A generous selection of illustrations, together with a list of surviving landscape sites accessible to the public, brings both the subjects and their art to life.

A rich portrait of a major figure in American art & architecture & his role in shaping American cultural identity.

The only compact yet comprehensive survey of environmental and cultural forces that have shaped the visual character and geographical diversity of the settled American landscape. The book examines the large-scale historical influences that have molded the varied human adaptation of the continent’s physical topography to its needs over more than 500 years. It presents a synoptic view of myriad historical processes working together or in conflict, and illustrates them through their survival in or disappearance from the everyday landscapes of today.

The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape provides a comprehensive overview of the American landscape in a way fit for the twenty-first century, not only in its topical and regional scope but also in its methodological and disciplinary diversity. Critically surveying the contemporary scholarship on the American landscape, this companion brings together scholars from the social sciences and humanities who focus their work on understanding the polyphonic evolution of the United States’ landscape. It simultaneously assesses the development of the US landscape as well as the scholarly thought that has driven innovation and continued research about that landscape. Four broad sections focus on key areas of scholarship: environmental landscapes, social, cultural, and popular identities in the landscape, political landscapes, and urban/economic landscapes. A special essay, "American Landscapes Under Siege" and accompanying short case studies call attention to the legacies and realities of race in the American landscape, bridging the discussion of social and political landscapes. This companion offers an invaluable and up-to-date guide for scholars and graduate students to current thinking across the range of disciplines which converge in the study of place, including Geography, Cultural Studies, and History as well as the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Planning.

This book argues that the design of built spaces influences civic attitudes, including prospects for social equality and integration, in America. Key American architects and planners—including Frederick Law Olmsted, Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Moses, and the New Urbanists—not only articulated unique visions of democracy in their extensive writings, but also instantiated those ideas in physical form. Using criteria such as the formation of social capital, support for human capabilities, and environmental sustainability, the book argues that the designs most closely associated with a communally-inflected version of democracy, such as Olmsted's public parks or various New Urbanist projects, create conditions more favorable to human flourishing and more consistent with a democratic society than those that are individualistic in their orientation, such as urban modernism or most suburban forms.

This study discusses how an immense diversity of ethnic and religious groups became sorted into a set of distinct regional societies in North America.

Photographs and essays express "the way the American landscape has been forged by various cultures in the past and what the possibilities are for its future design."--Jacket.