It has so altered the way cities look, feel, cost, and even smell to such an extent that it’s hard to imagine that it could ever have been otherwise.   Over the last few years, journalists, policy­makers, critics, and historians have all tried to ex­plain just what it is that happens when new money and new residents flow in, yet we’ve had very little access to the human side of this phenomenon.  Up and Coming captures the stories of the many kinds of people—brokers, buyers, sellers, renters, landlords, artists, contractors, politicians and everyone in between—who are being shaped by—and are shaping—the new New York City. In this extraordinary oral history, DW Gibson takes gentrification out of the op-ed columns and the textbooks and brings it to life. Gibson explains— in the voices of the people living through it—what urban change really looks and feels like.   In the plainspoken, casually authoritative tradition of Jane Jacobs and Studs Terkel, Up and Coming is an inviting and essential portrait of the way we live now.

    But in the late 1980s, activists rose up to tackle the social problems that had plagued the area for decades. Black on the Block tells the remarkable story of how these residents laid the groundwork for a revitalized and self-consciously black neighborhood that continues to flourish today. But theirs is not a tale of easy consensus and political unity, and here Pattillo teases out the divergent class interests that have come to define black communities like North Kenwood–Oakland. She explores the often heated battles between haves and have-nots, home owners and apartment dwellers, and newcomers and old-timers as they clash over the social implications of gentrification. Along the way, Pattillo highlights the conflicted but crucial role that middle-class blacks play in transforming such districts as they negotiate between established centers of white economic and political power and the needs of their less fortunate black neighbors. “A century from now, when today's sociologists and journalists are dust and their books are too, those who want to understand what the hell happened to Chicago will be finding the answer in this one.”—Chicago Reader “To see how diversity creates strange and sometimes awkward bedfellows . . . turn to Mary Pattillo's Black on the Block.”—Boston Globe

    In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology--to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

    In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below. Starting at the edge of earth's atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers. He asks: why was Dubai built to be seen from Google Earth? How do the super-rich in Sao Paulo live in their penthouses far above the street? Why do London billionaires build vast subterranean basements? And how do the technology of elevators and subversive urban explorers shape life on the surface and subsurface of the earth? Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world.

    But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography.In the late nineteenth century, support for the left began to cluster in cities among the industrial working class. Today, left-wing parties have become coalitions of diverse urban interest groups, from racial minorities to the creative class. These parties win big in urban districts but struggle to capture the suburban and rural seats necessary for legislative majorities. A bold new interpretation of today's urban-rural political conflict, Why Cities Lose also points to electoral reforms that could address the left's under-representation while reducing urban-rural polarization.

    It thereby adds an important yet often overlooked perspective to debates on gentrification -- the residents of formerly disinvested neighbourhoods themselves. Their perspectives suggest that gentrification is neither entirely threatening nor redemptive for urban neighbourhoods. Rather, it can both offer a better life and threaten long-established communities. While residents appreciate the opportunities, they resent that it often takes full-scale gentrification to make their neighbourhoods nice. The concluding chapters of the book suggest ways for limiting the negative aspects of gentrification and new ways of thinking about gentrification and the inner city.

    In this powerful book, Beryl Satter identifies the true causes of the city's black slums and the ruin of urban neighborhoods throughout the country: not, as some have argued, black pathology, the culture of poverty, or white flight, but a widespread and institutionalized system of legal and financial exploitation. In Satter's riveting account of a city in crisis, unscrupulous lawyers, slumlords, and speculators are pitched against religious reformers, community organizers, and an impassioned attorney who launched a crusade against the profiteers—the author's father, Mark J. Satter. At the heart of the struggle stand the black migrants who, having left the South with its legacy of sharecropping, suddenly find themselves caught in a new kind of debt peonage. Satter shows the interlocking forces at work in their oppression: the discriminatory practices of the banking industry; the federal policies that created the country's shameful "dual housing market"; the economic anxieties that fueled white violence; and the tempting profits to be made by preying on the city's most vulnerable population. A monumental work of history, this tale of racism and real estate, politics and finance, will forever change our understanding of the forces that transformed urban America.

    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.

    One of the most celebrated living architects, Ando is best known for crafting serenely austere structures that fuse Japanese building traditions with Western modernism. His minimalist masterworks-geometric forms clad in silky-smooth exposed concrete-are suffused with natural light and set in perfect harmony with the landscape. In these highlights from lectures delivered at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Architecture, Ando candidly describes his experiences as a largely self-taught practitioner, tracing his development from an early interest in the traditional building craft of his native Japan through his political awakening in the turbulent 1960s to his current stature as one of the world's foremost architects. In addition to exploring his aesthetic influences and working process, Ando offers students a road map not only for maintaining professional integrity, but also for becoming effective agents of change in the world.

