"There should be more books like All American City . Billingham masterfully demonstrates the value of looking beyond our largest metropolises to understand how and why cities change. Any comprehensive understanding of contemporary urbanism should rest on carefully researched, comprehensive, and engaging books about mid-sized cities like this one."-- Japonica Brown-Saracino , author of The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea "Urban sociology tends to focus on large cities and the problems that come from either rapid economic growth or decline. In this refreshing and engaging book, Billingham examines how Wichita, a mid-sized Great Plains city, has warded off severe decline but repeatedly struggled to compete with its peer cities and realize its dreams of growth. I hope this book inspires scholars to tell the story of other cities like Wichita that have too often escaped our attention."-- Richard E. Ocejo , author of Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City "From urban renewal demolition to riverfront festival marketplaces, pop-up placemaking, and city flag hoopla, downtown Wichita showcases almost the entire gamut of development 'best practices' that growth coalitions in small-to-mid sized cities have used to respond to urban decline and post-industrial change.

A compassionate and thorough investigator, Chase Billingham documents the many initiatives, actors, and rationales that have each tried to restore Wichita to past glories, reserving his critical focus for the corporate power and public sector austerity that never gave the city a fighting chance."-- Leonard Nevarez , author of Pursuing Quality of Life: From the Affluent Society to the Consumer Society " All-American City leverages the detailed experiences of locals with 'small city'-focused sociology to produce a compelling and clear-eyed vision of Wichita's past, present, and future. From a stream of city branding mottos like 'Cow Town,' 'The Air Capital of America,' and 'Detroit of the Small Plane Age,' to the Osage-inspired Keeper of the Plains, Billingham expertly charts the city's complicated cultural and historical landscape with a battery of important symbolic touchstones in between. This book firmly places Wichita on the great map of Urban America."-- Jonathan Wynn , author of Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport Billingham's history of contemporary Wichita serves as a stark reminder of the economic exigencies that impel even smaller cities to adopt financialized models of urban development. These policies promise to make cities economically competitive by promoting tourism, building entertainment complexes, and attracting a footloose creative class. As All-American City vividly shows, too often they exacerbate urban inequalities and erode local histories and culture."-- Jacob Lederman , author of Chasing World-Class Urbanism: Global Policy versus Everyday Survival in Buenos Aires "Billingham has, in exacting detail, outlined what happens when all the tricks and strategies of urban growth fail.

All-American City shows us that Wichita's reticence to pool resources prevents it from building the predictably unique urban amenities that have defined American cities in the first quarter of the 21st century."-- David A. Banks , author of The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America.