Why read Another City?

Book cover of Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New American Republic

Book description

An exploration of the beliefs, perceptions, and theories that shaped the architecture and organization of America's earliest cities

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, burgeoning American cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia seemed increasingly chaotic. Noise, odors, and a feverish level of activity on the streets threatened to…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Another City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sarah Fayen Scarlett

Author

No one writes more compellingly about the multi-sensory experiences of living in America’s past environments than Dell Upton. His book Another City deals with the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century city—a century before the time period in my book—but he weaves together narratives of urban experience from America’s first decades as a republic to offer surprisingly contemporary commentary on city politics today. His chapter called “Smell of Danger,” to offer just one example, demonstrates that America’s urban elite mobilized their belief that disease was caused by “miasmas” rising up from foul-smelling waste to justify segregation along with class and racial…

From Sarah's list on The best books about architecture and the visceral experience of social identity in industrial America.