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The Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, today has over one hundred forty thousand residents and is considered a “boomburb” because of its double-digit percentage growth over several decades. How did it reach this point? Explanations of urban growth—including the Chicago School and political economy perspectives; categories of suburbs, like boomburbs and edge cities; and narratives within Naperville itself—highlight different mechanisms at work. This study considers the factors that influenced Naperville’s growth and how each narrative fits the suburb’s development. The implications for future studies of suburban growth include the unpredictability of growth as it is happening, recognizing the limits of categorizing suburbs, undertaking comparative studies of suburbs across types or within regions, and not relying heavily on analyses of suburban outliers and unusual cases (like Naperville). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how tramways were publically appropriated, in what way people responded to the new modes of transport, and how they integrated them into their lives and urban environments. The approach of public appropriation shifts the focus away from the technology and tramway companies to the users of the new modes and opens the field to the analysis of the interrelationship between transport technology and urban cultures in a comparative perspective. The study concludes that people were more critical of horse than of electric tramways. The often-quoted “massive public opposition” to electrification turns out to be much weaker than hitherto assumed. Only by the mid-1910s had the urban masses, upper classes, and workers fully appropriated them as modes to serve their working and leisure habits, as fashionable and as a very positive and visual sign for the ability and prestige of the city and an urban community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the twentieth-century American South, black religious institutions played key roles in shaping and reshaping urban landscapes. In doing so, these institutions made significant, but often overlooked, contributions to the “Long Civil Rights Movement.” In Memphis, no church better exemplified the intimate intertwining of race, space, and religion than the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). The history of COGIC in Memphis complicates the assumption that the Civil Rights Movement dictated a simple move from segregated black space to racially integrated space and breaks down false spatial dichotomies such as black/white and religious/secular. Instead, COGIC built segregated worship space, moved into white residential space, adapted black religious space for overtly political purposes, and finally, claimed white secular space for black religious purposes. Alongside the properly celebrated deeds of national leaders, local reconfigurations of urban space by religious institutions deserve to be recognized as a prime factor in the long road to civil rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article untangles the history of the Bulgarian capital city from that of the state to analyze how the development of Sofia between 1934 and 1944 embodied the achievements and weaknesses of midcentury Bulgaria. During this period, Sofia embarked on an intensive project of urban planning and renewal. Municipal leaders and intellectuals aspired to transform the cluttered and chaotic city into a modern and attractive “European” capital on the one side and the heart of national existence on the other. This bifurcated vision of the nation—rooted in the past yet forward and Westward looking—failed to convince Sofia’s growing citizenry to stay and defend their city during the Allied bombing campaign of late 1943/early 1944. The wartime fate of this Axis capital revealed the shortcomings of the Bulgarian state and the nationalism it promoted. When residents did return to the bombed city, it was not out of patriotic duty but because it still appeared more “European,” more “modern” than any other place in the country. Therefore, one could interpret Sofia’s rapid and continued growth as a popular rejection of the traditions of Bulgarian rural existence and a desire for a different type of nation: convenient, democratic, dynamic, and modern. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores how historians—and others—continue to create a barrier between the natural world and the city, and why the so-called declensionist narrative—humans as agents of harmful physical change—still dominates our understanding of the urban environment. It suggests several ways to reconsider the declensionist narrative; to evaluate the connection between "first nature" and "second nature;" to better understand the relationship between urban and ecological systems; and to assess how cities are natural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hilarión González del Castillo (HOC) has made a place for himself in the history of urbanism as propagandist for the Linear City and theoretical town plannet The appearance of the first motorway projects in Spain at the end of the 1920s, inspired him to propose a colonising motor-way, that would take advantage of the infrastructure for the construction of linear cities. HOC's proposal had influence in the draft of some of the first Spanish motorways but has practically disappeared until the present. While few town planners of the age considered the role of the automobile (Le Corbusier, Benton Mackaye), HOC explained the relation of the motorways with the environment, spotting conflicts that passed unnoticed by the highway engineers. From this, the proposal evolved into an attempt to resolve the conflict between the intercity traffic and the urban activities situated on the margins of the motorway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the intersection of oil industry interests