Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth CenturyIt is a paradox of American life that we are a highly urbanized nation filled with people deeply ambivalent about urban life. An aversion to urban density and all that it contributes to urban life, and a perception that the city was the place where big government first took root in America fostered what historian Steven Conn terms the anti urban impulse. In response, anti urbanists called for the decentralization of the city, and rejected the role of