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New York has always been a bellwether for the nation, representing both its brightest ambitions and its darkest fears. The Restless City is a short, readable history of New York City, from colonial times to the present, showing how the successes and struggles of the city reinforced each other to create a distinctly dynamic, shocking, and therefore influential city. Organized around conventional time periods, each chapter provides an introduction to the era, followed by four or five mini-essays o...

Many urban centres are shaken to their core with mistrust between communities and law enforcement. Erosion was exacerbated in the Obama-era, intensified during the 2016 campaign, and is violently manifested in Trump's presidency. The promise of uniting communities articulated by leaders lays broken. The text suggests that promise of prosperous and engaged urban citizenry will remain broken until we can honestly address the following unanswered questions: What factors contribute to the creation o...

Over a ten-year period, Margaret Morton documented the inventive ways in which homeless people in New York City have created not only places to live but also communities that offer a sense of pride, place and individuality. Morton's camera reveals the ingenuity of builders who have constructed homes out of discarded materials such as warehouse pallets, junked auto parts and demolition scrap. Her luminous photographs bring to light the determination and aesthetic sensibilities of all but forgotte...

A series of rich case studies examine a range of topics, including neighbourhood gentrification, subway busking, yard sales, electronic waste, and language, refining the touchstone principle of circulation for the study of urban culture, both materially and theoretically. Contributors employ a variety of disciplinary approaches to create a richly varied picture of the multiple trajectories and effects of movement in the city. An engaging work that considers city planning, urban culture, and soc...

This work focuses on urban governance in the developing world, its aim being to bring a holistic perspective to the debate on urban governance in Asia and around the globe. It has been divided into three sections: The first section is on rural interventions as they influence urbanization and its problems/solutions. The second focuses on urban governance, infrastructure programs, service delivery reforms and their evaluation. The third and final section focuses on urbanization and the environment...

Greenwich Village is a collection of short essays and art by the hip and well-known artists, writers, musicians, dancers, actors, restaurateurs, and other neighbourhood habitues who have lived or live in the Village - from Mario Batali to Donna Karan, and John Guare to Sarah Jessica Parker. Every corner of the Village is represented in the book: There are recollections of jazz clubs and existentialism on Bleecker Street, edgy rock music at St. Mark's Place, folk singers and Hootenannies in Wash...

Covering the entire period, from the colonial era to the late-20th century, this book charts the history of the homeless in America. Drawing on sources that include records of charitable organizations, sociological studies, and numerous memoirs of formerly homeless persons, Kusmer demonstrates that the homeless have been a significant presence on the American scene for over 200 years. He probes the history of homelessness from a variety of angles, showing why people become homeless; how charitie...

For those looking to raise a family in a storybook American town, or a change of pace from hectic city life, this book is the answer. It includes information on: the cost of the home, recreation facilities, cost of electricity, schools, sales tax rates, per capita income, geography and climate, and a host of other pertinent information about the nicest, most affordable, cosiest towns in the US Even includes interviews with town officials, librarians, teachers, shop owners, and other residents. A...

This book offers the reader a comprehensive understanding and the multitude of methods utilized in the research of urban mobilities with cities and 'the urban' as its pivotal axis. It covers theories and concepts for scholars and researchers to understand, observe and analyse the world of urban mobilities. The Handbook of Urban Mobilities facilitates the understanding of urban mobilities within a historic conscience of societal transformation. It explores key concepts and theories within the 'm...

This groundbreaking, interdisciplinary volume brings together diverse analyses of state space in historical and contemporary capitalism. * The first volume to present an accessible yet challenging overview of the changing geographies of state power under capitalism. * A unique, interdisciplinary collection of contributions by major theorists and analysts of state spatial restructuring in the current era. * Investigates some of the new political spaces that are emerging under contemporary cond...

This book is a study of religious practices of listening in the Boston area. Through ethnographic study of a variety of religious communities, with an extensive focus on Quaker listening, it argues that religious practice shapes our habits of listening by creating a plurality of regimes of listening across Boston's landscape. These practices, moreover, cultivate specific dispositions, as well as distinct patterns of religious and democratic virtues. Through these dispositions and virtues, religi...

How the South Bronx and Puerto Rican migration defined Fr. Neil Connolly's priesthood as he learned to both serve and be part of his community South Bronx, 1958. Change was coming. Guidance was sorely needed to bridge the old and the new, for enunciating and implementing a vision. It was a unique place and time in history where Father Neil Connolly found his true calling and spiritual awakening. The Kingdom Began in Puerto Rico captures the spirit of the era and the spirit of this great man. Set...

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment is the first publication in any language of the only book devoted to architecture by Henri Lefebvre. Written in 1973 but only recently discovered in a private archive, this work extends Lefebvre’s influential theory of urban space to the question of architecture. Taking the practices and perspective of habitation as his starting place, Lefebvre redefines architecture as a mode of imagination rather than a specialized process or a collection of monuments. He ca...

Michael Sorkin is one of the most forthright and engaging architectural writers in the world. In What Goes Up he charts the dehumanising regimes of mayors Bloomberg and De Blasio that created a city of glittering towers and increasing inequality. He looks at what has happened to Ground Zero, as a place of memory has been reconstructed by "staritects" and turned into malls. The city, he suggests, has to be reimagined from the street up on a human scale, to develop new ways to revitalise neighbour...

Urban Arabesques examines philosophy as an event of the city and the city as an event of philosophy and how the intertwining of the two generates an urban imaginary. This critique-in-motion of creative figures and conceptual personae from (non) philosophy illuminates the emergence of sense in the city, shows how "transcendental empiricism" operates within it, and how the everyday life of the streets-the ordinariness of experience as well as the screen/projector of urban surfaces-uncovers new pat...