3 out of 4 stars
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This is a review of the book What Killed Downtown by Michael E. Tolle. This book is available under the ‘Political Theory’ section in Amazon.
It was the 1950s. Personal automobiles had given wings to the individuals to travel much easier than by public transport system but that freedom came with the price of finding the parking spaces to park. The downtowns could not handle the parking needs and the incoming traffic through the newly constructed highways and the expressways. This book narrates the struggles and the eventual demise of one such downtown, that of Norristown, Pennsylvania.
The book gives a detailed account of the real-time happenings from the days when settlements happened along the Schuylkill river to the days when malls became operational. The first part of the book covers the times when roads were formed to connect the waterways’ entries, and railroads laid their tracks to connect Norristown to the nearby cities. The second part of the book covers the parking and the traffic problems caused because of the personal automobiles and the Norristown county’s inability to address the issues due to internal squabbles, lack of leadership, and businessmen’s and politicians’ push-pulls. The third part of the book covers the eventual downfall of the downtown, and malls taking over the customers.
There are several interesting details that I liked in this book - introduction of the horse-drawn carriages and later the steam locomotives, the competitions between the railroads, contributions of the railroads, light rail, waterways and the roads to the local commerce, etc. As the author puts it succinctly - “Norristown swelled to a bustling town with shops and services housed in imposing multilevel brick and stone structures.” The statistics about relevant parameters like the number of shops that remained in business over the years etc. are shared throughout the book. The various types of architectures of the buildings and the details about the landmarks like 'Norris Theater’ are well narrated. The photos of major landmarks have been provided. The area map is not available for immediate reference.
The various factors leading to the Norristown downtown's demise are discussed in detail, e.g. local population’s apathy and indifference. It is interesting to note that the happenings were not just localized phenomena but were seen everywhere in the USA when people started using their personal vehicles and malls started attracting the customers with ‘ample, free parking’.
Overall, I find the topic and the contents of this book very intriguing to someone who is interested in the retail economy. This book is also a great resource for people who are interested in commerce, trade, transportation, housing, politics, history and social sciences. It took me 15 days to read and digest this 262-pages book because of the writing style. I had to make strenuous efforts to complete reading this book. I suggest that the author considers a contemporary colloquial storytelling style next time to attract and fascinate the young readers who are the pillars of the next generation. I recommend this book to everyone so that they understand the economics and politics behind what happened in Norristown, and probably in their local neighborhood too. I had really wanted to rate this book a 4 out of 4 stars, but because of the boring writing style, I rate this book a 3 out of 4 stars.
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What Killed Downtown?
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