This article is one step toward an urban history of the United States that foregrounds “emergency” as a clearing device. American cities were strategically targeted during the sustained mid-twentieth century depression and war by a complex of groups – the Federal government, corporations, professional organizations, and universities – who coordinated survival largely at the expense of existing urban fabric. Together they invented “the house” as a new type of space – at once national, masculine, and high-tech – whose connection to urban densities was casual if not inherently confrontational. “The house” was only the beginning of an emergency response that would eventually declare cities “blighted,” and hence susceptible to large-scale winnowing.
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1 March 2006
Research Article|
March 01 2006
Vast Clearings: Emergency, Technology, and American de-Urbanization, 1930–1945
Gregory Clancey
Gregory Clancey
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GREGORY CLANCEY TEACHES AT THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY. MOST OF HIS RESEARCH HAS TO DO WITH JAPAN, TECHNOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, CITIES, AND/OR THE PHENOMENA OF EMERGENCIES AND CATASTROPHES.
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Cultural Politics (2006) 2 (1): 49–76.
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Gregory Clancey; Vast Clearings: Emergency, Technology, and American de-Urbanization, 1930–1945. Cultural Politics 1 March 2006; 2 (1): 49–76. doi: https://doi.org/10.2752/174321906778054646
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