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Table of Contents
List of Figures and Table |
Acknowledgments |
Abbreviations |
Introduction |
Chapter 1: An American Ideology of Improvement |
The Rise of Improvement |
Disseminating Improvement |
Urban Improvement |
Conclusion |
Chapter 2: Real Estate Businessmen and the Improved Property Market |
Improvement and Chicago’s Real Estate Businessmen |
Advertising and the Commodification of Improvement |
Professionalization and Regulation |
Conclusion |
Chapter 3: “Active in Good Works”: NIAs |
The Origins of Chicago’s NIAs |
Membership |
The Politics of Improvement |
Objectives |
Practices |
Organizational Structure |
Conclusion |
Chapter 4: “Street Trees” |
“Nature” and Chicago |
Trees in the City |
Street Trees and Real Estate Businessmen |
Street Tree Species and Pest Control |
NIAs |
The City Forester and Institutionalization |
Conclusion |
Chapter 5: Local Prohibition and the Limits of Improvement |
Prohibition as an Improvement Objective |
Organizational Characteristics of the HPPA |
“Local Option” |
Amalgamation With the Illinois ASL and the Transformation of the HPPA |
The HPPA and the University of Chicago |
Reform and Reaction: Real Estate Businessmen |
Racism, Ethnicity, and the Unraveling of the HPPA |
Conclusion |
Chapter 6: “All Negroes Were Black”: Anti-Improvement and the Expanding Web of Segregation |
NIAs, Real Estate Businessmen, and the History of Segregation |
African American and Interracial Grassroots Improvement |
“Undesirables” and the Discourse of Anti-Improvement |
Poor Housing, Vice, and African American Anti-Improvement |
A “Fantasy of Blackness” and the Expanding Web of Segregation |
Conclusion |
Conclusion |
Endnotes |
Selected Bibliography |
Index |