Philip J. Ethington

Suburbs in transition: new approaches to suburban history

The history of suburbs has received so much scholarly attention in recent decades that it is time to take stock of what has been established, in order to discern aspects of suburbs that are still unknown. To date, the main lines of inquiry have been dedicated to the origins, growth, diverse typologies, culture and politics of suburbs, as well as to newer topics such as the gendered nature of suburban space. The vast majority of these studies have been about particular times and places. The authors propose a new perspective on the study of suburbs, one which will begin to investigate the transformations of suburbs after they have been established. Taking the entire era from the mid-nineteenth century through to the late twentieth century as a whole, it is argued that suburbs should be subjected to a longitudinal analysis, examining their development in the context of metropolises that usually enveloped them within a generation or two of their founding. It is proposed that investigation of these ‘transitions’ should be undertaken in parallel with the changes that occur in the life-cycles of their residents. It is suggested that an exploration of the interaction of these factors will open a broad new research agenda for suburban history as a subfield of urban history.

The public city : the political construction of urban life in San Francisco, 1850-1900

A solid anhydrous 1:1 molar compound of phosphoric acid and diisopropyl ether is prepared from a mixture of the ether and phosphoric acid in a molar ratio (R:1) of 0.6:1 to 1.4:1 at a temperature at least as low as the crystallization temperature (T DEG C) governed by the relationship T = 25(1.2-R). Treatment of the compound with water or a base produces purified acid or a phosphate respectively.

Placing the past: ‘Groundwork’ for a spatial theory of history

This essay presents an argument that the past is the set of all places made by human action. The past cannot exist in time: only in space. Histories representing the past represent the places (topoi) of human action. Knowledge of the past, therefore, is literally cartographic: a mapping of the places of history indexed to the coordinates of spacetime. The authors reply to published commentary emphasizes the multi-perspectival framework of his theory and the non-narrative potential of visual representation of the past.

Introduction: an atlas of the urban icons project

When the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 11 September 2001, many commentators noted that in their short lives, the towers had come to represent many things: American-led global capitalism, the United States and, most of all, New York City. Their brief role as a shorthand way of saying ‘New York City’ provoked us to ask about ‘urban icons’ more generally. But we did not need such cataclysm to provoke us to consider the topic of icons and their functioning in contemporary global culture. To help illuminate the usefulness of the concept of ‘urban icons’ we held an international conference in order to determine whether the category can be used as a conceptual grid for studying the intersection of visual culture and urban history.

The Utility of Spatial and Temporal Organization in Digital Library Construction

Abstract Full realization of the digital library concept includes the potential of infinite, integrated growth in materials, genres, and formats. The universal parameters of space (geographical location) and time can be used to augment conventional item description and provide general means to integrate disparate materials, subject matter, and non-textual formats.

Urban Constituencies, Regimes, and Policy Innovation in the Progressive Era: An Analysis of Boston, Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco

Perhaps no single aspect of the American polity has been more analyzed, discussed, cited for evidence in grand theories of American political development, and yet less understood than the role of the urban voter in the regime formation and policy innovation of the Progressive era (circa 1890–1920). One century of prolific urban political analysis has produced an abundance of evidence, theory, and keen insight, yet we still have nothing like a systematic survey of urban voting behavior using reliable multivariate methods in more than a few elections or comparatively across several cities simultaneously. As a consequence, we have built for the urban voter a city of theoretical models without an adequate empirical infrastructure.

Comment and Afterword: Photography and Placing the Past

This essay asks: what is photography to the past, such that a photograph offers knowledge about the past? In an extended commentary on Katja Zelljadt’s account of early Berlin photography, the essay presents two broad positions on the quality of photographic knowledge. The ‘assimilative’ position seeks to equate photographs with all other signs in a semiotic universe, and to derive their meanings primarily from this context. The ‘exceptional’ position holds that photographs are indexical signs that carry a direct impress of the world, and thus carry true knowledge of the world. It is argued that the two positions can be collapsed in a radical spatialization of visual knowledge by expanding Gombrich’s thesis on the ‘primacy of meaning’ to include the powerful neuronal pathways through visual field maps and processing centers. The embodied mind requires that each interpretive event, each ‘reading’ of a photograph takes place in a perspectival position. The essay then considers cartography and the Google-powered HyperCities geohistorical platform as an example of the latest networks knowledge in the hyperspatial internet. Emplacing photographic artifacts in wider and wider networks of contextualization can expand the universe of interpretive meaning, while also deepening their inscription into the terrestrial locations of their production. Rejecting the radical skepticism of the assimilationist position, the essay concludes that photography’s exceptional qualities in the circulation of signs anchors interpretation as we build historical knowledge by clearing pathways to perspectival nodes in the bottomless semiotic-embodied topology of the past.

Mapping the Local State

MARK BALDASSARE, When Government Fails: The Orange County Bankruptcy. Berkeley: University of California Press and the Public Policy Institute of California, 1998, pp. xviii, 317, tables, appendices, bibliography, index,

The Eclectic Center of the New Institutionalism

48.00 cloth,

The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900.

18.00 paper. TERRY NICHOLS CLARK and VINCENT HOFFMAN-MARTINOT, eds. The New Political Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999, pp. xiii, 298, tables, graphs, bibliography,