The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999


Ray Suarez - 1999
    For most, the home was not a display object but a place to keep the few things they had managed to hold on to from the surpluses produced by their labor. Their material life was made of the things they didn't have to eat, wear, or burn right this minute. A concertina maybe? A family Bible? A hunting rifle?" This life in "the old neighborhood," so lyrically captured by Ray Suarez, was once lived by a huge number of Americans. One in seven of us can directly connect our lineage through just one city, Brooklyn. In 1950, except for Los Angeles, the top ten American cities were all in the Northeast or Midwest, and all had populations over 800,000. Since then, especially since the mid-60s, a way of life has simply vanished. Ray Suarez, veteran interviewer and host of NPR's "Talk of the Nation®," is a child of Brooklyn who has long been fascinated with the stories behind the largest of our once-great cities. He has talked to longtime residents, recent arrivals, and recent departures; community organizers, priests, cops, and politicians; and scholars who have studied neighborhoods, demographic trends, and social networks. The result is a rich tapestry of voices and history. The Old Neighborhood captures a crucial chapter in the experience of postwar America. It is a book not just for first- and second-generation Americans, but for anyone who remembers the prewar cities or wonders how we could have gotten to where we are. It is a book about "old neighborhoods" that were once cherished, and are now lost.

Design With Nature


Ian L. McHarg - 1969
    --LewisMumford. . . important to America and all the rest of the world in ourstruggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes.--Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.This century's most influential landscape architecture book.--Landscape Architecture. . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature oflandscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection ofwritings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance ofecological principles in regional planning. --Landscape and UrbanPlanningIn the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world bystorm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields oflandscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecologicaldesign. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussionof mankind's place in nature and nature's place in mankind withinthe physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiasticreviewer as a user's manual for our world, Design With Natureoffers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationshipbetween the built environment and nature. In so doing, it providesnothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophicalfoundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumfordecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating anddisappearing before our eyes.

Shadowboxer


Nicholas Pollotta - 1997
    Two Bears, the dwarf mercenary, sees an easy way to make some cash in the search for the secrets behind IronHell, a force that threatens to unhinge the world, until he finds himself in a picaresque urban jungle.

Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality


Melissa Bruntlett - 2018
    City officials are rediscovering it as a multi-pronged (or -spoked) solution to acute, 21st-century problems, including affordability, obesity, congestion, climate change, inequity, and social isolation. As the world’s foremost cycling nation, the Netherlands is the only country where the number of bikes exceeds the number of people, primarily because the Dutch have built a cycling culture accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ability, or economic means. Chris and Melissa Bruntlett share the incredible success of the Netherlands through engaging interviews with local experts and stories of their own delightful experiences riding in five Dutch cities. Building the Cycling City examines the triumphs and challenges of the Dutch while also presenting stories of North American cities already implementing lessons from across the Atlantic. Discover how Dutch cities inspired Atlanta to look at its transit-bike connection in a new way and showed Seattle how to teach its residents to realize the freedom of biking, along with other encouraging examples. Tellingly, the Dutch have two words for people who ride bikes: wielrenner (“wheel runner”) and fietser (“cyclist”), the latter making up the vast majority of people pedaling on their streets, and representing a far more accessible, casual, and inclusive style of urban cycling—walking with wheels. Outside of their borders, a significant cultural shift is needed to seamlessly integrate the bicycle into everyday life and create a whole world of fietsers. The Dutch blueprint focuses on how people in a particular place want to move. The relatable success stories will leave readers inspired and ready to adopt and implement approaches to make their own cities better places to live, work, play, and—of course—cycle.

Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places


Edward W. Soja - 1996
    In what may eventually be seen as one of the most important intellectual and political developments in the late twentieth century, scholars have begun to interpret space and the embracing spatiality of human life with the same critical insight and emphasis that has traditionally been given to time and history on the one hand, and social relations and society on the other. Thirdspace is both an enquiry into the origins and impact of the spatial turn and an attempt to expand the scope and practical relevance of how we think about space and such related concepts as place, location, landscape, architecture, environment, home, city, region, territory, and geography. The book's central argument is that spatial thinking, or what has been called the geographical or spatial imagination, has tended to be bicameral, or confined to two approaches. Spatiality is either seen as concrete material forms to be mapped, analyzed, and explained; or as mental constructs, ideas about and representations of space and its social significance. Edward Soja critically re-evaluates this dualism to create an alternative approach, one that comprehends both the material and mental dimensions of spatiality but also extends beyond them to new and different modes of spatial thinking.Thirdspace is composed as a sequence of intellectual and empirical journeys, beginning with a spatial biography of Henri Lefebvre and his adventurous conceptualization of social space as simultaneously perceived, conceived, and lived. The author draws on Lefebvre to describe a trialectics of spatiality that threads though all subsequent journeys, reappearing in many new forms in bell hooks evocative exploration of the margins as a space of radical openness; in post-modern spatial feminist interpretations of the interplay of race, class, and gender; in the postcolonial critique and the new cultural politics of difference and identity; in Michel Foucault's heterotopologies and trialectics of space, knowledge, and power; and in interpretative tours of the Citadel of downtown Los Angeles, the Exopolis of Orange County, and the Centrum of Amsterdam.

