The modern American metropolis : a documentary reader / edited by David M.P. Freund.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

p. 1. Cities and hinterlands in mid-nineteenth-century America -- p. 2. From walking city to industrial metropolis, 1860-1920 -- p. 3. City and suburb ascendant, 1920-1945 -- p. 4. Creating a suburban nation, 1945-1970s -- p. 5. What makes a city? The "postindustrial" metropolis.

The modern American metropolis: a documentary reader introduces the history of cities and suburbs in the United States through a collection of original source materials that explore the centrality of urban change to the American experience. Readers can explore key questions and debates in urban studies by considering how a wide range of people, including themselves, has related to the built environment and to sweeping transformations in metropolitan life over the past 150 years. The collection features more than 60 primary sources, ranging from correspondence and photographs to marketing tools and government documents. An introductory essay highlights topics that link together the sources, including the physical transformation of American places, consumer culture, electoral politics, environmental change, battles over rights and opportunity, the role of technology, and contests over meaning of citizenship. Collectively, these materials reveal how the history of cities and suburbs is not limited to buildings, innovation, and politics -and not confined to municipal boundaries. The modern American metropolis enables readers to view the whole of modern US history as an essentially "metropolitan" history.