In this absorbing history, Jon C. Teaford traces the dramatic evolution of American metropolitan life. At the end of World War II, the cities of the Northeast and the Midwest were bustling, racially and economically integrated areas frequented by suburban and urban dwellers alike. Yet since 1945, these cities have become peripheral to the lives of most Americans. "Edge cities" are now the dominant centers of production and consumption in post-suburban America. Characterized by sprawling fr...

**Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Best Book of the Year Award in 2011“A masterpiece.” —Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics“Bursting with insights.” —The New York Times Book ReviewA pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities**America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or ...

“An exacting look at gentrification” (New York Times Book Review)—and the lives devastated in the processThe term gentrification has become a buzzword to describe the changes in urban neighborhoods across the country, but we don’t realize just how threatening it is. It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much-maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance....

Visionary social thinker Joel Kotkin looks ahead to America in 2050, revealing how the addition of one hundred million Americans by midcentury will transform how we all live, work, and prosper.In stark contrast to the rest of the world's advanced nations, the United States is growing at a record rate and, according to census projections, will be home to four hundred million Americans by 2050. This projected rise in population is the strongest indicator of our long-...

**One of Buzzfeed's 18 Best Nonfiction Books Of 2016**A lyrical, intelligent, authentic, and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American CityIn this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago-native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; with a memoirist's eye, she showcases the lives of these communities through the stories of people ...

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American su...

At its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Detroit's status as epicenter of the American auto industry made it a vibrant, populous, commercial hub—and then the bottom fell out. Detroit : A Biography takes a long, unflinching look at the evolution of one of America's great cities and one of the nation's greatest urban failures. This authoritative yet accessible narrative seeks to explain how the city grew to become the heart of American industry and how its utter collapse—from ...

The story of how the richest city in the world became one of the poorest in North America, with a new introduction by Peter KwongHow did New York City come to be a network of steel towers, banks, and nail salons, with chain drugstores on every block—a place where, increasingly, no one can afford to live except the lords of Wall Street and foreign billionaires, and where more and more of the Big Apple's best-loved businesses have closed their doors? It didn't start w...

In The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City we travel the nation with Alan Ehrenhalt, one of our leading urbanists, as he explains how America’s cities are changing, what makes them succeed or fail, and what this means for our future.Just a couple of decades ago, we took it for granted that inner cities were the preserve of immigrants and the poor, and that suburbs were the chosen destination of those who could afford them. Today, a demographic inversion is t...

Across America, universities have become big businesses—and our cities their company towns. But there is a cost to those who live in their shadow.Urban universities play an outsized role in America’s cities. They bring diverse ideas and people together and they generate new innovations. But they also gentrify neighborhoods and exacerbate housing inequality in an effort to enrich their campuses and attract students. They maintain private police forces that target th...

The reasons behind Detroit’s persistent racialized poverty after World War IIOnce 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 ...

When urban planning activist Jane Jacobs died in April 2006, Canada mourned the passing of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. But the ideas and insights of her richly packed life of social action—including her groundbreaking Death and Life of Great American Cities, written over 40 years ago—still resonate. In Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary, journalist Alice Sparberg Alexiou explores the ideas of this incisive, passionately engaged mind and celebrates ...