City Against Suburb: The Culture Wars in an American Metropolis

by Joseph Rodriguez

Overview

The culture wars continue to rage across the United States. Clashes over hate speech regulations, affirmative action, abortion, immigration, art, history, and lifestyle questions suggest that America is more polarized than ever before. This study looks at the rapid changes occurring in cities and suburbs in order to understand these cultural conflicts which, according to Rodriguez, have arisen in part because Americans continue to view themselves as city people or suburbanites in a time when the two areas are converging. As suburbs draw more businesses and residents, they produce new forms of art and cultural events which longtime residents resist as undermining the essentially residential quality of suburbs. Similarly, in cities, new parking structures, highways, and downtown malls produce suburban landscapes that urbanites reject, seeing those changes as evidence of the intrusion of suburban culture. Four community conflicts in the Bay Area from the 1960s to the 1990s illustrate these changes.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, freeways and rapid transit have brought city and suburb closer together. Local residents have resisted these changes that threaten their communities' original identities. In San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Concord, residents have clashed over the construction of freeways and rapid transit, urban and suburban redevelopment, affirmative action, and modern art. In each locality, rapid changes produced conflict over local identities, as white, black, and Chicano residents have attempted to maintain a clear distinction between urban and suburban culture in the face of forces that are driving city and suburb closer together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275964061
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/30/1999
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1540L (what's this?)

About the Author

JOSEPH A. RODRIGUEZ is Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee./e He has published articles on the Chicano movement, urban history, and multiculturalism.

Table of Contents

Introduction
City into Suburb
The Freeway Revolt in San Francisco
Building BART and Affirmative Action in West Oakland
Suburb into City
Multicultural History in San Jose
Public Art in Concord

Editorial Reviews

Beginning with an analysis of the suburbanization of the city in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rodriguez (history and urban studies, U. of Wisconsin-Madison) traces the opposition of middle-class San Franciscans to freeways through the city from the middle 1950s to the middle 1960s and the struggle over the value of regional mobility shifts across the bay to Oakland. Then he analyzes the local suburban struggles against urbanization, focusing on San Jose and Concord. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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