Best of
Cities

2009

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City


Michelle Nevius - 2009
    Fast-paced but thorough, its bite-size chapters each focus on an event, person, or place of historical significance. Rich in anecdotes and illustrations, it whisks readers from colonial New Amsterdam through Manhattan's past, right up to post-9/11 New York. The book also works as a historical walking-tour guide, with 14 self-guided tours, maps, and step-by-step directions. Easy to carry with you as you explore the city, Inside the Apple allows you to visit the site of every story it tells. This energetic, wide-ranging, and often humorous book covers New York's most important historical moments, but is always anchored in the city of today.

Seeing Central Park: An Official Guide to the World's Greatest Urban Park


Sara Cedar Miller - 2009
    In Seeing Central Park, Sara Cedar Miller, the official historian and photographer of the Central Park Conservancy, takes readers through America's most popular and celebrated park, where natural and manmade features are interwoven into a spectacular work of public art. Combining superb research and writing with breathtaking photographs, Seeing Central Park is not only a gorgeous gift book, but also a guide through every significant design feature in the park, from the largest, such as the Reservoir, to the smallest, such as the intricate carvings in the stonework surrounding Bethesda Terrace.Seeing Central Park also reveals many newly renovated and restored designs, including Bow Bridge, which has been canonized in countless films, and the Minto Tile Arcade near the famous Bethesda Fountain.

Transport For Suburbia: Beyond The Automobile Age


Paul Mees - 2009
    With countries like China and India moving towards mass-automobility, we face the prospects of an environmental and urban health disaster unless alternatives are found. It is time to move beyond the automobile age. But while public transport has worked well in the dense cores of some big cities, the problem is that most residents of developed countries now live in dispersed suburbs and smaller cities and towns. These places usually have little or no public transport, and most transport commentators have given up on the task of changing this: it all seems too hard.Transport for Surburbia argues that the secret of 'European-style' public transport lies in a generalizable model of network planning that has worked in places as diverse as rural Switzerland, the Brazilian city of Curitiba and the Canadian cities of Toronto and Vancouver. It shows how this model can be adapted to suburban, exurban and even rural areas to provide a genuine alternative to the car, and outlines the governance, funding and service planning policies that underpin the success of the world's best public transport systems.

The Architecture of Community


Leon Krier - 2009
    Until now, however, his ideas have circulated mostly among a professional audience of architects, city planners, and academics. In The Architecture of Community, Krier has reconsidered and expanded writing from his 1998 book Architecture: Choice or Fate. Here he refines and updates his thinking on the making of sustainable, humane, and attractive villages, towns, and cities. The book includes drawings, diagrams, and photographs of his built works, which have not been widely seen until now. With three new chapters, The Architecture of Community provides a contemporary road map for designing or completing today’s fragmented communities. Illustrated throughout with Krier’s original drawings, The Architecture of Community explains his theories on classical and vernacular urbanism and architecture, while providing practical design guidelines for creating livable towns. The book contains descriptions and images of the author’s built and unbuilt projects, including the Krier House and Tower in Seaside, Florida, as well as the town of Poundbury in England. Commissioned by the Prince of Wales in 1988, Krier’s design for Poundbury in Dorset has become a reference model for ecological planning and building that can meet contemporary needs.

Detroit: The Black Bottom Community


Jeremy Williams - 2009
    Because of the stringent racism and discrimination in housing, blacks migrating from the South seeking employment in Detroit's burgeoning industrial metropolis were forced to live in this former European immigrant community. During World War I through World War II, Black Bottom became a social, cultural, and economic center of struggle and triumph, as well as a testament to the tradition of black self-help and community-building strategies that have been the benchmark of black struggle. Black Bottom also had its troubles and woes. However, it would be these types of challenges confronting Black Bottom residents that would become part of the cohesive element that turned Black Bottom into a strong and viable community.Local historian Jeremy Williams combines careful research with archived photographs for insightful look at Black Bottom's early beginnings, its racial transformation, the building of a socioeconomic solvent community through various processes of institution building and networking, and its ultimate demise and the dislocation of its residents.

Halifax Haunts


Steve Vernon - 2009
    Presents the spooky history behind 33 of Halifax, Nova Scotia's scariest places.

