The Pastoral City: Urbanism and the Garden Idea of America
Although the opposition between the rural and urban environments has played a prominent role in the way Americans have responded to their cities, an equally powerful component of our culture has been the belief that the New World could be the sight of a synthesis of this dialectic. Convinced that native geography has offered repeated opportunities for fresh beginnings, Americans since the age of settlement have attempted to define and build cities combining the best of nature and civilization, inspired by what may be called an urban-pastoral ideal of society. Because of its laudable, humane goals, this belief has gone largely unchallenged in native ideology except for the more sophisticated response to the ideal found in the writings of some of America's most eminent literary artists.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign