MERCHANT OF ILLUSION: JAMES ROUSE, AMERICA'S SALESMAN OF THE BUSINESSMAN'S UTOPIA

Urban Life and Urban Landscape

by Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Zane Miller (Editor)

James Rouse was one of the most significant figures
in American urban development during the second half of the twentieth century
and deserves the attention devoted to him here. style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Merchant of Illusion fills a major gap in
urban scholarship, and will attract wide attention among urbanists in history,
political science, sociology, and planning. Jon Teaford, Purdue University

style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-STYLE: italic">Merchant of
Illusion revisits the intriguing projects and ideas of famed
developer James Rouse. Known mainly for his Festival Marketplaces in Boston
and Baltimore, Rouse actually played a more important role in redefining private
sector urban policy as the leading force in American public life. He argued
persuasively using diverse means of communication that the private sector, with
only limited state aid, had the ability to create a nearly ideal urban order.
The shopping centers, planned communities, downtown redevelopment projects,
community development corporations and festival marketplaces he helped pioneer,
develop, and publicize became America s compelling answer to state-dominated
urbanism in the Soviet Union and social democratic Europe.

Although
Rouse occasionally acknowledged the limitations of his privatized brand of
public policy, and the continuing urban crisis, his own critical insights were
overshadowed by his high-profile projects. Bloom examines Rouse s major spheres
of activities, both their strengths and weaknesses, in thematic chapters.
Merchant of Illusion, by
evaluating Rouse s activities in the context of cold war ideology and
competition, provides a much needed critical treatment of the rise of private
sector urbanism in the United States. For this reason and many
others it will be of great interest to urban and cultural historians, political
scientists, sociologists, planners and the general public with an interest in
urban affairs.

style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-STYLE: italic">Merchant of
Illusion follows on the heels of Bloom s first book, style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Suburban
Alchemy, which looks at three suburban new towns of the era,
one of which Columbia, Maryland was Rouse s brainchild.

223 pages, CD-ROM

First published February 15, 2004