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The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City

Author: Alan Ehrenhalt

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2013-01-22

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0307474372

Eye-opening and thoroughly engaging, this is an indispensible look at American urban/suburban society and its future. In The Great Inversion, Alan Ehrenhalt, one of our leading urbanologists, reveals how the roles of America’s cities and suburbs are changing places—young adults and affluent retirees moving in, while immigrants and the less affluent are moving out—and addresses the implications of these shifts for the future of our society. Ehrenhalt shows us how the commercial canyons of lower Manhattan are becoming residential neighborhoods, and how mass transit has revitalized inner-city communities in Chicago and Brooklyn. He explains why car-dominated cities like Phoenix and Charlotte have sought to build twenty-first-century downtowns from scratch, while sprawling postwar suburbs are seeking to attract young people with their own form of urbanized experience.

The Past and Future City

Author: Stephanie Meeks

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 161091709X

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At its most basic, historic preservation is about keeping old places alive, in active use, and relevant to the needs of communities today. As cities across America experience a remarkable renaissance, and more and more young, diverse families choose to live, work, and play in historic neighborhoods, the promise and potential of using our older and historic buildings to revitalize our cities is stronger than ever. This urban resurgence is a national phenomenon, boosting cities from Cleveland to Buffalo and Portland to Pittsburgh. Experts offer a range of theories on what is driving the return to the city—from the impact of the recent housing crisis to a desire to be socially engaged, live near work, and reduce automobile use. But there’s also more to it. Time and again, when asked why they moved to the city, people talk about the desire to live somewhere distinctive, to be some place rather than no place. Often these distinguishing urban landmarks are exciting neighborhoods—Miami boasts its Art Deco district, New Orleans the French Quarter. Sometimes, as in the case of Baltimore’s historic rowhouses, the most distinguishing feature is the urban fabric itself. While many aspects of this urban resurgence are a cause for celebration, the changes have also brought to the forefront issues of access, affordable housing, inequality, sustainability, and how we should commemorate difficult history. This book speaks directly to all of these issues. In The Past and Future City, Stephanie Meeks, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, describes in detail, and with unique empirical research, the many ways that saving and restoring historic fabric can help a city create thriving neighborhoods, good jobs, and a vibrant economy. She explains the critical importance of preservation for all our communities, the ways the historic preservation field has evolved to embrace the challenges of the twenty-first century, and the innovative work being done in the preservation space now. This book is for anyone who cares about cities, places, and saving America’s diverse stories, in a way that will bring us together and help us better understand our past, present, and future.

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Author: Charles Montgomery

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1429969539

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A globe-trotting, eye-opening exploration of how cities can—and do—make us happier people Charles Montgomery's Happy City will revolutionize the way we think about urban life. After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and tower dwelling an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl? The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, and during an exhilarating journey through some of the world's most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a "sexy" lipstick-red bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris's urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have transformed their lives by hacking the design of their streets and neighborhoods. Full of rich historical detail and new insights from psychologists and Montgomery's own urban experiments, Happy City is an essential tool for understanding and improving our own communities. The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting our cities for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city, the green city, and the low-carbon city are the same place, and we can all help build it.

Housing in the Evolving American Suburb

Author: Stockton Williams

Publisher:

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780874203967

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Shifting Suburbs: Reinventing Infrastructure for Compact Development- Suburban housing markets across the United States are evolving rapidly and overall remain well-positioned to maintain their relevance for the foreseeable future as preferred places to live and work, even as many urban cores and downtown neighborhoods continue to attract new residents and businesses. Suburban housing dynamics increasingly reflect some of the most profound issues shaping our society, including aging, immigration, economic mobility, and evolving consumer preferences. As a result, suburbs will generate substantial residential development and redevelopment opportunities and challenges in the years ahead. -Housing in the Evolving American Suburb- This title describes different kinds of suburbs based on the key factors that define and determine their housing markets. The report classifies and compares suburbs in the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. and assesses the key issues that will shape suburban residential demand and development in the future. Suburban housing markets across the United States are evolving rapidly and overall remain well-positioned to maintain their relevance for the foreseeable future as preferred places to live and work, even as many urban cores and downtown neighborhoods continue to attract new residents and businesses. Suburban housing dynamics increasingly reflect some of the most profound issues shaping our society, including aging, immigration, economic mobility, and evolving consumer preferences. As a result, suburbs will generate substantial residential development and redevelopment opportunities and challenges in the years ahead. Housing in the Evolving American Suburb, describes different kinds of suburbs based on the key factors that define and determine their housing markets. The report classifies and compares suburbs in the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. and assesses the key issues that will shape suburban residential demand and development in the future."

The Modernist City

Author: James Holston

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1989-09-08

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0226349799

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The utopian design and organization of Brasília—the modernist new capital of Brazil—were meant to transform Brazilian society. In this sophisticated, pioneering study of Brasília from its inception in 1957 to the present, James Holston analyzes this attempt to change society by building a new kind of city and the ways in which the paradoxes of constructing an imagined future subvert its utopian premises. Integrating anthropology with methods of analysis from architecture, urban studies, social history, and critical theory, Holston presents a critique of modernism based on a powerfully innovative ethnography of the city.

