America's once-vibrant small-to-midsize cities --
Syracuse, Worcester, Akron, Flint, Rockford, and others
-- increasingly resemble urban wastelands. Gutted by
deindustrialization, outsourcing, and middle-class
flight, disproportionately devastated by metro freeway
systems that laid waste to the urban fabric and
displaced the working poor, small industrial cities seem
to be part of America's past, not its future. And yet,
Catherine Tumber argues in this provocative book,
America's gritty Rust Belt cities could play a central
role in a greener, low-carbon, relocalized future. As we
wean ourselves from fossil fuels and realize the
environmental costs of suburban sprawl, we will see that
small cities offer many assets for sustainable living
not shared by their big city or small town counterparts,
including population density and nearby, fertile
farmland available for new environmentally friendly
uses. Tumber traveled to twenty-five cities in the
Northeast and Midwest -- from Buffalo to Peoria to
Detroit to Rochester -- interviewing planners, city
officials, and activists, and weaving their stories into
this exploration of small-scale urbanism. Smaller cities
can be a critical part of a sustainable future and a
productive green economy. Small, Gritty, and Green will
help us develop the moral and political imagination we
need to realize this.
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