Song of the City: An Intimate History of the American Urban Landscape

by Nathaniel Popkin

During the last quarter of the 20th century, many American cities were in a state of decline. The automobile paved the way for suburban sprawl and white flight, leaving cities with crumbling... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156858203X
• ISBN13: 9781568582030
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Lovely

This lovely, poem-like book is a set of little stories about various residents of Philadelphia's "borderline" urban neighborhoods- not fashionable areas like Center City and Chestnut Hill, but mostly not the "worst" areas either. Popkin's stories show what makes city life so attractive, especially the life of a close-knit, stable older neighborhood; I almost cried after reading the first couple of chapters.

Embodies the quintessential human experience

Song Of The City: An Intimate History Of The American Urban Landscape by Philadelphia planner and activist Nathaniel Popkin, is a highly recommended, anecdotal history of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the second half of the twentieth century. Using varied stories drawn from the lives of individual people to accurately reflect and bring to life this urban American community during its years of late 20th Century evolution, Song Of The City embodies the quintessential human experience which, taken as a whole, comprise the "soul" of the city.