The Lost City

Author: Alan Ehrenhalt

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 1996-08-23

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780465041930

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Millions of Americans yearn for a lost sense of community, for the days when neighbors looked out for one another and families were stable and secure. The 1950s are regarded as the golden age of community, but 1960s rebellion and 1980s nostalgia have blurred our view of what life was really like back then.In The Lost City, Alan Ehrenhalt cuts through the fog, immersing us in the sights, sounds, and rhythms of life in America forty years ago. He takes us down the streets and into the homes, schools, and shops of three neighborhoods in one quintessentially American city: Chicago. In St. Nicholas of Tolentine parish on the Southwest Side, we see how the local Catholic church served as the moral and social center of community life. In Bronzeville, the heart of the black South Side, we meet the civic leaders who offered hope and role models to people hemmed in by poverty and segregation. And in Elmhurst, a commuter suburb bursting with new subdivisions, we witness the culture of middle-class conformity and the ways in which children and adults bent to the rules of the majority culture.Through evocative stories and incisive analysis, Ehrenhalt shows that the glue holding each neighborhood together was an unstated social compact under which people accepted limits in their lives and deferred to authority figures to enforce those limits—a compact destroyed by the baby boomers' rejection of authority in the 1960s. Since that time, an entire generation has come to believe that personal choice is the most important of life's values. But Ehrenhalt argues that if we truly wish to balance the demands of modern life with a feeling of community, we have a great deal to learn from the ”limited” life of the 1950s. The Lost City reveals the price we must pay to restore community in our lives today and the values that will make such a restoration possible.

Black Ribbon

Author: Susan Conant

Publisher: Crimeline

Published: 1995-12-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0553762257

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“[Susan] Conant might be the dog lovers’ answer to Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who series.”—Rocky Mountain News Canine-loving detective Holly Winter is a columnist for Dog’s Life magazine. She thinks a week at Waggin’ Tail, a camp for canines in the scenic Maine woods, will be a vacation in pet heaven. So does Rowdy, her champion malamute—especially when there are pooches galore: mixed breeds, Pekes, cairn terriers, Labradors, shelties, and a gorgeous mastiff pup. But upon Holly’s arrival at the camp, things swiftly go to the dogs. Instead of the advertised gourmet food, there’s olive loaf and soggy pudding. The human campers are given to nasty back-stabbing. And Holly receives a black-edged card consoling her for the loss of her dog. Is this someone’s sick idea of a joke? Suddenly Waggin’ Tail seems like the summer camp from hell. Then a dog owner turns up dead in a freak accident. The probable cause? The victim’s own dog! Holly suspects a four-footed frame-up and with Rowdy sets out to find the real culprit. She’s on the scent and closing fast—which makes her the perfect target for a killer whose bite is definitely worse than his bark.

Pathways to Urban Sustainability

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2016-10-11

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 030944456X

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Cities have experienced an unprecedented rate of growth in the last decade. More than half the world's population lives in urban areas, with the U.S. percentage at 80 percent. Cities have captured more than 80 percent of the globe's economic activity and offered social mobility and economic prosperity to millions by clustering creative, innovative, and educated individuals and organizations. Clustering populations, however, can compound both positive and negative conditions, with many modern urban areas experiencing growing inequality, debility, and environmental degradation. The spread and continued growth of urban areas presents a number of concerns for a sustainable future, particularly if cities cannot adequately address the rise of poverty, hunger, resource consumption, and biodiversity loss in their borders. Intended as a comparative illustration of the types of urban sustainability pathways and subsequent lessons learned existing in urban areas, this study examines specific examples that cut across geographies and scales and that feature a range of urban sustainability challenges and opportunities for collaborative learning across metropolitan regions. It focuses on nine cities across the United States and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Grand Rapids, MI, Flint, MI, Cedar Rapids, IA, Chattanooga, TN, and Vancouver, Canada), chosen to represent a variety of metropolitan regions, with consideration given to city size, proximity to coastal and other waterways, susceptibility to hazards, primary industry, and several other factors.

The New Brooklyn

Author: Kay S. Hymowitz

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-01-22

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1442266589

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Featured in The New York Times Book Review Only a few decades ago, the Brooklyn stereotype well known to Americans was typified by television programs such as “The Honeymooners” and “Welcome Back, Kotter”—comedies about working-class sensibilities, deprivation, and struggles. Today, the borough across the East River from Manhattan is home to trendsetters, celebrities, and enough “1 percenters” to draw the Occupy Wall Street protests across the Brooklyn Bridge. “Tres Brooklyn,” has become a compliment among gourmands in Parisian restaurants. In The New Brooklyn, Kay Hymowitz chronicles the dramatic transformation of the once crumbling borough. Devoting separate chapters to Park Slope, Williamsburg, Bed Stuy and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Hymowitz identifies the government policies and young, educated white and black middle class enclaves responsible for creating thousands of new businesses, safe and lively streets, and one of the most desirable urban environments in the world. Exploring Brownsville, the growing Chinatown of Sunset Park, and Caribbean Canarsie, Hymowitz also wrestles with the question of whether the borough’s new wealth can lift up long disadvantaged minorities, and the current generation of immigrants, many of whom will need more skills than their predecessors to thrive in a postindustrial economy. The New Brooklyn’s portraits of dramatic urban transformation, and its sometimes controversial effects, offers prescriptions relevant to “phoenix” cities coming back to life across the United States and beyond its borders.