and the growth strategy of local elites in the wake of Ventura, California's oil boom of the 1920s. It amends urban growth machine and civic boosterism theory by showing why cosmopolitan capital may exert influence over parochial politics even if it does not have a direct interest in population increase. The study also finds that oil development sustained long-term quantitative growth for this coastal community, much as Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien found in their study of five towns in the Permian basin of west Texas. Owing to the influence of outside companies, however, boosters failed to develop Ventura qualitatively as a tourist and recreational destination. Indeed, by the 1950s, Ventura more closely resembled inland California oil towns in terms of place than nearby Santa Barbara, which boosters had hoped to emulate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to survey the field of historical studies concerned with "middle" cities (populations 100,000 to one million) in the post-Independence period of South Asia-which includes the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Maldives-with particular focus on places with populations between 100,000 and 200,000 and places that are rapidly growing to enter this category. The discussion begins with a statistical overview of the explosive growth of urbanization in South Asia since 1947-1948. The argument then moves into the colonial past to sketch the preconditions for urban change at the beginning of the British colonial period and the British-led contributions to "secondary" urban growth through initiatives in transportation systems, the cantonment, the hill station, and the agrarian marketing-and-administrative center. The argument then shifts back to approaches that may aid in the understanding of post-colonial economic and technological processes that built on the colonial framework to propel urban growth for middle cities; case studies here include central place theory, analysis of grass-roots capitalist development and entrepreneurship, and the impact of state-designed industrial planning. The article concludes with observations on the challenges presented to the historical profession by this gigantic field of urban expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines images of urban and domestic space that appeared in "Playboy" magazine in the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that in crafting the bachelor's ideal habitat, "Playboy" engaged in a popular discourse on changing roles for men and women, transformations in the urban landscape, and a consolidating ethos of consumption. Readers encountered a vision of urban life and domesticity that served as a gendered response to the perceived "feminization" of society and widespread suburbanization while also countering images of urban decline. "Playboy's" representations of the bachelor pad and the city provide insight into the meanings attached to the evolution of the metropolitan landscape in the postwar period and reveal the cultural foundations for the construction of a masculine identity based on leisure and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a heightened sensitivity to noise arose in European cities. In a context of expanding industrialization and urbanization, medical journals and leading newspapers published extensive articles on the changing acoustic conditions of cities. Neurologists and ear specialists increasingly were confronted with the physical effects of noise pollution, and civic officials and sanitary inspectors noted a marked increase of noise-related complaints. Engineers, architects, and urban planners searched for ways to reduce the din, and conferences on sanitary regulations and health management put noise and how to avoid it on their agendas. This study highlights the social background of this movement in Vienna. It describes the radically changed soundscape in a fast-growing metropolis and examines the heightened discourse on noise among the middle classes between 1870 and 1914. By analyzing the reactions to noise—for example, the ways in which noise-abatement campaigns were received by the public—this article shows that attitudes to noise were fundamentally ambivalent. Noise thus appears as a complex phenomenon that can illumine social and economic conflicts, cultural criticism. and questions of urban development. The strategies employed to cope with noise pollution turn out to be a consistent pan of a specific cultural perception that helped to transform and regulate public space according to middle-class concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the emergence of the postwar sex district in San Francisco, in particular, and in the metro- politan United States, in general. The author argues that the sex district of the I 960s and I 970s was not sim- ply a relic from the first half of the twentieth century but rather a fundamentally new phenomenon. Infused by the libertinism of the sexual revolution, the eroding legal criteria of "obscenity," and the immense profitabil- ity of pornography and other forms of commercial sexual entertainment, owners of sex businesses brought an element of explicit, public sexuality to the streets of San Francisco and other American cities that had not existed since the nineteenth century-and then only to a much lesser degree. Furthermore, the sex district played a crucial, though relatively unknown, role in municipal politics during the era of urban renewal and redevelopment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that socialist cities were fundamentally shaped by both "modern" and "traditional" concepts of urbanism, showing major shifts throughout time and remarkable differences from one city to another. After an examination of the planners' debates in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, the three East German cities of Eisenhuttenstadt, Schwedt, and Berlin Marzahn are