Palimpsests: Biographies of 50 City Districts

The opening words of Paul Knox's concise introductory essay get right at the heart of what this remarkable book is all about: “Cities reveal themselves in the moods and personalities of their districts” (p. 8). With the subtitle clarified, I'll save you toggling over to the online dictionary (as the author thoughtfully did for his hard-copy readers). A palimpsest is “a manuscript written over a partly erased older manuscript in such a way that the old words can be read beneath the new” (p. 8).

At first glance, this handsome, glossy, large-format paperback might appear to be a coffee table tome—but it is so much more than that. This volume stems from the author's lifelong wanderings across countless North American and European metropolises, from which fifty well-chosen vignettes have been drawn to highlight key local components of the urban scene. The result is a unique and valuable contribution to our understanding of the ever-changing metropolitan landscape. Throughout, Knox cleverly interweaves his two central concerns: (1) how human spatial organization produces sharply contrasting districts, and (2) how a district's character (singular blending of built environment, economic activities, and sociocultural attributes) evolves from the individual and collective decisions of earlier generations. In a study of this kind, the crucial selection of cities and districts is handled most adeptly, and diversity clearly triumphs over repetitiveness. Knox stresses that the districts surveyed here are not intended to be definitive, and he has deliberately chosen lesser known districts (in cities such as Bilbao, Vancouver, and Charlotte) as well as iconic ones (e.g., Belgravia, Levittown, and Hollywood). And let me add a word about the often-stunning photographs that play a major role in this work: They are mostly Knox's own, revealing yet another talent of this gifted urban scholar.

The fifty vignettes constitute a particularly comprehensive array of metropolitan districts, and each of them relates to twenty-first-century urban issues. In addition to Canada and the United States, these case studies are drawn from ten European countries. Surprisingly, by my count twenty-two of the fifty districts analyzed are located in suburbs rather than central cities. Knox broadly defines each district's specialty, and these fifty can be more tightly grouped as follows: downtown-area commercial and residential gentrification (fifteen); residential suburbs, including those with long histories (eleven); suburban activity centers (seven); ethnic, bohemian, and gay communities (six); central-city central business districts (six); tourist destinations (three); and lower income compounds (two). Because each district vignette follows a similar written and illustrated format, I have selected three for closer examination: London's City, Boston's Dorchester, and Miami Beach's South Beach.

In the eight pages devoted to London's Financial District, eleven generously sized photos predominate and are nicely linked to the text through their captions (as is the pair of small although generalized maps). The informative and efficiently crafted text totals about six columns, and despite space restrictions Knox manages to meet all of the aims outlined earlier in sufficient detail. I was especially pleased to note, here and in most of the other vignettes, the careful contextualization of his discussion within the knowledge frameworks of contemporary urban geography. The portrait of London's City that emerges is that of a highest order, postindustrial business complex dominated by classic agglomeration economies—underscoring that face-to-face transactions within tightly linked networks not only survive but thrive as this district has become London's economic cornerstone in its emergence as one of the global economy's three World Cities. As a neat final touch, all the vignettes conclude with a brief annotated listing of the most pertinent further readings.

The selection of Boston's Dorchester should come as no surprise to the initiated: It was one of the districts that urban historian Sam Bass Warner, Jr. (1962) examined in Streetcar Suburbs, his groundbreaking, magisterial study of the city's late-nineteenth-century expansion. Although limited to only six pages, Knox makes the most of his opportunity here to provide an insightful overview of one of the nation's first places to have its landscape and social geography shaped by the then-nascent process of middle-class suburbanization. The seven photos, which mostly depict arrangements of three-decker dwellings, are especially important in supplementing the discussion of this emerging residential environment of the 1890s. Equally well handled are the subsequent transformations of Dorchester's character, first as it steadily filtered down the socioeconomic ladder until white flight gave way to racial and immigrant ethnic change in the 1960s, and then more recently as the district has gradually begun to experience cosmopolitanism, reinvestment, and initial gentrification thanks to the enduring quality and appeal of its original housing stock.

Iconic South Beach with its renowned Art Deco shorefront architecture certainly exemplifies the notion of an urban “destination” district, but I must quibble over its municipal mislabeling as “Miami” in the vignette title (short-shrifting the separate city of Miami Beach is always a big deal in this part of south Florida). The vignette is graced as usual with appropriate photos—eight in all, half of them featuring the obligatory Ocean Drive hotels. These smoothly fit into the flow of the entertaining narrative—again shoehorned into what remains of the six pages allotted to this district—which deftly captures the busy history, multitude of socioeconomic transformations, and current complexion of the place. Indeed, the accuracy of his South Beach portrait reminds this reviewer that Knox has meticulously researched the key aspects of all fifty districts in addition to relying on his camera, field notes, and memories. Nonetheless, a couple of errors did slip into print: the (now-declining) upscale shopping area at the north end of Miami Beach's barrier island is in Bal Harbour (not Bel Harbor), and the famous Fontainebleau (incorrectly spelled as ending in “bleu”) Hotel, lying halfway between Ocean Drive and Bal Harbour, is thirty blocks away and therefore not “just to the north” of South Beach.

Without reservation, this fascinating book is heartily recommended for researchers and practitioners as well as history buffs and urban enthusiasts of every stripe. Moreover, anyone teaching courses that cover the topic of urban landscape evolution should consider this book for adoption, particularly because of its most effective utilization of case studies. In fact, because it is so skillfully organized, well written, and loaded with perceptive insights, it is easy to envision a course or seminar in which Palimpsests can be used in conjunction with other key readings on this topic.

After a recent hiatus within the discipline, it is most encouraging to see that the theme of landscape evolution in urban geography has not disappeared altogether. Knox's approach has great merit, and hopefully we will see more books like this, especially on the mushrooming cities of world regions lying outside North America and Atlantic-fronting Europe. Finally, it should be noted that this book establishes Paul Knox as a most worthy heir to the tradition of urban landscape interpretation exemplified by the outstanding work of Kevin Lynch, Grady Clay, Peirce Lewis, and Larry Ford.