High Life explores the architectural and social history of the American metropolis from 1860 to 1980, through the fascinating lens of collective homeownership. Most Americans in this period chose to live in one of two types of dwellings: the suburban house or the rented apartment. Overlooked in this formulation is the rise of the condominium and its antecedents like the co-op, which appealed to families and individuals, including many single women, who neither wanted nor needed whole houses yet who sought the social and financial benefits of homeownership. Chief among these benefits was control. By making the shared apartment house more "private," co-ownership helped to nurture the household and make the complex city more navigable. From New York to Chicago, Washington, Miami, and Los Angeles, this book examines the growth of the phenomenon though architects', urban planners', and homebuilders' myriad experiments with this flexible, modern housing type.

Matthew Gordon Lasner is an assistant professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College, where he teaches courses on urbanism, housing, and the built environment. He holds a PhD and MA from the GSD at Harvard, an MS in planning from the London School of Economics, and a BA in urban studies from Columbia. His research interests include the history and theory of modern urbanism and planning, vernacular housing, and suburban form. His book, High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century, to be published by Yale University Press in 2012, explores the emergence of co-op and condominium housing in the United States. His writing has also appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Buildings & Landscapes, Planning Perspectives, tarp: Architecture Manual, Robert Moses and the Modern City, and BurnAway.org. From 2007 to 2011, Lasner was an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University in Atlanta.