In the City: Random Acts of Awareness Review
This work relays vivid glimpses of the anonymous urban dweller's experience, history and culture to create a portrait that is familiar yet fresh; it is a consideration of modern urban life.
Public and Private Spaces of the City Review
The relationship between public and private spheres is one of the key concerns of the modern society. This book investigates this relationship, especially as manifested in the urban space with its social and psychological significance. Through theoretical and historical examination, it explores how and why the space of human socities is subdivided into public and private sections. It starts with the private, interior space of the mind and moves step by step, through the body, home, neighborhood and the city, outwards to the most public, impersonal spaces, exploring the nature of each realm and their complex, interdependent realtionships.
A stimulating and thought provoking book for any architect, architectural historian, urban planner or designer.
Encyclopedia of the City Review
The Encyclopedia of the City focuses on the key topics encountered by undergraduates and scholars in urban studies and allied fields. Contributors include major theoreticians and practitioners, and on other individuals, groups, and organizations which study the city or practice in a field that directly or indirectly affects the city, the Encyclopedia necessarily adopts an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspective.
A solid but also provocative starting point for wider exploration of the city, this is a first-class work of reference that will be an essential resource for independent study as well as a useful aid in teaching.
The Future of the Medium-sized City in Britain and Germany Review
New York City Politics: Governing Gotham Review
"A first-rate study of New York City's complex politics, with careful attention to interesting battles--such as the fight for an Olympic Stadium in Manhattan and the effort to redevelop Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn--and to important themes--such as the changing patterns of immigration and ethnic diversity and the conflicting interests among the city's many business organizations."-Jameson W. Doig, Princeton University "This study is essential reading for students and scholars who want to understand New York City politics--its structure and decision-making process."-Jewel Bellush, professor emerita, Hunter College, CUNY Most experts consider economic development to be the dominant factor influencing urban politics. They point to the importance of the finance and real estate industries, the need to improve the tax base, and the push to create jobs. Bruce F. Berg maintains that there are three forces which are equally important in New York City politics: • Economic development. • The city's relationships with the state and the federal governments, which influence taxation, revenue, and public policy responsibilities. • New York City's racial and ethnic diversity, resulting in calls for representation, recognition, and equity in the delivery of services. Berg's focus is on all three forces, as well as the interplay among them. Along the way, Berg covers a range of topics, including the Dinkins, Giuliani, and Bloomberg administrations; the battles over sports arenas; party politics; rising immigrant groups and the role of their leaders; changes to the city's charter; and New York City politics in the post-9/11 era. An engaging look at the complex nature of urban politics, this book is the only one of its kind to offer a comprehensive narrative of the challenges, frustrations, and successes of New York's governing institutions, and their prospects for meeting the city's long-term needs. Bruce F. Berg chairs the political science department at Fordham University, where he is an associate professor.
Visions of the Modern City: Essays in History, Art, and Literature Review
The relentless pace of urbanization since the industrial revolution has inspired a continuing effort to view, read, and name the modern city. "We are now at a point of transition to a new kind of city", write William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, "and thus we are experiencing the same crisis of language felt by observers of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cities." "Visions of the Modern City" explores the ways in which artists and writers have struggled to define the city during the past two centuries and opens a new perspective on the urban vision of our time.
In their introduction, the editors outline three phases in the evolution of the modern city-- each having its own distinctive morphology and metaphor-- and argue that a new vocabulary is needed to describe the sprawling "urban field" of today. Eric Lampard draws a detailed demographic and geographic picture of urbanization since the late eighteenth century, culminating with the "decentered" city of the 1980s. Other contributors examine the representation of cities from the London and Paris of 1850 to the New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo of the present. Deborah Nord and Philip Collins follow Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens, respectively, through the urban underworld of Victorian London. Theodore Reff traces the double life of Paris expressed in the work of Manet, while Michele Hannoosh shows bow Baudelaire influenced the Impressionists by transferring the aesthetic implications of the term nature to urban experience. Thomas Bender and William Taylor focus on tensions between the horizontal and the vertical in the architectural development of New York City, and Paul Anderer investigates the private, domestic spaces that represent Tokyo in postwar Japanese fiction. Steven Marcus analyzes the breakdown of the city as signifying system in the novels of Saul Bellow and Thomas Pynchon, writers who question whether the indecipherable contemporary city has any meaning left at all.
Arabic in the City: Issues in Dialect Contact and Language Variation (Routledge Arabic Linguistics Series) Review
Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the first examination of the interplay between urbanization, language variation and language change in fifteen major Arab cities.
The Arab world presents very different types and degrees of urbanization, from well established old capital-cities such as Cairo to new emerging capital-cities such as Amman or Nouakchott, these in turn embedded in different types of national construction. It is these urban settings which raise questions concerning the dynamics of homogenization/differentiation and the processes of standardization due to the coexistence of competing linguistic models. Topics investigated include:
Containing a broad selection of case studies from across the Arab world and featuring contributions from leading urban sociolinguistics and dialectologists, this book presents a fresh approach to our understanding of the interaction between language, society and space. As such, the book will appeal to the linguist as well as to the social scientist in general.
Regenerating London: Governance, Sustainability and Community in a Global City Review
Regenerating London explores latest thinking on urban regeneration in one of the fastest changing world cities. Engaging with social, economic, and political structures of cities, it highlights paradoxes and contradictions in urban policy and offers an evaluation of the contemporary forms of urban redevelopment.
City a Dictionary of Quotable Thoughts Review
Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County Review
Few cities captivate the imagination as does Los Angeles. It is the locus of spectaculars: movies, earthquakes, freeways, riots, sunsets. In this fascinating desk reference, Leonard and Dale Pitt have gathered a sweeping array of information on the City of Angels. Bolstering their historical and humanistic approach with scientific and technical information, the Pitts include alphabetically arranged entries on history, geography, automobile culture, sports, movies, current events, architecture, flora, fauna, scandals, biography, the arts, politics, neighborhoods, and ethnic, racial, and religious groups. Quotations throughout provide provocative and amusing tidbits about the city that has been called "the fulfillment of the American Dream." Copiously illustrated and wonderfully anecdotal, this is a book for anyone with a question, large or small, about Los Angeles.
"It's a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there."--Mark Twain
"At heart, Los Angeles is a vast cross-section of the Corn Belt set down incongruously in a Maxfield Parrish setting."--Irwin S. Cobb
"Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober."--Raymond Chandler
"Great weather and automobiles."--Jamal Wilkes