    She's seen it fail a number of times and knows the probability of it working out is not great. She is a scientist, after all. Over the years, she's found it smarter to invest in something that will pay back the effort she puts into it. Something like her career. But she wakes up one morning to realize she's overworked, underpaid, with no one to share her life with, and she wonders if she's been right about love. Jack Wheeler not only just lost his dad, but he's about to lose their family ranch and home. Unable to allow that to happen, Jack does everything he can, including selling all of his personal belongings to protect the land that has been in their family for generations. But when even that isn't enough, Jack isn't sure what to do.  When Tessa flies to Blue Falls to spend Christmas with her family and she meets Jack, the chemistry is immediate. But she's from New York, and his life is in Blue Falls. She's one of the heirs to the Heathcliff billions, and he can barely scrape together his next mortgage payment. Can they see past their differences and find some common ground to cultivate their fledging love? Or will this Christmas come and go without any miracles? Grab your copy today!The ninth book in the sweet and wholesome Heathcliff Family Romances series. Read all of the Heathcliff Family Romances by Julia Keanini! 1. His to Save2. His to Marry3. His to Protect4. Her Favorite Risk5. Her Forever Love6. Her Perfect Mistake7. Their Second First Kiss8. The Island Patriot9. Their White Christmas

    It goes on to show that, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies. In some urban areas the degree of black segregation is so intense and occurs in so many dimensions simultaneously that it amounts to "hypersegregation."The authors demonstrate that this systematic segregation of African Americans leads inexorably to the creation of underclass communities during periods of economic downturn. Under conditions of extreme segregation, any increase in the overall rate of black poverty yields a marked increase in the geographic concentration of indigence and the deterioration of social and economic conditions in black communities.As ghetto residents adapt to this increasingly harsh environment under a climate of racial isolation, they evolve attitudes, behaviors, and practices that further marginalize their neighborhoods and undermine their chances of success in mainstream American society. This book is a sober challenge to those who argue that race is of declining significance in the United States today.

    Now, in Favela, Perlman carries that story forward to the present. Re-interviewing many longtime favela residents whom she hadfirst met in 1969--as well as their children and grandchildren--Perlman offers the only long-term perspective available on the favelados as they struggle for a better life.Perlman discovers that while educational levels have risen, democracy has replaced dictatorship, and material conditions have improved, many residents feel more marginalized than ever. The greatest change is the explosion of drug and arms trade and the high incidence of fatal violence that hasresulted. Yet the greatest challenge of all is job creation--decent work for decent pay. If unemployment and under-paid employment are not addressed, she argues, all other efforts will fail to resolve the fundamental issues. Foreign Affairs praises Perlman for writing with compassion, artistry, and intelligence, using stirring personal stories to illustrate larger points substantiated with statistical analysis.

    Four decades later, the degree of racial inequality has barely changed. To understand what went wrong, Patrick Sharkey argues that we have to understand what has happened to African American communities over the last several decades. In Stuck in Place, Sharkey describes how political decisions and social policies have led to severe disinvestment from black neighborhoods, persistent segregation, declining economic opportunities, and a growing link between African American communities and the criminal justice system.As a result, neighborhood inequality that existed in the 1970s has been passed down to the current generation of African Americans. Some of the most persistent forms of racial inequality, such as gaps in income and test scores, can only be explained by considering the neighborhoods in which black and white families have lived over multiple generations. This multigenerational nature of neighborhood inequality also means that a new kind of urban policy is necessary for our nation’s cities. Sharkey argues for urban policies that have the potential to create transformative and sustained changes in urban communities and the families that live within them, and he outlines a durable urban policy agenda to move in that direction.

    

    As promoted by enterprises like IBM, Siemens and Cisco Systems, the vision of the "smart city" proposes that this technology can be harnessed by municipal administrators to achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency,security, convenience and sustainability. But a closer look at what this body of ideas actually consists of suggests that such a city will not, and cannot, serve the interests of the people who live in it. In this pamphlet, Everyware author Adam Greenfield explores the ways in which this discourse treats the city as an abstraction, misunderstands (or even undermines) the processes that truly do generate meaning and value — and winds up making many of the same blunders that doomed the High Modernist urban planning of the twentieth century. “Against the smart city” provides an intellectual toolkit for those of us interested in resisting this sterile and unappealing vision, and lays important groundwork for the far more fruitful alternatives to come.