A House Through Time


David Olusoga - 2020
    People, many of whom have already embarked upon that great adventure of genealogical research, and who have encountered their ancestors in the archives and uncovered family secrets, are now turning to the secrets contained within the four walls of their homes and in doing so finding a direct link to earlier generations. And it is ordinary homes, not grand public buildings or the mansions of the rich that have all the best stories.As with the television series, A House Through Time offers readers not only the tools to explore the histories of their own homes, but also a vividly readable history of the British city, the forces of industry, disease, mass transportation, crime and class. The rises and falls, the shifts in the fortunes of neighbourhoods and whole cities are here, tracing the often surprising journey one single house can take from elegant dwelling in a fashionable district to a tenement for society’s rejects.Packed with remarkable human stories, it is a phenomenal insight into living history, a history we can see every day on the streets where we live. And it reminds us that it is at home that we are truly ourselves. It is there that the honest face of life can be seen. At home, behind closed doors and drawn curtains, we live out our inner lives and family lives.

City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village


David Sucher - 1994
    Many of these small details are so obvious as to be invisible.

City Improbable: An Anthology of Writings on Delhi


Khushwant Singh - 2001
    This anthology brings together writings on Delhi by residents, refugees, travellers and invaders who have engaged with the city at various movements in its long history. Edited by Khushwant Singh, this is a collection as varied and lively - sometimes serious, sometimes richly humorous - as Delhi itself.

GATE Architecture / Planning


B.K. Das
    This book will be helpful for students who want to prepare within a short time, covering the whole syllabus and all compilations at one place.

Headspace: The Psychology of City Living


Paul Keedwell - 2017
     More and more of us are choosing to live in the man-made environment of the city. The mismatch between this artificial world and our nature-starved souls can contribute to the stresses of city living in a way that is barely noticed – but is crucially important.What does the science of architectural psychology tell us about how the world of brick and concrete affects how we think, feel and behave?In an increasingly crowded urban world, how does good urban design inspire, restore and bring us together? Conversely, how does bad architecture cause anxiety, alienation and depression?Starting with the home and reaching out to the street, neighbourhood and wider city landscape, Headspace teaches us how to see our cities differently, and how we can best adapt to our rapidly changing urban world.

When the Lion Feeds / The Dark of the Sun / Hungry as the Sea (Three Novels in One Volume)


Wilbur Smith - 1993
    Contains three stories - "When the Lion Feeds", in which twins Sean and Garrick are driven apart, "The Dark of the Sun" in which white mercenaries are up against a ruthless enemy, and "Hungry As the Sea", where courage, obsession and danger are on board a ship bound for the polar regions.

Time-Saver Standards for Housing and Residential Development


Joseph De Chiara - 1994
    In superb graphic detail, with hundreds of plans, illustrations, and diagrams, this comprehensive resource presents and entire library's worth of essential design data for residential development.

The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture


Alanna Stang - 2005
    The result: more than thirty-five residences in fifteen countries -- and nearly every conceivable natural environment -- designed by a combination of star architects and heretofore unknown practitioners.Six different climactic zones are presented in The Green House -- waterfront, forest and mountain, tropical, desert, suburban, and urban; there is also a section on mobile dwellings. Each chapter features a series of homes that show the diversity and possibility of sustainable design. Projects are presented with large color images, plans, drawings, and an accompanying text that describes their green features and explains how they work with and in the environment.Architects included: Santiago Calatrava, Shigeru Ban, Miller/Hull, Rick Joy, Lake Flato, Kengo Kuma, Glenn Murcutt, Pugh & Scarpa, Werner Sobek, and many others.The Green House is not only a beautiful object in its own right, but is sure to be an indispensable reference for anyone building or interested in sustainable design -- and if you ask us, that should be everyone.

Prefabulous and Sustainable: Building and Customizing an Affordable, Energy-Efficient Home


Sheri Koones - 2010
    The book is divided into 3 categories—green, greener, greenest—and the homes featured vary in style, design, type of construction, and size. All of the homes included in Prefabulous and Sustainable have been customized to create a level of sustainability beyond the inherent qualities of prefab.Written in an easy to understand and approachable style, author Sheri Koones walks the readers through each of the homes, explaining the materials, strategies, and systems used to create a sustainable living environment. Photographs, captions, floor plans, and sidebars illustrate to readers that green living is not as complicated as one might think, and attainable for everyone. Also included is a resource guide, making this book a hand-on guide for homebuilders. Praise for Prefabulous + Sustainable “Authoritative and beautiful. Once again, Koones builds her case for pre-fab thoroughly, and presents it in a compelling, well-organized package.” —Allen Norwood, NAREE Book Competition Head Judge

Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles


Charles Fleming - 2010
    That’s where William Faulkner was living when he wrote the screenplay for To Have and Have Not; that house was designed by Neutra; over there is a Schindler; that’s where Woody Guthrie lived, where Anais Nin died, and where Thelma Todd was murdered . . .Despite the fact that one of these staircases starred in an Oscar-winning short film—Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box, from 1932—these civic treasures have been virtually unknown to most of the city’s residents and visitors. Now, Secret Stairs puts these hidden stairways back on the map, while introducing urban hikers to exciting new “trails” all around the city of Los Angeles.