“Nothing Gained by Overcrowding”: The History and Politics of Urban Population Control

Bridge, Gary (editor) / Watson, Sophie (editor) / Ross, Andrew (author)

The New Blackwell Companion to the City ; 169-178

Wiley‐Blackwell Companions to Geography

2011-02-25

10 pages

9781444395105 , 9781405189811

https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444395105.ch15

Article/Chapter (Book)

Electronic Resource

English

laissez‐faire climate of Victorian capitalism ‐ state intervention, brunt of population control , recorded urban history, cities' capacities ‐ sign of prosperity, technical and administrative achievement , “shrinking cities” in post‐industrial Europe and North America ‐ refueling racially inflected genre of population anxiety , Marxist analysis of urban space ‐ environmentalist awareness of planetary limits to growth , “Nothing Gained by Overcrowding” ‐ history and politics of urban population control , extracting rent, attracting gentry ‐ holdings, new source of unearned increment , population control, a primary principle ‐ of city, regional and state planning , John Winthrop's 1630 exhortation to Massachusetts Bay Colony pilgrims ‐ building a “city upon a hill” model for Christian urbanism in the US , Victorian industrial city, intolerable conditions ‐ programs of conscience and uplift , anti‐urban sentiment, reflex of elites seeking bucolic refuge ‐ from sweaty mass