A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America

by Benjamin Looker

Despite the pundits who have written its epitaph and the latter-day refugees who have fled its confines for the half-acre suburban estate, the city neighborhood has endured as an idea central to American culture. In A Nation of Neighborhoods , Benjamin Looker presents us with the city neighborhood as both an endless problem and a possibility.

Looker investigates the cultural, social, and political complexities of the idea of “neighborhood” in postwar America and how Americans grappled with vast changes in their urban spaces from World War II to the Reagan era. In the face of urban decline, competing visions of the city neighborhood’s significance and purpose became proxies for broader debates over the meaning and limits of American democracy. By studying the way these contests unfolded across a startling variety of genres—Broadway shows, radio plays, urban ethnographies, real estate documents, and even children’s programming—Looker shows that the neighborhood ideal has functioned as a central symbolic site for advancing and debating theories about American national identity and democratic practice.

Genres: History, Urbanism, Grad School

441 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 2015

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whole book on neighborhood rhetoric and you're not going to include Mr. Rogers?

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took one of Dr. Looker’s course at Saint Louis University and each lecture was full of primary and secondary sources, and his enthusiasm for his subjects was astonishing and resulted in great classes. This book is an excellent analysis of the development of neighborhood level activism, culture, institutions, and so much more. It’s a dense read because Looker puts so much thought and detail into each sentence let alone each chapter, but it’s worth it if you are looking for a rich source of American history and culture in the mid-20th century.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looker traced neighborhoods through the mid century, often blending sources in politics, art, and activism. Nothing bad, but not particularly compelling; disjointed.