Showing titles in Urban

Winner of France's 2004 Prix de Flore for his memoir The Romanian: Story of an Obsession, Bruce Benderson has gained international respect for his controversial opinions and original take on contemporary society. In this collection of essays, Benderson directs his exceptional powers of observation toward some of the most debated, as well as some of the most neglected, issues of our day.

Sociologist Stephen Klineberg presents “a trailblazing study” (Kirkus Reviews) that shows how the city of Houston has emerged as a microcosm for America’s future—based on a meticulously researched, thirty-eight-year study of its changing economic, demographic, and cultural landscapes...

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s.

In Saving America's Cities, Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal.

Brought to you by Penguin. Building requires power and resources – then, once created, our environment structures how we relate to each other. But what would a distinctly democratic built environment look like? Should we prioritize an inclusive process by which as many citizens as possible can...

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?

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.

The origins of gentrification date back to World War I - only it was sometimes known as “remodeling” then. Dennis Gale’s insightful book The Misunderstood History of Gentrification provides a recontextualization of American gentrification, planning, and policymaking. He argues that gentrification must be understood as an urban phenomenon with historical roots in the very early 20th century.

As human activity and environmental change come to be increasingly recognized as intertwined phenomena on a rapidly urbanizing planet, the field of urban ecology has risen to offer useful ways of thinking about coupled human and natural systems. On the forefront of this discipline is Marina Alberti, whose innovative work offers a conceptual framework for uncovering fundamental laws that govern the complexity and resilience of cities, which she sees as key to understanding and responding to planetary change and the evolution of Earth.

In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi. 

The Civic Brand: The Power & Responsibility of Place is a bold and practical book that challenges conventional thinking about city-building, tourism, economic development, and community engagement. Author Ryan Short introduces a new framework for shaping more resilient, equitable, and loveable places that is rooted in identity, values, and a triple bottom line.

From four-term Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, a hopeful and illuminating look at the dynamic and inventive urban centers that will lead the United States in coming years. Oklahoma City. Indianapolis. Charleston. Des Moines. What do these cities have in common? They are cities of modest size...

A meticulously reported, character-driven, unforgettable investigation of a time when nothing was certain and everything was at stake, by the acclaimed sociologist and best-selling author Eric Klinenberg “A gripping, deeply moving account of a signal year in modern history, told through the...

In this exhilarating look at cities, past and future, Ben Wilson proposes that, in our world of rising seas and threatening weather, the natural world may prove the city's savior. Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but...

In light of concerns about food and human health, fraying social ties, economic uncertainty, and rampant consumerism, some people are foregoing a hurried, distracted existence and embracing a mindful way of living. Intentional residential communities across the United States are seeking the freedom to craft their own societies and live based on the values of nonviolence, self-sufficiency, equality, and voluntary simplicity.

Gabrielle Giffords's documentary Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down is now in theaters nationwide! Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, share their impassioned argument for responsible gun ownership. After the 2011 Tucson shooting that...

Words Whispered in Water is the story of how - against all odds - one woman exposed the culprit in the catastrophic flooding and compelled the news media, and the government, to tell the truth. Words Whispered in Water highlights the importance of exposing the bad behavior of giant corporations and bureaucracies whose unsavory activities affect millions of people, because once bad behavior is exposed, there is noticeably less fraud and better behavior on the part of an organization.

A New York Times bestselling author’s gripping account of a Chicago community coming together to save a group of teenagers from gun violence. In the tradition of works like Random Family and Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Sudhir Venkatesh’s The Tomorrow Game is a deeply reported chronicle of...

ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 ONE OF BUZZFEED’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 An electrifying, dazzlingly written reckoning and an essential addition to the national conversation about race and class, Survival Math takes its name from the calculations...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE PAST...