Yet contemporary Japanese designers and architects keep finding new ways to refurbish and take inspiration from the ways of old. Whether it's a pristinely preserved traditional house or a cutting-edge apartment, the best Japanese homes share a love of cleverly designed spaces and warm materials such as wood, bricks, and bamboo. From a thatched roof farmhouse occupied by a Zen priest to Tadao Ando's experimental 4x4 House, Shigeru Ban's conceptual Shutter House, and a beautiful homage to bamboo in the form of a home, this book traverses the multifaceted landscape of Japanese living today. Also included is a list of addresses and a glossary of terms, such as tatami.

    This concise book defines the vocabulary of sprawl from alligator to zoomburb, illustrating fifty-one colorful terms invented by real estate developers and designers to characterize contemporary building patterns. Sixty-nine aerial photographs, each paired with a definition, convey the impact of development and provide verbal and visual vocabulary needed by professionals, public officials, and citizens to critique uncontrolled growth in the American landscape. This "devil's dictionary" of American building accompanies a critique of metropolitan regions organized around unsustainable growth, where sprawling new areas of automobile-oriented construction flourish as older neighborhoods are left to decline.

    This is a book of borderlands and intersections, a cautionary tale about the dangers of putting infrastructure before culture, and a coming-of-age story about power and identity. The colonial history of southern California is interwoven through Adonia Lugo's story of growing up Chicana in Orange County, becoming a bicycle anthropologist, and co-founding Los Angeles's hallmark open streets cycling event, CicLAvia, along the way. When she takes on racism in the world of national bicycle advocacy in Washington, DC, she finds her voice and heads back to LA to organize the movement for environmental justice in active transportation.In the tradition of City of Quartz, this book will forever change the way you see Los Angeles, race and class in the United States, and the streets and people around you wherever you live.

    Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for women as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment.In Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out an intersectional feminist approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and women-friendly cities together.

    From the pioneering Bus Rapid Transit system to parks designed to catch runoff and reduce flooding and the creation of pedestrian-only zones, Lerner has been the driving force behind a host of innovative urban projects. In more than forty years of work in cities around the globe, Lerner has found that changes to a community don’t need to be large-scale and expensive to have a transformative impact—in fact, one block, park, or a single person can have an outsized effect on life in the surrounding city. In Urban Acupuncture, Lerner celebrates these “pinpricks” of urbanism—projects, people, and initiatives from around the world that ripple through their communities to uplift city life. With meditative and descriptive prose, Lerner brings readers around the world to streets and neighborhoods where urban acupuncture has been practiced best, from the bustling La Boqueria market in Barcelona to the revitalization of the Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea. Through this journey, Lerner invites us to re-examine the true building blocks of vibrant communities—the tree-lined avenues, night vendors, and songs and traditions that connect us to our cities and to one another.Urban Acupuncture is the first of Jaime Lerner’s visionary work to be published in English. It is a love letter to the elements that make a street hum with life or a neighborhood feel like home, penned by one of the world’s most successful advocates for sustainable and livable urbanism.

    Even fewer people are talented enough to write said memoir. By the grace of the literary gods, Pete Jordan is both." -San Francisco Bay GuardianPart personal memoir, part history of cycling, part fascinating street-level tour of Amsterdam, In the City of Bikes is the story of a man who loves bikes in a city that loves bikes.

    Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas, and concrete. To understand world events, news organizations and other authorities often focus on people, ideas, and political movements, but without geography, we never have the full picture. Now, in the relevant and timely Prisoners of Geography, seasoned journalist Tim Marshall examines Russia, China, the USA, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan and Korea, and Greenland and the Arctic—their weather, seas, mountains, rivers, deserts, and borders—to provide a context often missing from our political reportage: how the physical characteristics of these countries affect their strengths and vulnerabilities and the decisions made by their leaders.In ten, up-to-date maps of each region, Marshall explains in clear and engaging prose the complex geo-political strategies of these key parts of the globe. What does it mean that Russia must have a navy, but also has frozen ports six months a year? How does this affect Putin’s treatment of Ukraine? How is China’s future constrained by its geography? Why will Europe never be united? Why will America never be invaded? Shining a light on the unavoidable physical realities that shape all of our aspirations and endeavors, Prisoners of Geography is the critical guide to one of the major (and most often overlooked) determining factors in world history.

