In this book, Hans Kummer, one of the world's leading primate ethologists, examines the patterns of social interaction among primates. He examines this social behavior from the fundamentally biological viewpoint of evolutionary adaptation as part of the survival mechanisms for the species. Recognizing that all activity is constituted in part of genetic programming and in part of adaptive behavior, he explores the borderline area between the genetic and the "cultural." By use of astute obse...

This is a social and cultural analysis of community life in metropolitan areas of three nations--the United States, Sweden, and England. The author focuses on how environment and culture interact to shape human behavior. Despite their many similarities, the three societies offer remarkably contrasting urban forms, and thus provide a unique opportunity for comparative research. The findings suggest goals for urban community development in America that can help regain a sense of human scale ...

"The just city is one in which equity, democracy, and diversity are important considerations. This is in contrast with the city as growth machine. Fainstein examines three cities: New York, London, and Amsterdam. She provides a history of post–World War II planning and then focuses on fairly recent cases of development in each. Her goals, though modest, are important if growing inequality in urban areas is to be reversed. Recommended."― ChoiceFor mu...

Fast Fashion: A cut from Clothing Poverty marks the two-year anniversary of the disastrous collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh on 24 April 2013.Featuring a new introduction along with a chapter from the previously published Clothing Poverty: The hidden world of fast fashion and second-hand clothes, Andrew Brooks stitches together the events of the Rana Plaza tragedy with the hidden world of fast fashion, providing a short but enlightening exposé of the global commodity...

From the author of the best-selling Feminist City, this urbanite’s guide to gentrification knocks down the myths and exposes the forces behind the most urgent housing crisis of our time.Gentrification is no longer a phenomenon to be debated by geographers or downplayed by urban planners—it’s an experience lived and felt by working-class people everywhere. Leslie Kern travels to Toronto, Vancouver, New York, London, and Paris to look beyond the familiar and false stories we...

Canada’s cities are crippled by a lack of financial and governing clout. Their infrastructures are crumbling and their citizens are disaffected by the inability of municipal government—or any government, for that matter—to act on the issues that influence their constituents’ lives. Cities generate a disproportionate amount of Canada’s wealth and are home to the majority of the population, yet they have no means to control their own destinies.Alan Broadbent suggests that the problem...

In 1996, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, a grassroots advocacy organization, won a historic legal victory against the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. The resulting consent decree forced the MTA for a period of ten years to essentially reorient the mass transit system to better serve the city’s poorest residents. A stunning reversal of conventional governance and planning in urban America, which almost always favors wealthier residents, this decision is also, for renowned urban the...

In this lucid yet impassioned book Clarence Bolt reveals how Canada is rapidly losing its sovereign status to the liberal, globalizing drive that has, since Confederation, endeavoured to eliminate regional diversity, self-reliance and distinctiveness by blending our regions into a centralized economic and political system. Echoing George Grant, Bolt proposes that Canada can remain a unique, sovereign state only by fostering sustainable regional units in which citizens are committed to the ...

The urban world is an exciting terrain for investigating the central institutions, structures and problems of the social world and how they have transformed through the last 200 years. This Reader comprises sections on urban social theory, racial and social difference in the city, culture in everyday life, culture and the urban economy, globalization and transnational social relations and the regulation of urban space.Drawing together seminal selections covering the ninete...

The relation between identity and space is strong and generates many conflicts. Most people attach great importance to their local community and its identity. The possibility of change can cause turmoil and become fertile ground for staking new identities. Understanding how these changes can take place is important to the future of community cohesion across the world.This book gives a detailed analysis of how different stakeholders in two Dutch municipalities use and adapt their id...

This concise yet comprehensive overview of the political and economic development of the world's cities offers a unique emphasis on its cultural impacts. The book emphasizes the transition from modern (industrial) to post-modern (post-industrial) eras and its effect on established and developing global cities, and arguments are supported with case studies for each of the main concepts of urban theory and research. Mark Abrahamson analyzes contemporary global cities - ranging from Lagos to ...

This revised fifth edition not only examines the new geographical patterns forming within and between cities, but also investigates the way geographers have sought to make sense of this urban transformation. It is structured into three sections: 'contexts', 'themes' and 'issues' that move students from a foundation in urban geography through its major themes to contemporary and pressing issues. The text critically synthesizes key literatures in the following areas:t...