Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl

xiii, [1], 288 pages. Illustrations. Includes Acknowledgments, Preface, Notes, and Index. Chapters include The Fourth Battle of Manassas; The Misplacing of America; Bluff City; New Tools for Older Neighborhoods; The Revival of Mail Street; Reinventing Downtown; and Preservation in the Age of Sprawl. Also includes Notes and Index. Richard Moe, author of The Last Full Measure, is president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Richard Palmer Moe (born November, 27 1936) is an American lawyer from Duluth, Minnesota. Following his graduation from Williams College (1959) and the University of Minnesota Law School (1966), Moe went on to a distinguished career in government, law, and historic preservation. In 1977, Moe served as Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States during Walter Mondale's term. He later served as Mondale's presidential campaign team in 1984. Moe also worked on Dick Gephardt's presidential bid (1988) and Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign (1988). Moe led the National Trust for Historic Preservation for over sixteen years (1993-2009), and succeeded at expanding its budget despite funding reductions from Congress. He battled Tom DeLay and the Disney Corporation, among others, in his quest to save America's leading historical sites, such as Manassas battlefield. Moe also guided the trust in its effort to preserve historic structures and sites in New Orleans, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. Carter Wilkie is a longtime preservationist and former White House speechwriter. Under Richard Moe's direction, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has become much more than a guardian of the nation's architectural treasures. Moe has fashioned it into an effective weapon to compat automobilistic chaos and urban sprawl, and to protect the nation's fundamental community structures, now threatened everywhere. As a result, the Trust today is surely the major popular force in the United States that focuses on architecture at its proper scale, which is that of the city as a whole, the built environment entire. A detailed look into the historic communities that are fighting against urban development also examines the New England towns and areas in the Midwest that are battling against large conglomerates such as Wal-Mart. Derived from a Kirkus review: An eloquent, convincing argument for the preservation of city centers in a time of ex- and suburbanization. Moe is a Civil War historian and president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation; Wilkie is a former White House speechwriter. Their talents mesh well in this survey, which warns of the dangers of `losing the physical manifestations of our history—not just the great monuments but also the significant structures and entire neighborhoods that anchor our communities.' That loss has many causes, among them white flight and the relocation of downtown businesses to far-flung peripheries. When this happens, assert the authors, and when city residents' income drops with the evaporation of economic enterprise, the result is inevitably `a perpetual slum.' Such slums have been a long time in the building, but the authors lay particular blame on the legendary urban planner and superhighway builder Robert Moses, who `became the nation's most consulted expert on how to tear historic sections of cities apart to accommodate the automobile.' The perspective of Moe and Wilkie is resolutely urban and East Coast, but in advancing their call for an intelligent, admittedly expensive nationwide program of inner-city restoration, they also look westward to Denver and Portland, Ore., where, despite some Moses-era actions, downtowns have grown newly friendly to pedestrians and respectful of history. The authors also sound alarms over the likely fate of eastern cities like Pittsburgh, which, despite a massive commitment to downtown revitalization, has lost jobs and businesses and faces an ever-aging population as younger residents move to suburban sanct.…