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Record Nr.

UNISA996248155703316

Autore

Gandy Matthew

Titolo

Concrete and clay : reworking nature in New York City / / Matthew Gandy

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass. : , : MIT Press, , ©2002

ISBN

0-262-30361-2

0-262-27344-6

0-585-43723-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xi, 344 p. ) : ill., maps ;

Collana

Urban and industrial environments

Disciplina

304.2/09747/1

Soggetti

Urban ecology (Sociology) - New York (State) - New York

Human ecology - New York (State) - New York

City planning - Environmental aspects - New York (State) - New York

Land use, Urban - New York (State) - New York

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sommario/riassunto

An interdisciplinary account of the environmental history and changing landscape of New York City.In this innovative account of the urbanization of nature in New York City, Matthew Gandy explores how the raw materials of nature have been reworked to produce a "metropolitan nature" distinct from the forms of nature experienced by early settlers. The book traces five broad developments: the expansion and redefinition of public space, the construction of landscaped highways, the creation of a modern water supply system, the radical environmental politics of the barrio in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the contemporary politics of the environmental justice movement. Drawing on political economy, environmental studies, social theory, cultural theory, and architecture, Gandy shows how New York's environmental history is bound up not only with the upstate landscapes that stretch beyond the city's political boundaries but also with more distant places that reflect the nation's colonial and imperial legacies. Using the shifting meaning of nature under urbanization as a framework, he looks at how modern nature has been produced through



interrelated transformations ranging from new water technologies to changing fashions in landscape design. Throughout, he considers the economic and ideological forces that underlie phenomena as diverse as the location of parks and the social stigma of dirty neighborhoods.