Best of
Cities

2004

The High Cost of Free Parking


Donald C. Shoup - 2004
    The resulting cost? Today we see sprawling cities that are better suited to cars than people and a nationwide fleet of motor vehicles that consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. Donald Shoup contends in The High Cost of Free Parking that parking is sorely misunderstood and mismanaged by planners, architects, and politicians. He proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking so that Americans can stop paying for free parking's hidden costs.

Pompeii: The History, Life and Art of the Buried City


Marisa Ranieri Panetta - 2004
    It investigates public life, religious life, the economy, and the private arena. A special section is devoted to the eruption of 79 AD, described based on the most recent discoveries, and another section takes a look at Oplontis, the most celebrated villa in the suburbs of Pompeii - and legendarily owned by Poppea Sabina, Neros second wife. An updated bibliography and a chronological outline conclude this journey back in time.This book was done with the collaboration of the Archaeological Superintendency of Pompeii and the Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of Naples and Caserta.

Many are Called


Walker Evans - 2004
    While at work on this book, the two also conceived another less well-known but equally important book project entitled Many Are Called. This three-year photographic study of subway passengers made with a hidden camera was first published in 1966, with an introduction written by Agee in 1940. Long out of print, Many Are Called is now being reissued with a new foreword and afterword and with exquisitely reproduced images from newly prepared digital scans.Many Are Called came to fruition at a slow pace. In 1938, Walker Evans began surreptitiously photographing people on the New York City subway. With his camera hidden in his coat—the lens peeking through a buttonhole—he captured the faces of riders hurtling through the dark tunnels, wrapped in their own private thoughts. By 1940-41, Evans had made over six hundred photographs and had begun to edit the series. The book remained unpublished until 1966 when The Museum of Modern Art mounted an exhibition of Evans’s subway portraits.This beautiful new edition—published in the centenary year of the NYC subway—is an essential book for all admirers of Evans’s unparalleled photographs, Agee’s elegant prose, and the great City of New York.

Public Spaces, Public Life


Jan Gehl - 2004
    It presents a method of assessing urban quality and gives a thorough insight into how people use urban spaces. A handbook on how to create human qualities in the city.

Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness


Chris Kraus - 2004
    Probing the surface of art-critical buzzwords, Chris Kraus brilliantly chronicles how the City of Angels has suddenly become the epicenter of the international art world and a microcosm of the larger culture. Why is Los Angeles so completely divorced from other realities of the city? Shrewd, analytic and witty, Video Green is to the Los Angeles art world what Roland Barthes' Mythologies were to the society of the spectacle: the live autopsy of a ghost city.

Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It


Mindy Thompson Fullilove - 2004
    But for the people whose homes and districts were bulldozed, the urban renewal projects that swept America starting in 1949 were nothing short of assault. Vibrant city blocks—places rich in history—were reduced to garbage-strewn vacant lots. When a neighborhood is destroyed its inhabitants suffer “root shock”: a traumatic stress reaction related to the destruction of one’s emotional ecosystem. The ripple effects of root shock have an impact on entire communities that can last for decades. In this groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful book, Dr. Mindy Fullilove examines root shock through the story of urban renewal and its effect on the African American community. Between 1949 and 1973 this federal program, spearheaded by business and real estate interests, destroyed 1,600 African American neighborhoods in cities across the United States. But urban renewal didn’t just disrupt the black community. The anger it caused led to riots that sent whites fleeing for the suburbs, stripping them of their own sense of place. And it left big gashes in the centers of U.S. cities that are only now slowly being repaired. Focusing on three very different urban settings—the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the Central Ward in Newark, and the small Virginia city of Roanoke—Dr. Fullilove argues powerfully that the twenty-first century will be one of displacement and of continual demolition and reconstruction. Acknowledging the damage caused by root shock is crucial to coping with its human toll and building a road to recovery.Astonishing in its revelations, unsparing in its conclusions, Root Shock should be read by anyone who cares about the quality of life in American cities—and the dignity of those who reside there.From the Hardcover edition.

