Columbus, Ohio a Personal Geography: A Personal Geography (Urban Life and Urban Landscape Series)

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Summary: Henry Hunker's account of post-World War II Columbus
Review: Columbus, Ohio: A Personal Geography is Henry Hunker's account of post-World War II Columbus from his perspective as a professional geographer and longtime resident of this Ohio city. Personal and anecdotal, Columbus, Ohio spans the past fifty years when the city expanded to become the largest municipality in the state. Hunker includes itineraries for two tours (one in 1956, the other in 1999) and uses them to compare the city then and now. The informative and engaging text is enhanced with eighteen photographs, and four maps of the metropolitan area. Columbus, Ohio provides the reader with fascinating and thought-provoking view of the physical, economic, industrial, and cultural life of Columbus. This outstanding presentation could well serve as a template for historical surveys of other significant and influential American communities.

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Summary: All trees, no forest.
Review: [Note: If you are an old-time upper middle class Columbus resident with little interest in the how's and why's, this is the book for you. Go Buckeyes and all that.]

Columbus, Ohio.

Behind the mask, it is an amazing city. A thriving town with stunning sprawl and clever consumer oriented design, and a surprising diversity as tens of thousands of new Somali and Mexican immigrants pour into this post-modern Oz. The thriving gay culture; the rule of yuppie; the sickening Appalachian slums; the movie-set consumer cities of Polaris, Easton and New Albany; the subsumption of small satellite towns; the sharp racial lines; the real estate bonanza and on and on and on . . . all of it hidden from the reader by Hunker's misty sentimentality.

I, too, love Columbus. However, this is a subject in desperate need of serious study, and is in many ways the face of a new majority America wanting for explication. Its' transitions and losses are the hallmark of an economy remaking an entire region in its image, a stark contrast to post-industrial Cleveland or hilly Cincinnati.

Granted, this is a personal geography: a travelogue that misses more than it sees. The thin (in every sense) volume is devastating testament to the need for a critical approach to geography, least it be reduced to a series of lamentations, winking accolades, and the perpetuation of a such limited reading of the rich story embedded in the dynamic urban fabric. The geography of Columbus is waiting to be written.