Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape

The first history of the bulldozer and its transformation from military weapon to essential tool for creating the post-World War II American landscape

Although the decades following World War II stand out as an era of rapid growth and construction in the United States, those years were equally significant for large-scale destruction. In order to clear space for new suburban tract housing, an ambitious system of interstate highways, and extensive urban renewal development, wrecking companies demolished buildings while earthmoving contractors leveled land at an unprecedented pace and scale. In this pioneering history, Francesca Russello Ammon explores how postwar America came to equate this destruction with progress.

The bulldozer functioned as both the means and the metaphor for this work. As the machine transformed from a wartime weapon into an instrument of postwar planning, it helped realize a landscape-altering "culture of clearance." In the hands of the military, planners, politicians, engineers, construction workers, and even children's book authors, the bulldozer became an American icon. Yet social and environmental injustices emerged as clearance projects continued unabated. This awareness spurred environmental, preservationist, and citizen participation efforts that have helped to slow, though not entirely stop, the momentum of the postwar bulldozer.

Author: Francesca Russello Ammon
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 04/26/2016
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.30lbs
Size: 10.30h x 7.20w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780300200683


Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2016

About the Author
Francesca Russello Ammon is assistant professor of city and regional planning and historic preservation at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies the history of the built environment, focusing on the social, material, and cultural life of cities in the twentieth-century United States. She lives in Philadelphia, PA.


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