"How did neighborhood groceries, parish halls, factories, and even saloons contribute more to urban vitality than did the fiscal might of postwar urban renewal? In the grand lineage of Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Jane Jacob's The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Douglas Rae depicts the features that contributed most to city life in the early "urbanist" decades of the twentieth century. Rae's subject is New Haven, Connecticut, but the lessons he draws apply to many American cities." "Starting with a vivid sketch of the guests attending a party in August 1919, City: Urbanism and Its End presents a portrait of New Haven in a period of centralized manufacturing, civic vitality, and mixed-use neighborhoods. As social and economic conditions changed, the city confronted its end of urbanism, first during the Depression, and then very aggressively during the mayoral reign of Richard C. Lee (1954-70), when New Haven led the nation in urban renewal spending." "Strategies for the urban future should focus on nurturing the unplanned civic engagements that make mixed-use city life so appealing and so civilized. Small-scale retailing, neighborhood clubs, informal enforcement of sidewalk civility, and new urbanist design may be the keys to the future. Cities need not reach their old peaks of population, or look like thriving suburbs, to be once again splendid places for human beings to live and work."--Jacket.