The New Urbanism is perhaps the most influential movement that has emerged in suburban design, planning, and development in recent decades. It proposes to reform conventional suburban development by "building community." Building the New Urbanism asks "why new urbanism now?" to provide the first in-depth sociological investigation of the emergence of this phenomenon. This volume situates the growth of New Urbanism in the history of urban and suburban policy and development. The book builds an account of the movement's founding and development, linking its progress to the making of new places. The volume also investigates how the movement capitalized upon dynamics within architecture, planning, and the homebuying public to recruit support from among those groups. The book establishes a framework for analyzing the opportunities and constraints that confront any effort to change the way we produce the built environment. Moreover, it reveals how elaborately social the production of the built environment is and how specific the material solutions to social conditions must be to resolve this process. Building the New Urbanism is an accessible volume that encapsulates and engages the dominant history of American suburbia. It draws on interviews with key figures, brings the work of prominent theorists of culture and science into the investigation, and broadens the focus of urban studies to the metropolitan region. It will be of particular interest to scholars and students of urban and suburban development, sociology, geography, and planning.

The New Urbanism is perhaps the most influential movement that has emerged in suburban design, planning, and development in recent decades. It proposes to reform conventional suburban development by "building community." Building the New Urbanism asks "why new urbanism now?" to provide the first in-depth sociological investigation of the emergence of this phenomenon. This volume situates the growth of New Urbanism in the history of urban and suburban policy and development. The book builds an account of the movement's founding and development, linking its progress to the making of new places. The volume also investigates how the movement capitalized upon dynamics within architecture, planning, and the homebuying public to recruit support from among those groups. The book establishes a framework for analyzing the opportunities and constraints that confront any effort to change the way we produce the built environment. Moreover, it reveals how elaborately social the production of the built environment is and how specific the material solutions to social conditions must be to resolve this process. Building the New Urbanism is an accessible volume that encapsulates and engages the dominant history of American suburbia. It draws on interviews with key figures, brings the work of prominent theorists of culture and science into the investigation, and broadens the focus of urban studies to the metropolitan region. It will be of particular interest to scholars and students of urban and suburban development, sociology, geography, and planning.

Historic preservation is typically regarded as an elitist practice. In this view, designating a neighborhood as historic is a project by and for affluent residents concerned with aesthetics, not affordability. It leads to gentrification and rising property values for wealthy homeowners, while displacement afflicts longer-term, lower-income residents of the neighborhood, often people of color. Through rich case studies of Baltimore and Brooklyn, Aaron Passell complicates this story, exploring how community activists and local governments use historic preservation to accelerate or slow down neighborhood change. He argues that this form of regulation is one of the few remaining urban policy interventions that enable communities to exercise some control over the changing built environments of their neighborhoods. In Baltimore, it is part of a primarily top-down strategy for channeling investment into historic neighborhoods, many of them plagued by vacancy and abandonment. In central Brooklyn, neighborhood groups have discovered the utility of landmark district designation as they seek to mitigate rapid change with whatever legal tools they can. The contrast between Baltimore and Brooklyn reveals that the relationship between historic preservation and neighborhood change varies not only from city to city, but even from neighborhood to neighborhood. In speaking with local activists, Passell finds that historic district designation and enforcement efforts can be a part of neighborhood community building and bottom-up revitalization. Featuring compelling narrative interviews alongside quantitative data, Preserving Neighborhoods is a nuanced mixed-methods study of an important local-level urban policy and its surprisingly varied consequences.

Historic preservation is typically regarded as an elitist practice. In this view, designating a neighborhood as historic is a project by and for affluent residents concerned with aesthetics, not affordability. It leads to gentrification and rising property values for wealthy homeowners, while displacement afflicts longer-term, lower-income residents of the neighborhood, often people of color. Through rich case studies of Baltimore and Brooklyn, Aaron Passell complicates this story, exploring how community activists and local governments use historic preservation to accelerate or slow down neighborhood change. He argues that this form of regulation is one of the few remaining urban policy interventions that enable communities to exercise some control over the changing built environments of their neighborhoods. In Baltimore, it is part of a primarily top-down strategy for channeling investment into historic neighborhoods, many of them plagued by vacancy and abandonment. In central Brooklyn, neighborhood groups have discovered the utility of landmark district designation as they seek to mitigate rapid change with whatever legal tools they can. The contrast between Baltimore and Brooklyn reveals that the relationship between historic preservation and neighborhood change varies not only from city to city, but even from neighborhood to neighborhood. In speaking with local activists, Passell finds that historic district designation and enforcement efforts can be a part of neighborhood community building and bottom-up revitalization. Featuring compelling narrative interviews alongside quantitative data, Preserving Neighborhoods is a nuanced mixed-methods study of an important local-level urban policy and its surprisingly varied consequences.