Developing Expertise: Architecture and Real Estate in Metropolitan America

First Edition, First Printing with a Complete Number Line. This Book is Conservatively Graded in Very Good Condition. The Hardcover Boards (No Dust Jacket as Issued) have Very Light Bumping to the Corners but No Tears, Creases, Stains, or Any Major Damage. The Binding is Strong, Intact, and Undamaged. The Interior is Clean and Unmarked with No Writing, Highlighting, or Underlining and with No Tears, Creases, Stains, Mold, or Any Major Damage. The Page Edges have No Remainder Mark, Foxing, Stains, or Any Major Damage.

Book Description: The story of 20th-century American urban history is typically told as two distinct tales—the decline of downtowns and the rise of suburbs. Real estate developers are integral to understanding the split narratives of twentieth-century American urban history. Rather than divide the decline of downtowns and the rise of suburbs into separate tales, Sara Stevens uses the figure of the real estate developer to explore how cities found new urban and architectural forms through both suburbanization and urban renewal. This timely book weaves together these two narrative threads by exploring the role of the real estate developer. Through nuanced chapters addressing Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Denver, Washington, D.C., and New York, Sara Stevens explains how real estate developers, though often maligned, have shaped public policy through professional organizations, promoted investment security through design, and brought suburban models to downtowns. She considers how developers partnered with prominent architects, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and I. M. Pei, to sell their urban visions, packaged in modern architecture, to the public. By viewing real estate developers as a critical link between capital and construction in prewar suburban development and postwar urban renewal, Stevens offers an original and enlightening way of understanding the complex connections among suburbs and downtowns, policy, finance, and architectural history.