American Cities and Technology Reader: Wilderness to Wired City Book

Wilson argues through case studies of individual or related cities, argues that cities were deeply bound as symbolically female, with temptations, vice, and pockets of pleasure, which, in the 19th - 20th century, men sought to regulate, control, temper, and remake for the perceived safety of women. Women in cities were at once seen as temptress prostitutes, lesbians, and fallen heroines, or virtuous women in danger who successfully triumphed over temptation. As cities ballooned, the working class and minorities were depicted as metaphoric women, hysterical, prone to emotion, and could not be trusted to be in charge of their own lives. Wilson argued against feminist discourse that said that cities are naturally bad for women, instead arguing that cities historically were shaped by women and men planned them instead to control the femaleness of cities, especially in the false nuclear family structure. Henceforth, city controllers worked to exclude women in both decision making process and visibility, for their perceived own protection.

She breaks down the book looking at historic cities. After introducing her argument, in chapter two, she looks to the ancient to medieval cities histories, until the 19th century. In chapter three, she looks to London, the first industrial city where zoning separated people from workplaces in order to reform behavior. Chapter four moves to Paris, described as a decidedly female charactered city, a floating world. Chapter five moves to the American Dream anti-urban impulses, with the depiction of both Chicago and New York as the babylons, even as both experienced their so-called golden ages. Chapter six moves back to Europe, looking to Central European cities such as Vienna and Berlin, in both the socialist activist, thriving democratic impulses, and finally terrifyingly orderly fascist realities, in which Hitler made architecture among his top priorities. Chapter seven returns to ideas of cities, from garden cities to the city beautiful movement, both founded upon anti-urban impulses to control the worst aspects of cities, according to male planners. Chapter eight refreshingly moves to cities in the third world, noting at the beginning that there are sharp differences between cities of Latin America and Africa and that the temptation of lumping all into one category is not useful. For instance, Latin American cities were shaped by industrialization while African cities mostly were shaped by the colonial experience, and African cities mostly have family bonds extending to the rural countryside while Latin American cities more typically fall into the separation between the two. Chapter nine wraps the book by looking at how postmodern impulses have blurred the lines between country and city, structural changes to the perceived nuclear family have again put women into central roles of cities, and defended spaces are largely breaking down. Wilson argues strongly for moving past the good city, bad city duality.

Key Themes and Concepts
-Men plan cities, women experience cities.
-Cities as culture are fundamentally female, and the city is often seen as organic and feminine, wild and emotional.
-The city reformers promoted cleanliness, sanitation, and crackdown on prostitution and other women dominated vices.
-The same reformers on paper supported individualism and democracy, yet feared the urban mob which was a revolutionary danger.