Kara Schlichting is an assistant professor of history at Queens College, CUNY. She earned her PhD from Rutgers University. Her work in late-19th and 20th-century American history sits at the intersection of urban, environmental, and political history in greater New York City. Schlichting is a co-editor of the H-Environment Roundtable Reviews. She has published in the Journal of Urban History and the Journal of Planning History. Her book New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore was published in 2019 with the University of Chicago Press's History of Urban America series. New York Recentered examines the rise of the New York metropolitan area from 1840 to 1940, shifting the frame of reference of the city from Manhattan to the region's geographic edges—its coastlines and waterways—and to small-time unelected locals who shaped the modern metropolis from the periphery. This history brings to light the rapidly-evolving, often innovative, and at times uneasy relationship between the urban center and its growing suburban periphery. Her new project, Seasons in the City, examines how urban form created seasonal climatic challenges in pre-"climate-controlled" New York.
RCC Research Project: Seasons in the City
Selected Publications:
- New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
- "Rethinking the Bronx's 'Soundview Slums': The Intersecting Histories of Large-Scale Waterfront Redevelopment and Community-Scaled Planning in an Era of Urban Renewal." Journal of Planning History 16, no. 2 (May 2017): 112–138.
- "Sanitizing Playland: Establishing Expectations for Public Behavior in Greater New York's Parks." The Gotham Center for New York City History Blog. The Graduate Center, City University of New York. July 4, 2017.