Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 304 pages
- Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press November 19, 2003
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 080187422X
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0801874222
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Book Dimensions:
8.7 x 7 x 1 inches
- Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Product Review
Recounts the introduction of methodologies developed by the Pentagon to remedy the social and infrastructural problems confronting America's cities.
[A] superbly written intellectual history.Peace and Change
"An exceptionally useful contribution to the history of American cities, a book that takes seriously and does much to document the historical relationship between militarism and urban geography." -- Matthew Farish, Professional Geographer
"As historians of American cities stumble across missile experts straying far from their silos, they will find guidance in this careful account of a peculiar moment in urban policy." -- Zachary M. Schrag, Technology and Culture
"A very interesting book about the way in which American institutions get bamboozled into adopting popular fads and trends that ought to be scrutinized more carefully." -- Roger W. Lotchin, Journal of Military History
"Light stands some of the conventional Cold War wisdom on its head This study not only closes the loop between business management and the military back to the civilian sector, but also reminds readers of the continuing nature of unintended consequences that flow from expert technological obsessions when allied to policy making." -- Choice
"If the volume tells us something new and important about the history of planning, it is at the same time a cautionary tale, one that might well offer lessons to those today who are proposing many related technologies -- geographic information systems, remote surveillance systems and the like -- as a means for solving urban and military problems." -- Michael R. Curry, New Media and Society
During the early decades of the Cold War, large-scale investments in American defense and aerospace research and development spawned a variety of problem-solving techniques, technologies, and institutions. From systems analysis to reconnaissance satellites to think tanks, these innovations did not remain exclusive accessories of the defense establishment. Instead, they readily found civilian applications in both the private and public sector. City planning and management were no exception.
Jennifer Light argues that the technologies and values of the Cold War fundamentally shaped the history of postwar urban America. From Warfare to Welfare documents how American intellectuals, city leaders, and the federal government picked to attack problems in the nation's cities by borrowing techniques and technologies first designed for military engagement with foreign enemies. Experiments in urban problem solving adapted the expertise of defense professionals to face new threats: urban chaos, blight, and social unrest. Tracing the transfer of innovations from military to city planning and management, Light reveals how a continuing source of inspiration for American city administrators lay in the nation's preparations for war.
Jennifer S. Light is an associate professor of communication studies, history, and sociology at Northwestern University.
"Light has made an important contribution by showing how defense intellectuals contributed to the creation and promotion of cybercities." -- Nils Gilman, Journal of Cold War Studies
Product Review
"A compelling historical narrative that exposes a little-known linkage between defense and civilian affairs: the urban-planning applications of technologies and management styles that were developed originally for national defense." -- Journal of Planning Education and Research
Reader Reviews
Jennifer Light has written a fine book on the influence of defense intellectuals on urban planning after World War II. The historical narrative is interesting and the scholarship is sound. However, a number of arguments in the book are not persuasive. Most importantly, a number of the alleged legacies of the ideas of defense intellectuals may have been the legacies of something else. Light states the main thesis of the book in the introduction: "...during the cold war, strategies for urban problem solving were heavily influenced by, and in some cases directly derived from, military techniques and technologies originally used against America's foreign enemies." (p. 7) She argues further that "the application of military innovations and expertise to urban problems rarely served as sources of solutions." (p. 8) She then goes on to demonstrate how specific innovations, particularly ideas about population dispersion, computer simulations of urban dynamics, programmed planning and budgeting systems (PPBS), remote sensing of geographic information by aircraft and satellites, geographic information systems (GIS), and cable television, came out of the cold war defense effort and were applied (or misapplied) to the solution of urban problems. Light correctly identifies the late 1960s and early 1970s as a period of intensification of efforts to do this because of a heightened concern about eradicating "urban blight" in the wake of the riots and increased crime levels of that period. She concludes by noting that defense intellectuals "have left indelible marks, for better or worse, on the nation's urban past." (p. 237) The main thesis is somewhat surprising since one would not expect defense intellectuals to have much to say about urban planning. But in light of the importance of the role of defense in the long history of the city as an institution, this is perhaps not so surprising. In any case, Light documents well the role of defense think tanks like RAND and MITRE in influencing urban planning in New York, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles. Their main lasting impact, however, seems to have been in convincing urban planners to collect quantitative data that would permit them to project demographic changes and to maintain the physical infrastructure of the city. My main complaint is not with the main thesis so much as with identifying the ideas and technologies applied in urban contexts as essentially "cold war" or "military." It may be true, as the author claims that computer simulation, PPBS, and GIS were first used in military settings, but in fact most of these technologies are "dual-use" - that is, they can be applied to both civilian and military applications, unlike "sole-use" technologies like land mines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, or nuclear submarines. The use of defense spending to subsidize the development of dual-use technologies has a long history that predates the cold war. Examples are the development of propeller aircraft and photographic reconnaissance during World War I and computers, radar, and powerful jet engines during World War II. Just because a simulation model employs computers does not necessarily make it a cold war technology. Light implies that many of the ideas and technologies that came from defense intellectuals that urban planners tried to employ failed because they were designed for military purposes and not for solving urban problems (which she claims are more complex). However, some of her cases are really examples of failure in applying a dual-use technology before it is ready to be applied to civilian applications, either because it is still too expensive or because it needs further development. GIS is a perfect example of a tool that is widely employed in urban governments now that it is easier to use and less expensive than when it was first introduced. One of my colleagues uses an inexpensive commercial computer simulation, SimCity, to teach her students about the problems of managing a metropolitan region. The underlying tone of the book is one of regret that anyone ever tried to adapt a dual-use technology funded by the military for civilian use. In my view, this is wrong-headed. If we had followed that advice in the 1990s, we would have missed the benefits of the dot.com revolution and the Internet. Since the U.S. government is rarely empowered to fund technological development other than through the funding of basic research (with the notable exceptions of health, agriculture, and defense), it would be unwise to avoid any technology that has received defense dollars - just as it would be unwise to avoid health technologies funded by the National Institutes of Health. Still, Light is correct in arguing that a cold war zeitgeist seeped into all sorts of non-military and non-defense activities and institutions. The stress on military spending during the cold war created a demand for finding civilian applications for military technologies to justify that spending even where employing those technologies was not appropriate. Her book is therefore an important contribution to the growing literature on the history and culture of the cold war. It would have benefited, however, from a broader and more historical view of the role of defense spending in U.S. technology policy.
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