2017 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleThe High Line, an innovative promenade created on a disused elevated railway in Manhattan, is one of the world’s most iconic new urban landmarks. Since the opening of its first section in 2009, this unique greenway has exceeded all expectations in terms of attracting visitors, investment, and property development to Manhattan’s West Side. Frequently celebrated as a monument to community-led activism, adaptive re-use of...

“The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two children, and a car. But there is no single American Dream anymore.”For nearly 70 years, the suburbs were as American as apple pie. As the middle class ballooned and single-family homes and cars became more affordable, we flocked to pre-fabricated communities in the suburbs, a place where open air and solitude offered a retre...

A classic work advocating ecological urban planning—from a civic visionary and former architecture critic for the New Yorker.Considered among the greatest works of Lewis Mumford—a prolific historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and longtime architecture critic for the New Yorker—The Culture of Cities is a call for communal action to "rebuild the urban world on a sounder human foundation." First published in 1938, this radical investig...

In Welcome to the Urban Revolution, internationally recognized urbanist Jeb Brugmann turns traditional thinking about globalization on its head to show that the city isn't a backdrop to global change; it is a central driver of change—political, economic, social, and environmental. This powerful reappraisal of the global role of cities brilliantly synthesizes urban studies, economics, and sociology to show how cities create but can also help solve some of the 21st century's major c...

The author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism and The New Class Conflict challenges conventions of urban planning.Around the globe, most new urban development has adhered to similar tenets: tall structures, small units, and high density. In The Human City, Joel Kotkin―called "America's uber-geographer" by David Brooks of the New York Times―questions these nearly ubiquitous practices, suggesting that they do not consider the needs and ...

Popular opinion holds that public housing is a failure; so what more needs to be said about seventy-five years of dashed hopes and destructive policies? Over the past decade, however, historians and social scientists have quietly exploded the common wisdom about public housing. Public Housing Myths pulls together these fresh perspectives and unexpected findings into a single volume to provide an updated, panoramic view of public housing.With eleven chapter...

This book moves beyond superficial generalizations about Cairo as a chaotic metropolis in the developing world into an analysis of the ways the city's eighteen million inhabitants have, in the face of a largely neglectful government, built and shaped their own city. Using a wealth of recent studies on Greater Cairo and a deep reading of informal urban processes, the city and its recent history are portrayed and mapped: the huge, spontaneous neighborhoods; housing; traffic and transport; ci...

Cities are home to over fifty percent of the world's population, a figure which is expected to increase enormously by 2050. Despite the growing demand on urban resources and infrastructure, food is still often overlooked as a key factor in planning and designing cities. Without incorporating food into the design process – how it is grown, transported, and bought, cooked, eaten and disposed of – it is impossible to create truly resilient and convivial urbanism.Moving from the table ...

A benchmark study in the changing field of urban anthropology, Berlin, Alexanderplatz is an ethnographic examination of the rapid transformation of the unified Berlin. Through a captivating account of the controversy around this symbolic public square in East Berlin, the book raises acute questions about expertise, citizenship, government and belonging. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the city administration bureaus, developers’ offices, citizen groups and in Alexanderplatz its...

For nearly fifty years John Friedmann's writings have not just led the academic study of the discipline, but have given shape and direction to the planning profession itself.Covering transactive planning, radical planning, the concept of the Good City, civil society, rethinking poverty and the diversity of planning cultures, this collection of Friedmann's most important and influential essays tells a coherent and compelling story about how the evolution of thinking about planning o...

In the past decade, America has experienced an urban renaissance. Cities as varied as New York, Chicago and Boston are no longer seen as ungovernable and doomed to crime and blight. However, they still face formidable problems. Urban Policy Reconsidered is a comprehensive overview of the issues and problems facing our cities today and cover every important issue in urban affairs. What is poverty? What is economic development? What is education? What is crime? As well as covering all of the...

Relaunching Titanic critically considers the invocation of Titanic heritage in Belfast in contributing to a new ‘post-conflict’ understanding of the city. The authors address how the memory of Titanic is being and should be represented in the place of its origin, from where it was launched into the collective consciousness and unconscious of western civilization.Relaunching Titanic examines the issues in the context of international debates on the tension between ...