Graffiti New York


Eric Felisbret - 2009
    Painting there is a badge of honor, with graffiti artists from around the globe making pilgrimages to New York for that purpose. This is the city where it all began, yet few know the back story.Graffiti New York fills that gap, detailing the concepts, aesthetics, ideals, and social structures that have served as a cultural blueprint for graffiti movements across the world. The book features approximately 1,000 images, complemented by texts by the authors and relevant players in the movement, as well as descriptive graphics and sidebars.Ranging from the birth of simple signature tags to today’s vibrant murals, and covering the ups and downs of the movement, the culture’s value system, its social framework, the various forms of graffiti, and significant artists and crews, Graffiti New York is a major addition to Abrams' superb books on graffiti art.

Wynfield's Kingdom


Marina Julia Neary - 2009
    Welcome to 1830s Bermondsey, London's most notorious slum, a land of gang wars, freak shows, and home to every depravity known to man. Dr. Thomas Grant, a disgraced physician, adopts Wynfield, a ten-year old thief savagely battered by a gang leader for insubordination. The boy grows up to be a slender, idealistic opium addict who worships Victor Hugo. By day he steals and resells guns from a weapons factory. By night he amuses filthy crowds with his adolescent girlfriend-a fragile witch with wolfish eyes. Wynfield senses that he has a purpose outside of his rat-infested kingdom; buthe never guesses that he had been selected at birth to topple the British aristocracy. "Neary writes with unbelievable power, yet never loses her sense of emotional insight.... Wynfield's Kingdom is truly an extraordinary first novel..""

A Journey Through Literary America


Thomas Hummel - 2009
    Unique to this book of literary biography is the element of the photograph. With over 140 photographs throughout, the images add mood and dimension to the writing and they are often shockingly close to what the featured authors described in their own words. Lushly illustrated, and beautifully designed, the book is as much of a pleasure to look at as it is to read.Rags to riches. Forbidden loves. Supernatural experiences. Narrow escapes. Some of the greatest stories of American literature are the stories of the scribes themselves and of the places that sparked their imaginations. In 2007, writer Thomas Hummel and photographer Tamra Dempsey set out in search of the sources of inspiration for 26 of this country's greatest authors. Two years and twenty thousand miles later, the result is A Journey Through Literary America -- a literary pilgrimage in photography and prose. In the words of one reviewer, "this is a beautiful and necessary book."

Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure


David Freeland - 2009
    Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The slim island at the mouth of the Hudson River is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan's infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history.Yet with David Freeland as a guide, it's possible to uncover skeletons of New York's lost monuments to its nightlife. With a keen eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan's nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry. From the Atlantic Garden German beer hall in present-day Chinatown to the city's first motion picture studio--Union Square's American Mutoscope and Biograph Company--to the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, Freeland situates each building within its historical and social context, bringing to life an old New York that took its diversions seriously. Freeland reminds us that the buildings that serve as architectural guideposts to yesteryear's recreations cannot be re-created--once destroyed they are gone forever. With condominiums and big box stores spreading over city blocks like wildfires, more and more of the Big Apple's legendary houses of mirth are being lost. By excavating the city's cultural history, this delightful book unearths some of the many mysteries that lurk around the corner and lets readers see the city in a whole new light.

Forbidden Places: Exploring our Abandoned Heritage


Sylvain Margaine - 2009
    Head off to explore the filming location of 12 Monkeys, Michael Jackson’s hometown turned ghost town, Berlin’s 1936 Olympic Village, deconsecrated churches, forgotten castles, deserted train stations, prisons and mental asylums, a cemetery of rusted locomotives, abandoned steel factories, phantom metro stations, and more.For 10 years, Sylvain Margaine has traveled the world in search of these forbidden and forgotten places.  An exceptional photographic report.

Imperfect Union: Representation and Taxation in Multilevel Governments


Christopher R. Berry - 2009
    Collectively, special purpose governments have more civilian employees than the federal government and spend more than all city governments combined. The proliferation of special purpose jurisdictions has fundamentally altered the nature of representation and taxation in local government. Citizens today are commonly represented by dozens - in some cases hundreds - of local officials in multiple layers of government. As a result, political participation in local elections is low and special interest groups associated with each function exert disproportionate influence. With multiple special-interest governments tapping the same tax base, the local tax base takes on the character of a common-pool resource, leading to familiar problems of overexploitation. Strong political parties can often mitigate the common-pool problem by informally coordinating the policies of multiple overlapping governments.

Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of the Death and Life of Great American Cities


Glenna Lang - 2009
    Jacobs perceived that the new structures being built to replace the aging housing of older cities were often far worse. This book reveals how Jacobs changed the way the world thought forever.

Vancouver Special


Charles Demers - 2009
    From a history of anti-Asian racism to a deconstruction of the city's urban sprawl; from an examination of local food trends to a survey of the city's politically radical past, Vancouver Special is a love letter to the city, taking a no-holds-barred look at Lotusland with verve, wit, and insight.

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast


Robert D. Bullard - 2009
    Questions linger: What went wrong? Can it happen again? Is our government equipped to plan for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from natural and manmade disasters? Can the public trust government response to be fair? Does race matter? Racial disparities exist in disaster response, cleanup, rebuilding, reconstruction, and recovery. Race plays out in natural disaster survivors’ ability to rebuild, replace infrastructure, obtain loans, and locate temporary and permanent housing. Generally, low-income and people of color disaster victims spend more time in temporary housing, shelters, trailers, mobile homes, and hotels—and are more vulnerable to permanent displacement. Some “temporary” homes have not proved to be that temporary. In exploring the geography of vulnerability, this book asks why some communities get left behind economically, spatially, and physically before and after disasters strike.

Toward the Healthy City: People, Places, and the Politics of Urban Planning


Jason Corburn - 2009
    Recognizing that city environments and the planning processes that shape them are powerful determinants of population health, urban planners today are beginning to take on the added challenge of revitalizing neglected urban neighborhoods in ways that improve health and promote greater equity. In Toward the Healthy City, Jason Corburn argues that city planning must return to its roots in public health and social justice. The first book to provide a detailed account of how city planning and public health practices can reconnect to address health disparities, Toward the Healthy City offers a new decision-making framework called "healthy city planning" that reframes traditional planning and development issues and offers a new scientific evidence base for participatory action, coalition building, and ongoing monitoring.To show healthy city planning in action, Corburn examines collaborations between government agencies and community coalitions in the San Francisco Bay area, including efforts to link environmental justice, residents' chronic illnesses, housing and real estate development projects, and planning processes with public health. Initiatives like these, Corburn points out, go well beyond recent attempts by urban planners to promote public health by changing the design of cities to encourage physical activity. Corburn argues for a broader conception of healthy urban governance that addresses the root causes of health inequities.

City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads


AbdouMaliq Simone - 2009
    As such, the book is not a collection of case studies on a specific theme, not a review of developmental problems, nor does it marshal the focal cities as evidence of particular urban trends. Rather, it examines how possibilities, perhaps inherent in these cities all along, are materialized through the everyday projects of residents situated in the city and the larger world in very different ways.

Dodge City: The Early Years, 1872–1886


William B. Shillingberg - 2009
    Wm. B. Shillingberg now goes beyond the violence for which the town became notorious, more fully documenting its early history by uncovering the economic, political, and social forces that shaped Dodge.The author cuts through legend and myth to depict a Dodge City that few people really know. He takes readers back to the southwestern Kansas frontier and traces a town’s evolution from a military site for protecting Santa Fe commerce, to a wild and lawless buffalo hunters’ rendezvous, to a regional freighting center and the primary shipping point for Texas cattle on the central plains. Amid all this activity a community sprang up in 1872 and was still stumbling toward maturity fourteen years later when the great herds no longer came. Shillingberg describes this transformation of place and purpose, along with its attendant political machinations and business fervor, revealing singular personalities, social turmoil, and a local economy in flux. Along the way, the book offers new perspectives on the Battle of Adobe Walls, the constant maneuvering of railroad moguls and cattle barons, and the exploits of such legendary figures as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp.Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, from city records to personal papers, Dodge City: The Early Years, 1872–1886 surpasses previous accounts of the town by depicting complex individuals and events in greater depth and detail. It shows us a community concerned with more than brothels, saloons, and gunplay. It will stand as the authoritative history of this quintessential western town.