analyzed to show common features as well as the different pathways of urban development. Special attention is given to the relationship between inner-urban transformation and "extensive urbanism," and to the question of socialist environmental problems and lifestyles. It is claimed that the socialist pathway of urban development differed considerably from the process of suburbanization in the Western countries and can be interpreted as an attempt to realize "socialist utopias" by forming socialist men, socialist families, and socialist neighborhoods with the help of urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have generally argued that the modern triumph of a language of class eclipsed collective identities rooted in older, more hierarchical conceptions of rank and estate. This article, drawing on the author's previously published research on white-collar workers in twentieth-century Peru, comes to a radically different conclusion. Despite using what appeared to be an explicit and often combative discourse of class interest and class conflict, Peru's white-collar workers justified their demands by emphasizing the difference between themselves and manual workers. Masquerading as class consciousness were many of the rhetorical tropes that had long legitimated the society of orders, including a presumption that social standing was an innate quality fixed at birth. Corporatist social legislation adopted in the 1920s reinforced the principle that white-collar and blue-collar workers were distinct species of human beings deserving of entirely different benefits. Unequal rights became enshrined in labor law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that members of not only the "new" middle class but also the so-called old middle class contributed to the emergence of modern American society. The author examines the experiences of members of the "old" middle class from midwestern small towns and cities as they sought to situate themselves within six subcultures that were intertwining to form a regional and national middle-class culture-professional culture, corporate culture, politics and the law, boosterism, male subcultures, and gentility. In each, their efforts focused on responding to the erosion of personal networks, a proliferation of choices within an increasingly differentiated and fragmented social and institutional landscape, and an increasingly impersonal society. The author suggests that members of both the old and new middle class contributed to shaping new definitions of self, gender, and identity that helped define a new national middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study examines the specificity of the circumstances in which influx control measures were introduced in the city of Port Elizabeth. The Eastern Cape's premier port and industrial center acquired a reputation as a progressive place partly because the city council resisted implementing such measures until 1953, by which time they were well entrenched in other South African centers. This reputation also rested on the municipality's provision of low-cost council housing for both white and black residents. But Port Elizabeth's exceptionalism was overstated by the city's publicists. It is argued that the city's labor requirements, the institutional interests of the local authority, the possibility of African resistance, and the costs thereof contributed to the council's misgivings about influx control. In the final analysis, the resistance to the implementation of influx controls was based on pragmatic rather than principled objections by liberal councillors who determined council policies toward the African population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German sociologist and cultural philosopher Georg Simmel's contribution to Europe's urban history has had an enduring influence, due in no part to the validity of his empirical approach. In his texts, however, Simmel manages to capture quite accurately the feeling of life in modem urban centers—so his readers attest—due to his own experiences as a city dweller. This article asks what kind of experiences he had in the big city, or could have had, particularly in Berlin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the social relations in urban history. Sanctions of public interactions; Perpetuation of materiality in modern urban space; Proliferation of shared labyrinthian streetways.

Explores the ironies of urban reform in the United States during the 1960's. Advantages of revisiting the Mobilization for Youth (MFY) program; What influenced the MFY approach to community organization; Ironies that became apparent during the second and final year of the MFY planning efforts.

Explores the way in which a sense of identity, which transforms mere urban space into a quartier, can be born and develop. Origin of the name Quartier de la Gare in Clermont-Ferrand, France; Factors considered in naming the place where one lived; Possible factors that could have contributed to the construction and subsequent consolidation of an identity specific to the Quartier de la Gare.

Interviews Charles Tilly about urban history and urban sociology. Discovery of the process of connecting urbanization with revolution and counterrevolution; How Tilly's theory of urbanization came about; Tilly's research on contention and social changes in 17th and 18th-century Great Britain.

Discusses the problems regarding media reporting of urban life. Treatment of socio-economic projects as separate from the metropolitan public; Distortion of community life by the media; Contributions of Charles Edward Merriam Jr.; Inaccurate information passed along to the powerful; Urban reporting through direct experience and observation.

Examines the transformation of black western areas in Johannesburg in South Africa. Process of racial segregation; Efforts to engineer racially segreagted towns and cities; Increase in the black population.