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

Andrew Ross

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Title of host publicationThe New Blackwell Companion to the City
    PublisherWiley-Blackwell
    Pages169-178
    Number of pages10
    ISBN (Print)9781405189811
    DOIs
    StatePublished - May 15 2012

    Keywords

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

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Social Sciences

    Cite this