City Walks: Paris, Revised Edition: 50 Adventures on Foot


Christina Henry De Tessan - 2004
    Completely revised and updated!Walks include:• Montmartre• The Marais• The Champs-Elysée• The Gardens of Versailles• And more!

Rome Then & Now


Federica D'Orazio - 2004
    They survive in an enchanting urban tableau of classicism and modern Italian culture. Here are all of Rome's most famous tourist attractions -- the Coliseum, St. Peter's Square, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps -- represented in dozens of photographs, old and new, that bring the great city to life.

Alexandria: City of Memory


Michael Haag - 2004
    Drawing on diaries, letters, and interviews, Michael Haag recovers the lost life of the city, its cosmopolitan inhabitants, and its literary characters.Located on the coast of Africa yet rich in historical associations with Western civilization, Alexandria was home to an exotic variety of people whose cosmopolitan families had long been rooted in the commerce and the culture of the entire Mediterranean world.Alexandria famously excited the imaginations of writers, and Haag folds intimate accounts of E. M. Forster, Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, and Lawrence Durrell into the story of its inhabitants. He recounts the city’s experience of the two world wars and explores the communities that gave Alexandria its unique flavor: the Greek, the Italian, and the Jewish. The book deftly harnesses the sexual and emotional charge of cosmopolitan life in this extraordinary city, and highlights the social and political changes over the decades that finally led to Nasser’s Egypt.

Small Change: About the Art of Practice and the Limits of Planning in Cities


Nabeel Hamdi - 2004
    This book is an argument for the wisdom of the street, the ingenuity of the improvisers and the long-term, large-scale effectiveness of immediate, small-scale actions. Written by Nabeel Hamdi, the guru of urban participatory development and the master of the art, Small Change brings over three decades of experience and knowledge to bear on the question 'what is practice'?. Through an easy-to-read narrative style, and using examples from the North and South, the author sheds light on this question and the issues that stem from it - issues relating to political context, the lessons of the 'informal city', and the pursuit of learning that challenges convention. The result is a comprehensive, yet imaginative, guide to the forms of knowledge, competencies and ways of thinking that are fundamental to skilful practice in urban development. This is powerful, informed, critical and inspiring reading for practitioners in the field, students and teachers of urban development, those who manage international aid and everyone looking to build their community.

Key Thinkers on Space and Place


Phil Hubbard - 2004
    It will surely prove an invaluable tool for students, whom I would strongly encourage to purchase this edited collection as one of the best guides to recent geographical thought′ -Claudio Minca, University of Newcastle `Key Thinkers is the best encyclopedic tool for human geographers since the Dictionary of Human Geography. It takes into its orbit discussions of the lives and work of the last three decades′ major thinkers on space and place. It is hugely useful for students who want an easy way to access the roots of where some major themes and debates in contemporary geography. It is organized so that each chapter details the scholar′s biography, their contribution to spatial and place-based theory and the controversies that arise through their work′- Stuart Aitken, San Diego State University Key Thinkers on Space and Place is a comprehensive guide to the latest work on space. Each entry is a short interpretative essay of 2,500 words, outlining the contributions made by the key theorists, and comprises:- a concise biography, indicating disciplinary background, career trajectory and collaboration with others- an outline of the key theoretical, conceptual and methodological ideas each has introduced to human geography- an explanation of the reaction to, and uptake of, how these ideas has changed and evolved over time- an explanation of how these theories have been used and critiqued by human geographers- a selective bibliography of each thinker′s key publications (and key secondary publications)The text is introduced by a contextual essay which outlines in general terms the shifting ways in which space and place have been theorised and which explains how Key Thinkers on Space and Place can be used. A glossary that defines key traditions, with cross-links to key theorists and a timeline of key article/book publication date is also included.

Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century


Andrew Wiese - 2004
    Two dozen homes line the street; behind them wooden decks and living-room windows open onto vast woodland properties. Residents returning from their jobs steer SUVs into long driveways and emerge from their automobiles. They walk to the front doors of their houses past sculptured bushes and flowers in bloom.For most people, this cozy image of suburbia does not immediately evoke images of African Americans. But as this pioneering work demonstrates, the suburbs have provided a home to black residents in increasing numbers for the past hundred years—in the last two decades alone, the numbers have nearly doubled to just under twelve million. Places of Their Own begins a hundred years ago, painting an austere portrait of the conditions that early black residents found in isolated, poor suburbs. Andrew Wiese insists, however, that they moved there by choice, withstanding racism and poverty through efforts to shape the landscape to their own needs. Turning then to the 1950s, Wiese illuminates key differences between black suburbanization in the North and South. He considers how African Americans in the South bargained for separate areas where they could develop their own neighborhoods, while many of their northern counterparts transgressed racial boundaries, settling in historically white communities. Ultimately, Wiese explores how the civil rights movement emboldened black families to purchase homes in the suburbs with increased vigor, and how the passage of civil rights legislation helped pave the way for today's black middle class.Tracing the precise contours of black migration to the suburbs over the course of the whole last century and across the entire United States, Places of Their Own will be a foundational book for anyone interested in the African American experience or the role of race and class in the making of America's suburbs. Winner of the 2005 John G. Cawelti Book Award from the American Culture  Association. Winner of the 2005 Award for Best Book in North American Urban  History from the Urban History Association.

Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America


Donald Braman - 2004
    Braman reveals the devastating toll mass incarceration takes on the parents, partners, and children left behind."-Katherine S. Newman"Doing Time on the Outside brings to life in a compelling way the human drama, and tragedy, of our incarceration policies. Donald Braman documents the profound economic and social consequences of the American policy of massive imprisonment of young African American males. He shows us the link between the broad-scale policy changes of recent decades and the isolation and stigma that these bring to family members who have a loved one in prison. If we want to understand fully the impact of current criminal justice policies, this book should be required reading."-Mark Mauer, Assistant Director, The Sentencing Project"Through compelling stories and thoughtful analysis, this book describes how our nation's punishment policies have caused incalculable damage to the fabric of family and community life. Anyone concerned about the future of urban America should read this book."-Jeremy Travis, The Urban InstituteIn the tradition of Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street and Katherine Newman's No Shame in My Game, this startling new ethnography by Donald Braman uncovers the other side of the incarceration saga: the little-told story of the effects of imprisonment on the prisoners' families.Since 1970 the incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled, and in many cities-urban centers such as Washington, D.C.-it has increased over five-fold. Today, one out of every ten adult black men in the District is in prison and three out of every four can expect to spend some time behind bars. But the numbers don't reveal what it's like for the children, wives, and parents of prisoners, or the subtle and not-so-subtle effects mass incarceration is having on life in the inner city.Author Donald Braman shows that those doing time on the inside are having a ripple effect on the outside-reaching deep into the family and community life of urban America. Braman gives us the personal stories of what happens to the families and communities that prisoners are taken from and return to. Carefully documenting the effects of incarceration on the material and emotional lives of families, this groundbreaking ethnography reveals how criminal justice policies are furthering rather than abating the problem of social disorder. Braman also delivers a number of genuinely new arguments.Among these is the compelling assertion that incarceration is holding offenders unaccountable to victims, communities, and families. The author gives the first detailed account of incarceration's corrosive effect on social capital in the inner city and describes in poignant detail how the stigma of prison pits family and community members against one another. Drawing on a series of powerful family portraits supported by extensive empirical data, Braman shines a light on the darker side of a system that is failing the very families and communities it seeks to protect.

