BULLDOZER (Yale University Press, 2016)

Winner of the 2017 Lewis Mumford Prize for Best Book in American Planning History

Francesca Russello Ammon is Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning and Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies the history of the built environment, focusing on the social, material, and cultural life of American cities from World War II to the present. She lives in Philadelphia, PA.

This first history of the bulldozer follows the machine from its use as a weapon in World War II through its role in the massive suburban housing, interstate highway, and urban renewal projects that dramatically transformed postwar American space.

Ammon also harnesses the digital humanities to explore both dramatic and everyday change in the postwar built environment. Current projects examine historic preservation-based urban renewal in Philadelphia’s Society Hill and vernacular redevelopment along Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard.