| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Urban Origins of Suburban Autonomy. By Richardson Dilworth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. x + 267 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. Cloth $52.50; The Code of the City: Standards and the Hidden Language of Place Making. By Eran Ben-Joseph. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. xxi + 241 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Paper $24.00.
According to Sam Bass Warner, Kenneth Jackson, and other urban historians, America's suburbs emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the wealthier classes fled the city for the tranquility of rural life. First the streetcar and later the automobile spurred this extraordinary exodus. For many critics the result has been the abandonment of the urban poor, "cookie cutter" housing, environmental degradation, and the breakdown of those community ties that once enlivened American cities.	1
Together, Richardson Dilworth and Eran Ben-Joseph shed new light on urban fragmentation and the creation of suburban sprawl. A political scientist, Dilworth untangles the history of annexation attempts in the New York metropolitan area in The Urban Roots of Suburban Autonomy. He draws upon a rich store of contemporary newspaper accounts and local histories to show that urban infrastructure projects both hindered and encouraged attempts by New York City to annex outlying towns during the late 1800s.	. . .

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