One night his solitary wanderings take him into a restaurant where he reads these words on the menu: ''The Westway Cafe -- where all your dreams come true. '' A soft-voiced waiter (metaphorically named Angel) welcomes him and invites him back. Each night Singer returns, ordering food and, silently, ordering his wishes for the things he remembers from an Indiana boyhood.

    The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, overextended government farm subsidies and zealous transit police, to show what happens when the moral systems of commerce collide with those of politics.

    In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., set the nation's sights on the city when he said, If we crack Chicago, then we crack the world. Black empowerment would take off like a prairie fire across the land. Here is the story of Harold Washington's election in 1983 as the city's first black mayor. Photographs.

    In the analysis of rhythms -- both biological and social -- Lefebvre shows the interrelation of space and time in the understanding of everyday life.With dazzling skills, Lefebvre moves between discussions of music, the commodity, measurement, the media and the city. In doing so he shows how a non-linear conception of time and history balanced his famous rethinking of the question of space. This volume also includes his earlier essays on "The Rhythmanalysis Project" and "Attempt at the Rhythmanalysis of Mediterranean Towns.">

    This book is the middle volume of a three-part work devoted to the evolution of New York's architecture and urbanism in the Metropolitan Era, the three-quarters of a century from the Civil War's conclusion through the depression of the 1930s.

    A new Kind of urbanism--manipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditional public space--is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and psuedo-historic marketplaces. If anything can be described as a paradigm for these places, it's the theme park, an apparently benign environment in which all is structured to achieve maximum control and in which the idea of authentic interaction among citizens has been thoroughly purged. In this bold collection, eight of our leading urbanists and architectural critics explore the emblematic sites of this new cityscape--from Silicon Valley to Epcot Center, South Street Seaport to downtown Los Angeles--and reveal their disturbing implications for American public life.

    to the late twentieth century.

    Moving from the historical and cultural overviews of the city, Kostof descends into the streets, sidewalks, squares, markets, and waterfronts and presents a detailed urban anatomy. The book is organized thematically around the structural phenomena of cities -- the city edge, the street, public space, the marketplace, and the realities of cultural and economic segregation. It explores the customs, practicalities, and biases behind the elements of the city. The City Assembled is a fascinating account of the urban experience, written, like The City Shaped, for general and professional readers alike.

    Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosenzweig tell the story of Central Park's people-the merchants and landowners who launched the project; the immigrant and African-American residents who were displaced by the park; the politicians, gentlemen, and artists who disputed its design and operation; the German gardeners, Irish laborers, and Yankee engineers who built it; and the generations of New Yorkers for whom Central Park was their only backyard. In tracing the park's history, Blackmar and Rosenzweig give us the history of New York, and bring to life larger issues about the meaning of the word "public" in a democratic society.

    Includes historical notes that help you to create an integrated view of Lahore of the 19th century, of which so many adventurous and romantic accounts exist.

    Jerry Flamm's warm reminiscences of growing up in 1920s and 1930s San Francisco glows with romance for the city when San Franciscans entertained themselves listening to the radio, swimming at Sutro Baths or enjoying a 50 cents pasta dinner.