    Now, for the first time, del Toro reveals the inspirations behind his signature artistic motifs, sharing the contents of his personal notebooks, collections, and other obsessions. The result is a startling, intimate glimpse into the life and mind of one of the world's most creative visionaries. Complete with running commentary, interview text, and annotations that contextualize the ample visual material, this deluxe compendium is every bit as inspired as del Toro is himself.Contains a foreword by James Cameron, an afterword by Tom Cruise, and contributions from other luminaries, including Neil Gaiman and John Landis, among others.

    Sharpe James, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, recalls the sense of excitement and possibility he felt when Jackie Robinson became the first black ballplayer in the major leagues. Gilles Ryan remembers what it was like to be a high-school student in Dayton, Tennessee, during the Scopes Trial. Connie Chang talks about emigrating to the United States from Korea and establishing a liquor store in Los Angeles, only to have it destroyed in the civil unrest. Comparisons to Harold Evans's The American Century are, perhaps, inevitable, but in addition to the emphasis on ordinary lives, The Century is further distinguished by the effective use of color photography (as well as several black-and-white shots). The book's sweeping narrative, shaped by Jennings and Brewster's comprehensive text, also flows a bit more smoothly than Evans's telegraphic prose; one can almost imagine Jennings reciting from these pages as he hosts the ABC/History Channel documentaries to which this book is a companion piece.

    The strange saga of American architecture in the twentieth century makes for both high comedy and intellectual excitement as Wolfe debunks the European gods of modern and postmodern architecture and their American counterparts.

    Some of these states came remarkably close to joining the Union. Others never had a chance. Many are still trying. Consider:        •  Frontier legend Daniel Boone once proposed a state of Transylvania in the Appalachian wilderness (his plan was resurrected a few years later with the new name of Kentucky).      •  Residents of bucolic South Jersey wanted to secede from their urban north Jersey neighbors and form the fifty-first state.      •  The Gold Rush territory of Nataqua could have made a fine state—but since no women were willing to live there, the settlers gave up and joined California.   Each story offers a fascinating glimpse at the nation we might have become—along with plenty of absurd characters, bureaucratic red tape, and political gamesmanship. Accompanying these tales are beautifully rendered maps detailing the proposed state boundaries, plus images of real-life artifacts and ephemera. Welcome to the world of Lost States!

    senator, in January 2005, and served as the chief official White House photographer for the President's full two terms. Souza was with President Obama more often, and at more crucial moments, than any friend or staff member, or even the First Lady--and he photographed it all. Souza captured nearly 2 million photographs of Obama, in moments ranging from classified to disarmingly candid.This large-format (12"x10"), exquisitely produced book presents more than 300 of Souza's favorite and most iconic images from these historic years; many have never been seen before. This seminal work on the Obama presidency documents moments of national importance--including the historic image of the President and his advisors watching tensely in the Situation Room as the Bin Laden mission unfolded--alongside unguarded moments with the President's family, his many encounters with children, and his time spent interacting with world leaders, members of Congress, White House staff, artists, musicians and more.The photographs are paired with captions and stories providing behind-the-scenes context for each, and offer insight into the special relationship Souza and the President forged during their time together. The result is a stunning record of a landmark era in American history.Souza's work enabled us to feel that we knew the President. This book puts us in the White House with him.

    She has been back to London countless times since, through the pages of books and in person, and now, in Imagined London, she takes her own readers on a tour of this greatest of literary cities. While New York, Paris, and Dublin are also vividly portrayed in fiction, it is London, Quindlen argues, that has always been the star, both because of the primacy of English literature and the specificity of city descriptions. She bases her view of the city on her own detailed literary map, tracking the footsteps of her favorite characters: the places where Evelyn Waugh's bright young things danced until dawn, or where Lydia Bennett eloped with the dastardly Wickham. In Imagined London, Quindlen walks through the city, moving within blocks from the great books of the 19th century to the detective novels of the 20th to the new modernist tradition of the 21st. With wit and charm, Imagined London gives this splendid city its full due in the landscape of the literary imagination. Praise for Imagined London: Shows just how much a reading experience can enrich a physical journey." -New York Times Book Review

    But for how long?Are New York City's local merchants a dying breed or an enduring group of diehards hell bent on retaining the traditions of a glorious past? According to Jim and Karla Murray the influx of big box retailers and chain stores pose a serious threat to these humble institutions, and neighborhood modernization and the anonymity it brings are replacing the unique appearance and character of what were once incredibly colorful streets.Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York is a visual guide to New York City's timeworn storefronts, a collection of powerful images that capture the neighborhood spirit, familiarity, comfort and warmth that these shops once embodied.