Fleeing the City: Studies in the Culture and Politics of Antiurbanism [Hardcover]

This collection of essays explores the phenomenon of antiurbanism: the antipathy, fear, and hatred of the city. Antiurbanism has been a pervasive counter-discourse to modernity and urbanization especially since the beginning of industrialism and the dawning of modern life. Most of the attention on modernity has been focused on urbanization and its consequences. But as the essays collected here demonstrate, antiurbanism is an equally important reality as it can be seen as playing a crucial role in cultural identity, in the formation of the self within the context of modernity, as well as in the root of many forms of conservative politics and cultural movements.PART I: THEORIZING ANTIURBANISM What is Antiurbanism? A Theoretical Perspective; M.J.Thompson Antiurbanism in the United States, England, and China; R.A.Beauregard The Origins of Antiurbanism; J.A.Clapp PART II: ANTIURBANISM IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE Pastoral Ideals and City Troubles; L.Marx Boys in the City: Homoerotic Desire and the Urban Refuge in Early-Twentieth-Century Germany; E.Mancini Antiurbanism, New York, and the Early-Twentieth-Century American National Imagination; A.M.Blake PART III: ANTIURBANISM IN SOCIETY AND POLITICS Imagining the Urban Poor; R.Salerno Americans, Urbanism, and Sprawl: An Exploration of Living Preferences; E.Talen Fundamentalism and Antiurbanism: The Frontier Myth, the Christian Nation, and the Heartland; E.Mendieta Against Safety, Against Security: Reinvigorating Urban Life; D.Mitchell

Fleeing the City is a worthwhile project that fills the gap in the existing literature on urbanism. As Thompson points out, there is a lacuna in the extensive scholarship on urbanism. Although there have been numerous critical histories of the suburbs, studies of the city tend to approach the topic from a broadly sympathetic perspective and focus on the legal, architectural, economic, or social factors that have undermined its potential. A new systematic, book-length study of antiurbanil3+