Search results

David Reid has gathered together the novelists, journalists, and cultural critics who could best address the myths, define the truths, and interpret the media images of the second largest city in the U.S. They report on the new Latino and Asian populations of South Central and the East Side and the old establishment of the West side; Downtown with its heavily mortgaged office towers held by Canadian and Japanese landlords; shuttered factories and thriving sweatshops; architecture from Irving Gil...

For as long as statistics record, housing conditions in the United States have been improving. Housing that only the rich once enjoyed is commonplace today; by today's standards, most of the population was ill-housed at the turn of the century. Amidst this rise, however, inadequate living accommodations for a portion of the population have stubbornly persisted. Many families endure housing deprivations that are severe, even with respect to the norms of earlier years.Development of housing policy...

Originally published in 1986, this book provides an authoritative summary of late 20th Century trends which affected housing stock and a comprehensive commentary on policies which were designed to improve housing stock. The policies referred to are specific to England and Wales but the experience is relevant to other countries facing similar trends: a growth in owner-occupation, increasing problems of disrepair and low levels of investment in the housing stock. It will be on interest to those co...

This book looks at the transition from New Labour's 'Spatial Planning' approach to the Coalition Government's preferred 'Localism' approach. Localism we are told will liberate local planners from the heavy hand of central government and allow planning to flourish at the local level. Alternatively, austerity cuts nationally mean planning faces cuts. In just two years the machinery of regional planning has been dismantled and local authorities are being asked to do more with less. Innovation is al...

Democracy, States, and the Struggle for Social Justice draws on the fields of geography, political theory, and cultural studies to analyze experiments with novel forms of democracy, highlighting the critical issue of the changing nature of the state and citizenship in the contemporary political landscape as they are buffeted by countervailing forces of corporate globalization and participatory politics. Using interesting case studies, the book explores these 3 main themes: the meaning of radi...

In The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn, Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C. Altschuler tell the story of nineteenth-century Brooklyn's domination by upper- and middle-class Protestants with roots in Puritan New England. This lively history describes the unraveling of the control they wielded as more ethnically diverse groups moved into the "City of Churches" during the twentieth century. Before it became a prime American example of urban ethnic diversity, Brooklyn was a lovely and salubrious "to...

"Wide-Open Town" traces the history of gay men and lesbians in San Francisco from the turn of the century, when queer bars emerged in San Francisco's tourist districts, to 1965, when a raid on a drag ball changed the course of queer history. Bringing to life the striking personalities and vibrant milieu that fueled this era, Nan Alamilla Boyd examines the culture that developed around the bar scene and homophile activism. She argues that the communities forged inside bars and taverns functioned...

In the years between 1880 and 1915, New York City and its environs underwent a tremendous demographic transformation with the arrival of millions of European immigrants, native whites from the rural countryside, and people of African descent from both the American South and the Caribbean. While all groups faced challenges in their adjustment to the city, hardening racial prejudices set the black experience apart from that of other newcomers. Through encounters with each other, blacks and whites,...

Through the lens of real estate transactions from 1890 to 1920, Kevin McGruder offers an innovative perspective on Harlem's history and reveals the complex interactions between whites and African Americans at a critical time of migration and development. During these decades Harlem saw a dramatic increase in its African American population, and although most histories speak only of the white residents who met these newcomers with hostility, this book uncovers a range of reactions. Although some...

As issues of power and social order loom large in Angelstown, Ralph Cintron shows how eruptions on the margins of the community are emblematic of a deeper disorder. In their language and images, the members of a Latino community in a midsized American city create self-respect under conditions of disrepect. Cintron's innovative ethnography offers a beautiful portrait of a struggling Mexican-American community and shows how people (including ethnographers) make sense of their lives through cultura...

Useful and inspiring cases illustrate participatory placemaking practices and strategies. How Spaces Become Places tells stories of place makers who respond to daunting challenges of affordable housing, racial violence, and immigration, as well as community building, arts development, safe streets, and coalition-building. The book's thirteen contributors share their personal experiences tackling complex and contentious situations in cities ranging from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and from Paris to D...

A city's infrastructure influences the daily life of residents, neighborhoods, and businesses. But uniting the hard infrastructure of roads and bridges with the soft infrastructure of parks and public art creates significant political challenges. Planners at all stages must work at an intersection of public policy, markets, and aesthetics--while also accounting for how a project will work in both the present and the future. The latest volume in the Urban Agenda series looks at pressing infrastru...

In most cities today, fire has been reduced to a sporadic and isolated threat. But throughout history the constant risk of fire has left a deep and lasting imprint on almost every dimension of urban society. This volume, the first truly global study of urban conflagration, shows how fire has shaped cities throughout the modern world, from Europe to the imperial colonies, major trade entrep\u00f4ts, and non-European capitals, right up to such present-day megacities as Lagos and Jakarta. Urban fir...