The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Mit Press)

Just as described

Hayden provides a nice summary of public history projects she has undertaken. Her emphasis is on including women and minorities in public history projects. She also gives a great assessment on how to use the physical landscape to determine what types of projects are incorporated.

great book to use at the university

Using Los Angeles as a case study (based in her own professional projects) Hayden argues for shifting the public history paradigm in urban places to acknowledge a more diversely gendered, racial and ethnic past. The case studies are preceded by a brief examination of urban public history in other American locations. Hayden's text is accessible to a broad readership, but at times the narrative might have benefited from greater depth of exploration.

I admire Hayden's book, "Building Suburbia" so I anticipated this volume with great pleasure. Unfortunately, "The Power of Place" lacks the insight and observation of Hayden's later book. That is forgivable; I expect authors to develop their skills, and Hayden is an astute writer.She wasn't particularly astute, however, when she wrote "The Power of Place". I don't want to offend anyone, but the idea of white liberals going in to disenfranchised "ethnic" neighborhoods, to give those poor deprived people some art--well, that is patronizing and rather pathetic. Who asked them?Every community has art, and I hope Hayden has learned from the mistakes she made in "The Power of Place". Bringing art to the poor ignored masses (as she sees them) merely replicates and reinforces minority and ethnic groups as "marginalized" and "needy". It never occurred to Hayden that there are artforms that are inaccessible to her; she is not the target audience for this art, and may not be able to perceive or understand it. She readily assumes that her understanding of art and her access to it is superior to that of various cultural and ethnic minorities, so she's going to help the poor, culturallly-starved plebes. She delivers her own clumsy aesthetics to "underrepresented" groups and assumes that if she can't see or understand an art force or cultural form, it must not be there. So, a Euro-American process of art is the only legitimate one for her, and she didn't see that in these poor, isolated, marginalized, disenfranchised, communities, the members of which were probably too polite to tell Hayden and her do-gooder, well-meaning buddies to "Hit the road. Who asked you? We got this." If only Hayden had the same courtesy. Assume that art is everywhere, Hayden, and learn to understand forms and expressions that might be unfamiliar to you. The author wrote this book in the mid-1990s, I hope by now she has grown at least as sophisticated as the patient recipients of her imposed "community artwork".