Crossing Great Divides: City and Country in Environmental and Political Disorder

Ranging across two centuries of American history, Crossing Great Divides argues that the habit of construing city and country as opposites is at the root of our current environmental and political disorder. This oversimplifying dualism has distorted how we planned cities, our patterns of production and consumption, how we deal with waste, and how urban and rural populations perceive each other.

Conventional urban environmental reform has made modern city life possible, but it has done littl...