Central Ohio's Historic Prisons


David Meyers - 2009
    With the opening of the Ohio State Reformatory in 1896, the state legislature had put in place "the most complete prison system, in theory, which exists in the United States." The reformatory joined the Ohio Penitentiary and the Boys Industrial School, also central-Ohio institutions, to form the first instance of "graded prisons; with the reform farm on one side of the new prison, for juvenile offenders, and the penitentiary on the other, for all the more hardened and incorrigible class." However, even as the concept was being replicated throughout the country, the staffs of the institutions were faced with the day-to-day struggle of actually making the system work.

The Chicago Music Scene: 1960s and 1970s


Dean Milano - 2009
    Chicago was a major player throughout those decades. It was a time when jazz, rock and roll, country and western, folk, blues, and R & B flowed through the streets of Chicagoland. Much has been written about the national and international talent of that time, but not enough has been written regarding local music scenes. This story focuses on the city of Chicago (along with its suburban club scene) and the homegrown performers who made the 1960s and 1970s one of the most electrifying and memorable periods in music history. Some of those players went all the way to the big time, while others made their mark and disappeared. But they all made a difference in their own way, and for those who were there, it is a time they will never forget.

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York


Joshua Stoff - 2009
    Kennedy International Airport opened in 1948, after the realization set in that the newly built LaGuardia Airport was unable to handle the volume of air traffic for New York City. Pushed through by New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the airport was to be located 14 miles from Manhattan, in Jamaica Bay, Queens, on the site of the old Idlewild Golf Course. For its first years, Idlewild Airport, as it was originally known, consisted of a low-budget temporary terminal and a series of Quonset huts. A major new building program began in the mid-1950s, and the airport rapidly changed from a ramshackle series of buildings into a glamorous-looking city. Renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1963, it has now grown to cover 5,000 acres.

Hearts of the City: The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp


Herbert Muschamp - 2009
    He often wrote about how the right architecture could be inspiring and uplifting, and he uniquely drew on film, literature, and popular culture to write pieces that were passionate and often personal, changing the landscape of architectural criticism in the process. These columns made architecture a subject accessible to everyone at a moment when, because of the heated debate between modernists and postmodernists, architecture had become part of a larger public dialogue. One of the most courageous and engaged voices in his field, he devoted many columns at the Times to the lack of serious new architecture in this country, and particularly in New York, and spoke out against the agenda of developers. He departed from the usual dry, didactic style of much architectural writing to playfully, for example, compare Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao to the body of Marilyn Monroe or to wax poetic about a new design for Manhattan’s manhole covers. One sees in this collection that Muschamp championed early on the work of Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Thom Payne, Frank Israel, Jean Nouvel, and Santiago Calatrava, among others, and was drawn to the theoretical writings of such architects as Peter Eisenman. Published here for the first time is the uncut version of his brilliant and poignant essay about gay culture and Edward Durrell Stone’s museum at 2 Columbus Circle. Fragments from the book he left unfinished, whose title we took for this collection—“A Dozen Years,” “Metroscope,” and “Atomic Secrets”—are also included. Hearts of the City is dazzling writing from a humanistic thinker whose work changed forever the way we think about our cities—and the buildings in them.

Ethnoburb: The New Ethnic Community in Urban America


Wei Li - 2009
    Ethnoburbs--suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas--are multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual, and often multinational communities in which one ethnic minority group has a significant concentration but does not necessarily constitute a majority. Wei Li documents the processes that have evolved with the spatial transformation of the Chinese American community of Los Angeles and that have converted the San Gabriel Valley into ethnoburbs in the latter half of the twentieth century, and she examines the opportunities and challenges that occurred as a result of these changes.Traditional ethnic and immigrant settlements customarily take the form of either ghettos or enclaves. Thus the majority of scholarly publications and mass media covering the San Gabriel Valley has described it as a Chinatown located in Los Angeles' suburbs. Li offers a completely different approach to understanding and analyzing this fascinating place. By conducting interviews with residents, a comparative spatial examination of census data and other statistical sources, and fieldwork--coupled with her own holistic view of the area--Li gives readers an effective and fine-tuned socio-spatial analysis of the evolution of a new type of racially defined place. The San Gabriel Valley tells a unique story, but its evolution also speaks to those experiencing a similar type of ethnic and racial conurbation. In sum, Li sheds light on processes that are shaping other present (and future) ethnically and racially diverse communities.The concept of the ethnoburb has redefined the way geographers and other scholars think about ethnic space, place, and process. This book will contribute significantly to both theoretical and empirical studies of immigration by presenting a more intensive and thorough take on arguments about spatial and social processes in urban and suburban America.