Chicago's Mansions


John Graf - 2004
    Although many people are familiar with the city's skyscrapers and public buildings, they often overlook or are unaware of Chicago's mansions that are located throughout the city. These mansions represent Chicago's past and its future, and it can even be said that they are the very embodiment of Chicago and its architecture. These fashionable residences were built to make a statement, and what better way to have done this than to employ the leading architects of the time to design them. These architects included men such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Hobson Richardson, Daniel Burnham, and John Wellborn Root. While the city's mansions are significant because of who built them, they are just as important because of who lived in them. Many of these mansions were built for Chicago's elite businessmen and captains of industry-men who represented old money, new money and big money. Just as important were the families of these men and the other residents who came to live in these mansions-for they left a legacy of their own that contributed to the city's history.

A Drink of Red Mirror


Kim Hyesoon - 2004
    Asian & Asian American Studies. Translated from the Korean by Jiwon Shin, Lauren Albin, and Sue Hyon Bae. A landmark feminist poet and critic in her native South Korea, Kim Hyesoon's surreal, dagger-sharp poetry has spread from hemisphere to hemisphere in the past ten years, her works translated to Chinese, Swedish, English, French, German, Dutch, and beyond. In A DRINK OF RED MIRROR, Kim Hyesoon raises a glass to the reader in the form of a series of riddles, poems conjuring the you inside the me, the night inside the day, the outside inside the inside, the ocean inside the tear. Kim's radical, paradoxical intimacies entail sites of pain as well as wonder, opening onto impossible--which is to say, visionary--vistas. Again and again, in these poems as across her career, Kim unlocks a horizon inside the vanishing point.

The Smart Growth Manual


Andrés Duany - 2004
    From the expanse of the metropolis to the detail of the window box, they address the pressing challenges of urban development with easy-to-follow advice and broad array of best practices.With their landmark book Suburban Nation, Andres Duany and Jeff Speck set forth more clearly than anyone has done in our time the elements of good town planning (The New Yorker). With this long-awaited companion volume, the authors have organized the latest contributions of new urbanism, green design, and healthy communities into a comprehensive handbook, fully illustrated with the built work of the nation's leading practitioners. The Smart Growth Manual is an indispensable guide to city planning. This kind of progressive development is the only way to fully restore our economic strength and create new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete in the first rank of world economies. -- Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San FranciscoAuthors Andres Duany, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon have created The Smart Growth Manual, a resource which not only explains the overarching ideals of smart growth, but a manual that takes the time to show smart growth principles at each geographic scale (region, neighborhood, street, building). I highly recommend [it] as a part of any community participant's or urban planner's desktop references. -- LocalPlan.orgPlanetizen Top 10 Books - 2010 On the ninth annual list of the ten best books in urban planning, design and development: The goal of The Smart Growth Manual is clear from page 1: to create a guidebook for smart growth following the pattern of the Charter for New Urbanism. Duany, Speck and Lydon have achieved that in spades (the Charter is included in the appendix, in case we missed the connection). It even clears up some of the architectural arguments that attach themselves to New Urbanists, such as this segment of Section 14.1, Regional Design; 'While new buildings should not be compelled to mimic their historic predecessors, designers should pay attention to local practices regarding materials and colors, roof pitches, eave lengths, window-to-wall ratios, and the socially significant relationship of buildings to their site and the street; these have usually evolved in intelligent response to local conditions.' In addition to making the old 'traditional vs. modern' argument irrelevant, Duany, Speck and Lydon have truly managed to boil down the best parts of current practices into a highly readable, portable book.

The City Beneath Us: Building the New York Subway


New York City Transit Museum - 2004
    Made from 8 x 10-inch glass negatives after the turn of the last century, and reproduced here in glorious duotone, over 175 images show the incredible construction techniques and details involved in creating the underground marvel we enjoy today. From "cut and cover" and deep tunneling to sinking under-river tubes and disastrous cave-ins, these photographs are nothing short of awe-inspiring. The book is accompanied by an engaging, illustrated history of the subway system. Published in honor of the New York City subway's centennial, The City Beneath Us will fascinate anyone who's ever been amazed by the gigantic undertaking that is New York City transportation. 175 duotone and 40 black-and-white photographs.

