Metropolitan Philadelphia

"As America's fifth-largest city and fourth-largest metropolitan region, Philadelphia is tied to its surrounding counties and suburban neighbourhoods. It is this vital relationship, suggests Steven Conn, that will make or break the region." "Central to the identity of a twenty-first-century metropolitan Philadelphia, Conn argues, is the deep and complicated interplay of past and present. Looking at the region through the wide lens of its culture and history, Metropolitan Philadelphia moves seamlessly between the two. Displaying a specialist's knowledge of the area as well as a deep personal connection to his subject, Conn examines the shifting meaning of the region's history, the utopian impulse behind its founding, its role in creating the American middle class, its rivers and watershed, and the way art and cultural institutions have given shape to a resident identity."--Jacket.