Selling the City: Gender, Class, and the California Growth Machine, 1880-1940 [Hardcover]

Lee Simpson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 28, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0804748756 | ISBN-13: 978-0804748759 | Edition: 1

Between 1880 and 1940, California cities were in the vanguard in creating comprehensive city plans and zoning ordinances that came to characterize modern American city growth. This book reveals the means by which property-owning middle-class women achieved entry into the male-dominated sphere of urban planning. It suggests that women in California were not excluded from public life. Instead, they embraced the middle-class ideology of propertied self-interest and participated to the fullest extent possible in the urban struggle for regional dominance that shaped this period of western history. Likewise, as urban historians have presented this story as essentially male, this work suggests that although California's urban elite often maintained a division of labor along traditional gender lines, they clearly worked in a cross-gender alliance to shape a regional identity based on a commitment to urban growth.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Thoroughly researched, this book will be of considerable interest to a broad range of scholars....All in all, this book is valuable both for its substantial accomplishments and for the questions it raises.”—American Historical Review

“[An] engrossing study of the historic role women have played in shaping California cities...”California History

“...Selling the City offers important insights into women’s involvement in urban growth and development in the long Progressive era.”—The Public Historian

"Lee Simpson...does the field of California urban history a great service by investigating the role of women in turn-of-the-century civic boosterism and city planning."—H-Net Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Between 1880 and 1940, California cities were in the vanguard in creating comprehensive city plans and zoning ordinances that came to characterize modern American city growth. This book reveals the means by which property-owning middle-class women achieved entry into the male-dominated sphere of urban planning. It suggests that women in California were not excluded from public life. Instead, they embraced the middle-class ideology of propertied self-interest and participated to the fullest extent possible in the urban struggle for regional dominance that shaped this period of western history. Likewise, as urban historians have presented this story as essentially male, this work suggests that although California's urban elite often maintained a division of labor along traditional gender lines, they clearly worked in a cross-gender alliance to shape a regional identity based on a commitment to urban growth.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (July 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804748756
• ISBN-13: 978-0804748759
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,690,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars influential women, July 2, 2005

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This review is from: Selling the City: Gender, Class, and the California Growth Machine, 1880-1940 (Hardcover)

Simpson provides a basically optimistic view of the "space" in which white, upper class women could operate, during the period in California up to 1940. You can read the book at two levels. Firstly, and simply, as a good backdrop to the growth of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The narrative helps give more flesh to a time of great urban expansion, that is nowadays often cursorily discussed. Since that expansion was in turn dwarfed by the ever greater growth after World War 2.

But at another level, the book shows how while women might not have been able to hold formal reins of power, in practise, they had more leeway. It is this informal exercise of power that is well described. The merit of the book is in showing that the commonly accepted view of women having little power in that time is perhaps oversimplified. The historical scholarship demonstrated by Simpson is impressive and amply rewards the reader's attention.