Building the Urban Environment: Visions of the Organic City in the United States, Europe, and Latin America

Building the Urban Environment is a comparative study of the contestation among planners, policymakers, and the grassroots over the production and meaning of urban space. Award-winning historian Harold Platt presents case studies of seven cities, including Rotterdam, Chicago, and Sao Paulo, to show how, over time, urban life created hybrid spaces that transformed people, culture, and their environments.

As Platt explains, during the post-1945 race to technological modernization, policymaker...