Conquest!: Can You Build a Roman City?


Julia Bruce - 2009
    Your superiors want you to expand the Roman Empire and conquer new lands. Do everything correctly, and they might even let you become a governor. This step-by-step guide will show readers how to plan and win battles, build a fort, roads, and aqueducts and govern this new province the Roman way. A fun and exciting way to introduce readers to the Ancient Roman world.

Clintonville and Beechwold


Shirley Hyatt - 2009
    Beechwold, three more miles north, was a farm, then a zoo. Today they are bedroom communities but no longer sleepy. The beauty of their grassy knolls, springs, river, and wooded ravines inspired the creation of one of Ohio s best amusement parks, which in turn spurred housing and businesses. The City of Columbus marched right alongside this progress, annexing residential areas almost as soon as they were developed. This new compilation tells, through images and words, the story of Clintonville and Beechwold as they evolved from sleepy hamlets to the communities they are today."

Urban Sprawl, Global Warming, and the Empire of Capital


George A. Gonzalez - 2009
    Shortly after the Second World War, urban development in the United States became an important spur for the global economy, creating demand for products such as automobiles, furniture, and appliances. Growing urban sprawl in recent decades is also a key factor behind the massive energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions of the American economy. Although today the United States is the largest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide, the nation's culpability in global warming is frequently sidestepped due to the enormous political and economic influence of corporations and wealthy individuals who continue to benefit from America's access to abundant supplies of fossil fuels. Troubling and insightful, Urban Sprawl, Global Warming, and the Empire of Capital reveals both the alarming global consequences of urban sprawl at home and the entrenched political and economic forces working against a solution to the problem.

The Illinois Statehouse


James R. Donelan - 2009
    For the first two years of Illinois's statehood, its capitol was located in Kaskaskia, a small town on the Mississippi River. Vandalia was home to three capitol buildings during its 19-year tenure as the second capital city. In 1837, a group of legislators, led by Abraham Lincoln and referred to as the Long Nine, campaigned to make Springfield the capital city. The Long Nine's goal was met in 1839, and since then, there have been two capitol buildings in Springfield. The first is where Lincoln delivered his House Divided speech. The second, completed in 1888 and the subject of this book, is still in use today. Since it is the current statehouse, its historical value is often overlooked. However, Illinois's sixth capitol is beautiful in its architecture and rich in its history. Many nationally prominent politicians, including a U.S. president, got their start underneath its dome.

Carfree Design Manual


J.H. Crawford - 2009
    Based on walking, bicycling, and public transport, this comprehensive handbook offers a fresh look at city design. The book proposes methods to achieve aesthetically pleasing and practical, carfree living environments. From urban planning and neighborhood design to squares and building layouts, the author argues that narrower streets, four-story buildings, and interior courtyards offer a higher quality of life. A design process is proposed that directly involves future residents. Illustrative case examples and comparative analysis of 18 urban spaces are also included.

Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use


Philipp Oswalt - 2009
    After city planners and the real estate market have failed in their initial attempts to develop them, these sites become the setting for clubs and bars, start-up firms and art galleries, migrant conomies and informal markets, recreational activities and nightlife. Indeed, it is often precisely here that innovative cultural production and a vibrant public sphere are to be found.The Urban Catalyst research team explored these unplanned temporary uses in five European countries over the course of several years, and did far more than merely analyze their hidden logic. Building on the team's own participation in a number of different projects, Urban Catalyst examines various ways in which city planning can incorporate informal processes and describes important lessons architects and city planners can learn from temporary users.Included are seminal contributions by Azra Aksamija, Kees Christiaanse, Margaret Crawford, Jesko Fezer, Florian R�tzer, Saskia Sassen, and others, as well as key projects from European cities such as Amsterdam, Basel, Berlin, London, Rome and Zagreb.