Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America's Built Environment (Geographic Perspectives on the Human Past)

The success of World War II and the world economic hegemony that followed bolstered America's confidence to configure itself anew. Growth became a panacea to solve all problems since the American engine for change appeared boundless. Cities were turned inside-out as people, enterprise, and wealth fled to suburbs. Unfortunately, all has not been progress. American society has proven wasteful of its built environments. In "Derelict Landscapes", John A. Jakle and David Wilson present a portrait of various kinds of landscape dereliction in the United States - disinvestment, underutilization, vacancy, abandonment, and decay and degradation - and the cultural values that have underlain both personal and societal predispositions to be wasteful. They argue that a society can be known by the landscapes it creates and nourishes, and seek to answer the disturbing question: does widespread, chronic dereliction in the built environment suggest basic flaws in the American system? In the concluding chapters, Jakle and Wilson examine successful experiments at reversing dereliction and highlight the role of "locality-based communities" as an alternative to waste.