Rebuilding Germany: The Creation of the Social Market Economy, 1945-1957


James C. Van Hook - 2004
    He examines the 1948 West German economic reforms that dismantled the Nazi command economy and ushered in the fabled economic miracle of the 1950s. By abandoning Nazi era economic controls, the West Germans discarded a pre-1945 economic and industrial culture.

Westerville


Beth Berning Weinhardt - 2004
    Its industrious citizens founded Otterbein College, shaped an active business and social community, and attracted the nation's attention by taking a strong stand on the sale of alcohol. Wooed by the promise of land in a "dry" community, the Anti-Saloon League located their printing headquarters in the village in 1909. The photographs in this book capture Westerville as it grew and changed from the 19th century to 1961, when it officially became a city.

Forgotten Chicago


John Paulett - 2004
    Chicago continued to grow and evolve through the 20th century, but many of its architectural masterpieces have been lost, some to modernization, and others simply to the ravages of time. Forgotten Chicago preserves the unique story of many of Chicago's famed architectural wonders. Included are the old Northwestern Train station, the Coliseum, the Chicago Stadium, old Comiskey Park, and Soldier Field. Many of the smaller treasures of the city will also be found here, including some of Chicago's most famous diners.

Art Deco in Detroit


Rebecca Binno Savage - 2004
    Although the Detroit metro area is primarily known as an industrial region, it boasts some of the finest examples of Art Deco in the country. Art Deco in Detroit explores the wide-ranging variety of these architectural marvels, from world-famous structures like the Fisher and Penobscot Buildings, to commercial buildings, theaters, homes, and churches. Through a panorama of photographs, authors Rebecca Binno Savage and Greg Kowalski take readers on a fascinating tour of this influential movement and its manifestations in and around Detroit. The grandeur evident in some of the major buildings reflects a time when artisans and architects collaborated to craft structures that transcend functionality-they endure as standing works of art.

The Plan Of Nashville: Avenues To A Great City


Christine Kreyling - 2004
    The planA-s purpose is to help the central city hold its place in civic life.

Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850


Antonia Finnane - 2004
    Even today Yangzhou continues to evoke images of artists, men of letters, great merchant families, scenic waterways, an urban environment of considerable grace and charm, and a history imbued with colour and romance. This book is in some ways a biography of a city that acquired a personality, even a gender, and became an actor in its own history. Yangzhou invites attention because its place in China's cultural iconography tells us not only of one city's vicissitudes and fortunes but also of changes in the geography of the Chinese imagination. The author examines the city's place in the history of the late imperial era and of the meanings that accrued to Yangzhou over time. She argues that the actual construction of the city - its academies of learning, its philanthropic institutions, its gardens, its teahouses, and its brothels - underpinned the const

The Companion Guide To Berlin (Companion Guides)


Brian Ladd - 2004
    Today's Berlin is new and vibrant, but history has left its scars. A look in the right place is rewarded with glimpses of the glories of old Prussia as well as the abominations of Hitler's Third Reich and of the outer bulwark of the Soviet empire. Brian Ladd, a historian who has been returning to Berlin for twenty-five years, pays homage to the familiar landmarks, but he also penetrates into obscure corners of the city and brings them alive with his shrewd and informed comment. He explains what the sights of Berlin have meant to Berliners who coped under kings and dictators, and who toiled, suffered and celebrated as their city was destroyed and rebuilt. This book invites you to share their passions as it draws you into the dynamic new capital that has risen from wreckage of post-war German history. BRIAN LADD is at the State University of New York at Albany. He has been a constant visitor to Berlin over a quarter of a century.

