Imperial San Francisco : urban power, earthly ruin
"For more than a century before the current enthusiasm for Pacific Rim trade, San Francisco's leaders strove to make the ocean their lake. In Imperial San Francisco, urban geographer Gray Brechin provides a visionary and myth-shattering reinterpretation not only of the city by the Golden Gate but of the process of urbanization itself, a saga that extends from the rise of ancient Rome to the founding of Washington to the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima." "Brechin maintains that "imperial" cities use advanced remote control technology to pull toward their centers the resources and energy of far-flung "empires" in order to raise the value of real estate. This process, founded on the extractive practice and ethos of mining, permits a few individuals and families to attain immense wealth and power at the expense of the city's hinterland and of succeeding generations."--BOOK JACKET
Print Book, English, 1999
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999