According to the united nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world. From the...

Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do...

The reasons behind Detroit’s persistent racialized poverty after World War IIOnce America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America’s racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue...

In the 70 years between the Civil War and World War II, the women of Boston changed the city dramatically. From anti-spitting campaigns and demands for police mothers to patrol local parks, to calls for a decent wage and living quarters, women rich and...

In Black Corona, Steven Gregory examines political culture and activism in an African-American neighborhood in New York City. Using historical and ethnographic research, he challenges the view that black urban communities are "socially disorganized."...

First there was downtown. Then there were suburbs. Then there were malls. Then Americans launched the most sweeping change in 100 years in how they live, work, and play. The Edge City.

THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION OF ESSAYS BY THE FIELD’S TOP PRACTITIONERS

"A vivid, unforgettable picture of the quality—or lack of it—of life in England among 'ordinary' people."—Peter Stansky.

No other place on earth is as full both of promise and of dread as the city; it is at once alienating and exciting. These concentrations of people have not, however, come about as the result of vast immutable, impersonal forces, but because of human...

As early as the 1850s, gaslight tempted New Yorkers out into a burgeoning nightlife filled with shopping, dining, and dancing. Electricity later turned the city at night into an even more stunning spectacle of brilliantly lit streets and glittering...

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit over the last fifty years has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of racial and economic inequality in modern America, Thomas Sugrue explains how Detroit and many other once...

During the nineteenth century, large, naturalistic urban parks began to appear in cities around the world. These parks, as Melodramatic Landscapes engagingly demonstrates, offered the opportunity for visitors to assert their social status in performances...

Variations on the theme of the ornament in Kracauer's urban writings, suggesting ways in which the subjective can reappropraite urban life.For Siegfried Kracauer, the urban ornament was not just an aspect of design; it was the medium through which city...

How Hadrian left an enduring mark on the architecture and urban topography of ancient RomeThe Pantheon, the Temple of Venus and Roma, Hadrian’s Mausoleum transformed into Castel Sant’Angelo, and his villa at Tivoli epitomize for many the power and...

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit over the last fifty years has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of racial and economic inequality in modern America, Thomas Sugrue explains how Detroit and many other once...

The sixteen ground-breaking essays in this volume examine the processes by which cities grow and how current public policy, both in the area of zoning and town planning respond to this process.

As the birthplace of the Black Panthers and a nationwide tax revolt, California embodied a crucial motif of the postwar United States: the rise of suburbs and the decline of cities, a process in which black and white histories inextricably joined...

This sociological classic is updated with a new preface by the authors looking at developments in the study of urban planning during the twenty-year life of this influential work.

The “green building revolution’’ is happening right now. This book is its chronicle and its manifesto. Written by industry insider Jerry Yudelson, The Green Building Revolution introduces readers to the basics of green building and to the projects and...

Did alligators ever really live in New York's sewers? What's it like to explore the old aqueducts beneath the city? How many levels are beneath Grand Central Station? And how exactly did the pneumatic tube system that New York's post offices used to...