conference traverses the whole of post WWII 20th century history.  From the efforts of municipal leaders to construct expressways boosting downtown development in the 1940s to the role of 1970s sexual debates and the onslaught of AIDS in reforming health policies to 1990s military activism that pushed back against the Army's long history of discrimination against homosexuals, PHC participants engaged a range of topics and periods.  Here they are. The US Military:  Activism, Rights, and Policy Beth Bailey, Military Exceptionalism, Civil Rights, and the Struggle over Gays in the Military Author of From Front Porch to Back …

Richmond City Nights: Part II of the 2012 Policy History Conference

In Part II of ToM's coverage, policy scholars address the efforts of Great Society cultural programs and the power of conservative media and infrastructure in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. If you missed part one, click here. Cultural Policy Making in the Great Society Christopher Loomis, An Appetite for Excellence: The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 In this paper, UVA doctoral student Christopher Loomis brings welcome attention to one of the least understood legacies of the Great Society: public broadcasting.  Since the 1960s conservatives have deplored the liberal projects of that decade as the exemplar of big government failure, while many on the Left have focused on how …

Richmond City Nights: Part I of the 2012 Policy History Conference

What is a conference without a solid discussion of the future prospects of the robot rights movement?  Every two years, scholars gather in burgeoning metropolises like Richmond, VA and Columbus, OH to debate the sources, implications, and meanings of public policies and the movements and people who craft them at the Policy History Conference. At June’s 2012 four day event, attendees traversed a variety of topics and issues.  In Part I, ToM looks at the impact of the New Right on gun ownership, taxes and Richard Nixon and the results and conflicts of 1970s regional developmental efforts in Denver, Detroit, and the Bay area. Guns, Taxes and the Rise of the Right Jeffrey Marlin, …

L.A. Confidential: California History and the 2012 Whitsett Seminar

If you've ever been to Los Angeles, you know beneath the sprawl lay one of the nation's most fascinating cities.  From Echo Park to Boyle Heights to Silver Lake to Malibu, Los Angeles collects vistas, peoples, highways, and film noir like few others. Beyond LA, California provides scholars with ample subjects from which to explore history both locally and nationally.  The network of public universities in Los Angeles and the state's other cities only furthers this process. The annual Whitsett Grad Student Seminar enables future academics to present their California research to professors and  graduate students working in similar fields. Cal State Northridge's Whitsett Professor of …

The 2012 AHA: The Chicago Way

Chicago dogs, deep dish pizza, nasal Midwestern accents, and sunny 50 degree days. Three of these things are associated with Chicago in January. Perhaps the larger forces of the universe took sympathy on the army of academics that descended upon Chicago last week for the annual American History Association conference (one might note the annual meeting of the American Economics Association also held there conference in the Windy City last week, throttling native Chicagoans with questions about opportunity costs, endogenous influences, credit supply in the age of financial crisis and so on). The dark arts of academic employment deserved at the very least blue skies and semi-warm weather. As …