Urban category: 4425 books
Black Metropolis
A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City
Language: English
Release Date: November 10, 2015
Ground-breaking when first published in 1945, Black Metropolis remains a landmark study of race and urban life. Few studies since have been able to match its scope and magnitude, offering one of the most comprehensive looks at black life in America. Based on research conducted by Works Progress Administration...
The Fires
How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New Yo rk City--and Determined the Future of Cities
Language: English
Release Date: May 27, 2010
New York City, 1968. The RAND Corporation had presented an alluring proposal to a city on the brink of economic collapse: Using RAND's computer models, which had been successfully implemented in high-level military operations, the city could save millions of dollars by establishing more efficient...
Power at Ground Zero
Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan
Language: English
Release Date: August 5, 2016
The destruction of the World Trade Center complex on 9/11 set in motion a chain of events that fundamentally transformed both the United States and the wider world. War has raged in the Middle East for a decade and a half, and Americans have become accustomed to surveillance, enhanced security, and...
Bike Battles
A History of Sharing the American Road
Language: English
Release Date: June 8, 2015
Americans have been riding bikes for more than a century now. So why are most American cities still so ill-prepared to handle cyclists? James Longhurst, a historian and avid cyclist, tackles that question by tracing the contentious debates between American bike riders, motorists, and pedestrians over...
Buyways
Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape
Language: English
Release Date: May 15, 2004
First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
by Rob Sullivan
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2016
In the latter part of the C20th, a series of seminal books were written which examined Los Angeles by the likes of Reyner Banham, Mike Davis, Edward Soja, Allen Scott, Michael Dear, Frederick Jameson, Umberto Eco, Bernard-Henri Levy, and Jean Baudrillard which have been hugely influential in thinking...
Twentieth-Century Sprawl
Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape
Language: English
Release Date: May 1, 2004
Here, Owen Gutfreund offers a fascinating look at how highways have dramatically transformed American communities nationwide, aiding growth and development in unsettled areas and undermining existing urban centers. Gutfreund uses a "follow the money" approach, showing how government policies...
Civic Symbol
Creating Toronto's New City Hall, 1952-1966
Language: English
Release Date: September 15, 2015
When Toronto’s New City Hall opened in 1965, it was an iconic modernist symbol for what was still a sedate and conservative city. Its futuristic design by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, composed of two curved towers flanking a clam-shaped council chamber, remains as strange and distinctive today...
We're Still Here Ya Bastards
How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City
Language: English
Release Date: June 9, 2015
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is one of the darkest chapters in American history. The storm caused unprecedented destruction, and a toxic combination of government neglect and socioeconomic inequality turned a crisis into a tragedy. But among the rubble, there is hope.
We're Still Here...
by Stephen J. Leonard, Thomas J. Noel
Language: English
Release Date: September 20, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: September 20, 2016
A Short History of Denver covers more than 150 years of Denver’s rich history. The book recounts the takeover of Native American lands, the founding of small towns on the South Platte River at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and the creation of a city, which by 1890 was among the nation’s major...
Song of Brooklyn
An Oral History of America's Favorite Borough
Language: English
Release Date: June 10, 2008
The voices of Brooklyn:
“I’m a Brooklyn guy, it’s in my bones and it’s there in Brooklyn. There’s a certain rhythm you get growing up there. Every Brooklyn kid has it. Always on the right beat. The Bronx, no; Queens, you were out of it; but Brooklyn, that was it.”
—Mel Brooks,...
Rites of Way
The Politics and Poetics of Public Space
Language: English
Release Date: April 7, 2011
There are many ways to approach the subject of public space: the threats posed to it by surveillance and visual pollution; the joys it offers of stimulation and excitement, of anonymity and transformation; its importance to urban variety or democratic politics. But public space remains an evanescent...
by Jim Daniels
Language: English
Release Date: August 19, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: August 19, 2013
A Detroit native, Jim Daniels is a well-known author in Michigan
Birth Marks has strong regional ties to Detroit, MI, where Jim Daniels spent his childhood, and to Pittsburgh, PA, and Ohio where he has lived the past 32 years. Daniels says of his writings on Detroit: "The writer Richard...
BART
The Dramatic History of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System
Language: English
Release Date: December 16, 2016
**The history of Bay Area Rapid Transit, as told by "Mr. BART" himself **
When BART opened in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1972, it became a catalyst for a renaissance in modern rail transit, both nationally and internationally. The concept as sold to Bay Area voters was gargantuan:...