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In late 1933 and early 1934, Harry Hopkins, director of the infant
Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), dispatched an elite
corps of journalists and authors, including Bruce McClure and
Lorena Hickok, to obtain a grass-roots portrait of
Depression-wracked America. His marching orders to Hickok were "to
go out around the country and look this thing over.... Tell me what
you see and hear.... All of it." She and her compatriots spent two
years in different regions of the country, talking with preachers,
teachers, civic leaders, businessmen, and "the small fry John
Citizen," monitoring the mood of a nation battered by natural and
economic disaster. They found the downside of the American dream:
flophouses overflowing with tenants who once had been sturdy
middle-class citizens, aid administration offices awash in
incompetence and corruption, and, beneath it all, a permanent
underclass of the illiterate, the mentally ill, and the aged.
Untrained in sociology or economics, the reporters described their
impressions in passionate and graphic terms that helped move the
Roosevelt administration to implement the work programs of the New
Deal. Bauman and Coode reveal another dark side of 1930s America,
one that is evident in the words of the writers themselves: racial
and class prejudice. Comfortably middle-class, mostly from
traditional East Coast backgrounds, Hopkins's reporters reflected
prevalent beliefs concerning the "deserving" and "undeserving"
poor-beliefs that would influence the scope of such New Deal
ventures as the 1935 Social Security Law. Author Marth Gellhorn,
repulsed by the pattern of inbreeding and degeneration she observed
among the "white trash" families of South Carolina, suggested a
two-pronged aid program of education and eugenics. In the Eye of
the Great Depression objectively portrays a period of American
history that is too often romanticized as a time when a combination
of inspired leadership and pioneer resilience pulled the nation
through a great test of its mettle.
Before Renaissance examines a half-century epoch during which
planners, public officials, and civic leaders engaged in a dialogue
about the meaning of planning and its application for improving
life in Pittsburgh. Planning emerged from the concerns of
progressive reformers and businessmen over the social and physical
problems of the city. In the Steel City enlightened planners such
as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and Frederick Bigger pioneered the
practical approach to reordering the chaotic urban-industrial
landscape. In the face of obstacles that included the embedded
tradition of privatism, rugged topography, inherited built
environment, and chronic political fragmentation, they established
a tradition of modern planning in Pittsburgh. Over the years a
m+lange of other distinguished local and national figures joined in
the planning dialogue, among them the park founder Edward Bigelow,
political bosses Christopher Magee and William Flinn, mayors George
Guthrie and William Magee, industrialists Andrew Carnegie and
Howard Heinz, financier Richard King Mellon, and planning
luminaries Charles Mulford Robinson, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.,
Harland Bartholomew, Robert Moses, and Pittsburgh's Frederick
Bigger. The famed alliance of Richard King Mellon and Mayor David
Lawrence, which heralded the Renaissance, owed a great debt to
Pittsburgh's prior planning experience. John Bauman and Edward
Muller recount the city's long tradition of public/private
partnerships as an important factor in the pursuit of orderly and
stable urban growth. Before Renaissance provides insights into the
major themes, benchmarks, successes, and limitations that marked
the formative days of urban planning. It defines Pittsburgh's key
role in the vanguard of the national movement and reveals the
individuals and processes that impacted the physical shape and form
of a city for generations to come.
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