Showing titles in Urban

This urgent exploration of why American society is in trouble—and how to fix it, starting with the places we call home—is an “essential and engaging read for everyone who wants to better understand the challenges facing our cities, towns and our nation.” (Richard Florida, author of The...

In July 2016, inner-city resident Judy Ryan found a young man—one of ‘her regulars'—slumped and quiet at her gate. He had overdosed from heroin. Fortunately, that man lived. But Judy had reached breaking point. After four years in a ‘war zone', where children might encounter a body on the streets, enough was enough. Knowing little about what she was getting into, but fired with resolve, Judy launched a grassroots campaign against apathy and prejudice.

In Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country.

The North Will Rise Again covers the colourful adventures of its inhabitants, the expansiveness and optimism that defines Northern culture, and the recurrent sense of failure and despair that is at the heart of one of the West’s most impoverished regions. By telling the story of the North in the last few decades, Alex goes in search of answers to some of the big questions at the forefront of British politics and society today.

Often overshadowed by San Francisco, its larger and more glamorous twin, Oakland has a fascinating history of its own. From serving as a major transportation hub to forging a dynamic manufacturing sector, by the mid-twentieth century Oakland had become the urban center of the East Bay. Hella Town focuses on how political deals, economic schemes, and technological innovations fueled this emergence but also seeded the city's postwar struggles.

Quando noi italiani pensiamo alla nazione che vorremmo diventare, cosa ci viene in mente? Probabilmente vorremmo avere un'economia in grande crescita e la piena occupazione: un paese in cui chiunque voglia lavorare possa farlo. Vorremmo avere le migliori università del pianeta e bellezze naturali adeguatamente valorizzate, prodotti culturali dall'influenza globale e la possibilità di definire «made in Italy» non solo un paio di scarpe ma anche un'app capace di costruire il futuro e un'idea che sappia cambiare il mondo.

The arbitrary lines of zoning maps across the country have come to dictate where Americans may live and work, forcing cities into a pattern of growth that is segregated and sprawling. The good news is that reform is in the air, with states across the country critically reevaluating zoning. In cities as diverse as Minneapolis, Fayetteville, and Hartford, the key pillars of zoning are under fire, with apartment bans being scrapped, minimum lot sizes dropping, and off-street parking requirements disappearing altogether. 

An indictment of America's housing policy that reveals the social engineering underlying our segregation by economic class, the social and political fallout that result, and what we can do about it The last, acceptable form of prejudice in America is based on class and executed through...

Through over ten years of research, interviewing activists along with unprecedented access to their personal archives, Tracy and Sonnie tell a crucial, untold story of the New Left. Their deeply sourced narrative history shows how poor and working-class individuals from diverse ethnic, rural and urban backgrounds cooperated and drew strength from one another. The groups they founded redefined community organizing, and transformed the lives and communities they touched.

Zwei Hörbücher in einer Box! 1. "Psychologie der Massen": Was passiert mit dem Individuum, wenn es sich in einer Gruppe wiederfindet? Wie ist es zu erklären, dass intelligente Menschen sich in der Masse zu Dingen hinreißen lassen, die sie als Einzelne niemals tun würden? Gustave le Bon beschrieb 1895 in seinem Standardwerk diese Mechanismen. Es ist erstaunlich und spricht für den Autor, dass die eingängig erklärte Analyse zeitlos wirkt und die Hörer den Eindruck gewinnen, das Buch sei tatsächlich viel jünger. 2. "Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse": Was ist eine Masse?

Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood, the gay sons of immigrants featured in Brown and Gay in LA could not have felt further removed from a world where queerness was accepted and celebrated. Instead, the men profiled here maneuver through family and friendship circles where masculinity dominates, gay sexuality is unspoken, and heterosexuality is strictly enforced. For these men, the path to sexual freedom often involves chasing the dreams while resisting the expectations of their immigrant parents—and finding community in each other.

Once America’s capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country’s greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city’s worst crisis yet (and that’s saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists―all have been drawn to Detroit’s baroquely decaying frontier. With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new Detroit-area native Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence.

Die Wohnungsfrage ist die soziale Frage unserer Zeit. Wohnungen sind zu reinen Spekulations­objekten verkommen. Hohe Nachfrage und sogenannte Zwangssanierungen lassen die Mieten explodieren und zwar nicht nur in den Großstädten, sondern auch im Umland. Caren Lay nimmt die deutsche Wohnungspolitik der letzten 20 Jahre schonungslos unter die Lupe. Sie zeigt, wie und warum Deutschland zum Eldorado für Wohnungsspekulanten werde konnte, und liefert provokante Ideen für eine soziale Wohnungspolitik, die wir so dringend brauchen.

A birder strolling in Central Park. A college student lounging on a university quad. Two men sitting in a coffee shop. Perfectly ordinary actions in ordinary settings—and yet, they sparked jarring and inflammatory responses that involved the police and attracted national media coverage. Why? In essence, Elijah Anderson would argue, because these were Black people existing in white spaces. In this book, Anderson brings his immense knowledge and ethnography to bear in this timely study of the racial barriers that are still firmly entrenched in our society at every class level. 

From the medieval cobbles, through Dickensian iron and fog, to the neon lights and bustle of the twenty-first century, the ever-changing streets of London map out the vibrant stories, triumphs and struggles of everyone who ever called London home. From the Roman and Celts marching along the ancient Old Kent Road, to the rattling newspaper presses of Fleet Street, the game of Monopoly has painted London's story across cheerful coloured tiles. But those Monopoly streets live and breathe—they don't just illuminate our history.

Georg Simmel (1858 - 1918), war Philosoph und Soziologe. Sein Essay über die "Großstädte und das Geistesleben" war bahnbrechend - weil es eingänglich schildert, wie die Großstadt auf das Individuum wirkt. Ein faszinierendes, zeitloses Werk.

Our modern-day cities might seem to represent our separation from the natural world. In fact, as Ben Wilson reveals in this captivating re-examination of urban landscapes around the world, nature has always been at the heart of the city. Wilson explores the wild side of cities, past, present and future: the middens, abandoned sites and strips of land alongside railway lines.

This book is the first anthology to explore the connection between race and the suburbs in American cinema from the end of World War II to the present. It builds upon the explosion of interest in the suburbs in film, television, and fiction in the last fifteen years, concentrating exclusively on the relationship of race to the built environment. Race and the Suburbs in American Film is a stimulating resource for considering the manner in which race is foundational to architecture and urban geography, which is reflected, promoted, and challenged in cinematic representations.

Life in Cockney London was tough in the post-war years. The government's broken promises had led to a chronic housing shortage, rampant crime and families living in squalor. But one thing prevailed: the unbeatable spirit of the East End, a tight-knit community who pulled through the dark times with humour and heart. Drawing on both family history and her own memories of growing up in the 1950s and '60s, as well as her working life as a district nurse and local police officer, Jean Fullerton vividly depicts this fascinating part of London.

At the end of the 1976 football season, more than forty Harvard athletes went to Boston's Combat Zone to celebrate. In the city's adult entertainment district, drugs and prostitution ran rampant, violent crime was commonplace, and corrupt police turned the other way. At the end of the night, Italian American star athlete Andy Puopolo, raised in the city's North End, was murdered in a stabbing. Three African American men were accused of the crime. His murder made national news and led to the eventual demise of the city's red-light district.