Rosen C.M. The Limits of Power: Great Fires and the Process of City Growth in America

Cambridge University Press, 1986. — 395 p. — ISBN10: 0521545706; ISBN13: 978-0521303194.Chicago, Boston, and Baltimore all suffered terrible fires in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Residents of these cities agreed that the destruction caused by the fires provided them with a special opportunity to improve their inadequately built cities. This book examines these rebuildings, using each to examine in close detail the process of city growth. The massive population growth and economic expansion of the nineteenth century necessitated that every aspect of the urban environment be redeveloped. By drawing on several fields of the social sciences, the author develops a conceptual framework for explaining the barriers to environmental improvement; and through the historical narrative, the usefulness of this framework is demonstrated.List of figures and tables
Acknowledgments
The conceptual frameworkThe barriers to structural improvement
The barriers to infrastructural improvement
The barriers to spatial change
Three case studies
Theory and narrative history
The rebuilding of Chicago
The rebuilding of Boston
The rebuilding of BaltimorePower in the city
Notes
Sources of illustrations
Index