A Hedonist's Guide to Marrakech


Paul Sullivan - 2004
    One of the most talked-about cities in recent years, Marrakech continues to grace the style pages of magazines and newspapers across the world – it has become a haven for those interested in design, shopping and the naturally exotic.

The New York Subway: Its Construction and Equipment: Interborough Rapid Transit, 1904


Interborough Rapid Transit Co - 2004
    From the perspective of both urban history and the history of transportation, this book is an important primary source.Building the city's first subway in the early years of the twentieth century required delicate collaboration between public and private interests and called for the expenditure of considerable sums of both public and private money. The book introduces us to Abram S. Hewitt, a late nineteenth-century mayor of New York City. It was Hewitt who realized that, while private capital alone had been perfectly adequate for building elevated rapid transit lines in New York as early as the 1870s, the more costly construction of underground rapid transit lines was far beyond the ability of private corporations to finance. Hewitt set in motion a chain of events that sanctioned the use of public funds for subway construction, with the completed facility then to be leased to a private company for day-to-day operation.The private firm that emerged, both to build and to operate the first subway in New York, was called the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, a name that would later be rendered more crisply as the IRT. The City of New York and the Interborough Rapid transit Company inaugurated service over the city's first subway line on Thursday afternoon, October 27, 1904. Mayor George B. McClellan, son of the Civil War general, took the controls of the first ceremonial train at City Hall Station in downtown Manhattan and headed north. In one way or another, the subway has been going ever since.The book also presents important tabular and statistical information, as well as clear and concise narrative descriptions of technical details.

Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics


Stephen Graham - 2004
     A path-breaking exploration of the intersections of war, terrorism and cities Argues that contemporary cities are the key strategic sites of geopolitical conflict Written by the world's leading analysts of the intersections of urban space and military and terrorist violence Draws on cutting-edge research from geography, history, architecture, planning, sociology, critical theory, politics, international relations and military studies Provides up-to-date empirical analyses of specific conflicts, including 9/11, the "War on Terrorism", the Balkan wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and urban antiglobalization battles Offers lay readers a sophisticated perspective on the violence that is engulfing our increasingly urbanised world

Splendours of Imperial India: British Architecture in the 18th and 19th Century


Volwahsen - 2004
    One of the most revealing legacies of Britain's long history in India is the colonial architecture from the two centuries preceding the struggle for independence. Built to house both occupiers and occupied alike, these imposing buildings, including palaces, mansions, clubhouses and government offices, represented a hybrid of Western and Eastern sensibilities as their architects sought to plant the flag of British dominance in a foreign culture. Colonial Splendour focuses on India's towns and cities, particularly Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, providing countless illustrations, sketches, and photographs of the many impressive buildings and ruins that dot India's coastlines, hillsides, and valleys. Andreas Volwahsen's informative commentaries highlight the considerable achievements of these magnificent structures while offering insight into the stories these buildings tell about their own and India's history.

Streets in Their Own Ink: Poems


Stuart Dybek - 2004
    . . has a gritty realism infused with a sense of the marvelous." --Edward Hirsch, The Washington Post In a city like that one might sailthrough life led by a runaway hat.The young scattered in whatever directionstheir wild hair pointed and, gustinginto one another, they fell in love.-from "Windy City"In his second book of poems, Stuart Dybek finds vitality in the same vibrant imagery that animates his celebrated works of fiction. The poems of Streets in Their Own Ink map the internal geographies of characters who inhabit severe and often savage city streets, finding there a tension that transfigures past and present, memory and fantasy, sin and sanctity, nostalgia and the need to forget. Full of music and ecstasy, they consecrate a shadowed, alternate city of dreams and retrospection that parallels a modern city of hard realities. Ever present is Dybek's signature talent for translating "extreme and fantastic events into a fabulous dailiness, as though the extraordinary were everywhere around us if only someone would tell us where to look" (Geoffrey Wolff).