Download or read book An Unnatural Metropolis written by Craig E. Colten and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city." How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis. Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000 and demonstrates that, though all cities must contend with their physical settings, New Orleans may be the city most dependent on human-induced transformations of its precarious site. In a new preface, Colten shows how Hurricane Katrina exemplifies the inability of human artifice to exclude nature from cities and he urges city planners to keep the environment in mind as they contemplate New Orleans's future. Urban geographers frequently have portrayed cities as the antithesis of nature, but in An Unnatural Metropolis, Colten introduces a critical environmental perspective to the history of urban areas. His amply illustrated work offers an in-depth look at a city and society uniquely shaped by the natural forces it has sought to harness.

Download or read book An Unnatural Metropolis written by Craig E. Colten and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2006-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city." How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis. Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000 and demonstrates that, though all cities must contend with their physical settings, New Orleans may be the city most dependent on human-induced transformations of its precarious site. In a new preface, Colten shows how Hurricane Katrina exemplifies the inability of human artifice to exclude nature from cities and he urges city planners to keep the environment in mind as they contemplate New Orleans's future. Urban geographers frequently have portrayed cities as the antithesis of nature, but in An Unnatural Metropolis, Colten introduces a critical environmental perspective to the history of urban areas. His amply illustrated work offers an in-depth look at a city and society uniquely shaped by the natural forces it has sought to harness.

Download or read book Nature s Metropolis Chicago and the Great West written by William Cronon and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-11-02 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Winner of the Bancroft Prize. "No one has written a better book about a city…Nature's Metropolis is elegant testimony to the proposition that economic, urban, environmental, and business history can be as graceful, powerful, and fascinating as a novel." —Kenneth T. Jackson, Boston Globe

Download or read book Mind the Gap written by Christopher Golden and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fleeing her mother’s murderers, a London teenager discovers an underground world of thieves and ghosts in this dark urban fantasy series debut. Jasmine Towne and her mother have always been taken care of by men known only as the Uncles. But Jazz was raised to always beware. And she discovers why on the day she finds her paranoid mother murdered. Her mother’s last words, scrawled in her own blood, demand action: JAZZ HIDE FOREVER. Seeking cover in the London Underground, Jazz slips through a mysterious gate—and seemingly through time. Inside an abandoned city of bomb shelters and forgotten Tube stations, she finds temporary refuge with a gang of petty thieves. But flashes of the past, spectral and haunting, share the tunnels with no regard for the living. Now Jazz must ask herself a difficult question: how long can she hide from the terrors of both her worlds? "Magical realism at its finest…with mystery, magic, ghosts and a fascinating subterranean world.”—Sfrevu.com

Download or read book Citizens Without a City written by Jan-Jonathan Bock and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2009, after seismic tremors struck the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, survivors were subjected to a "second earthquake"—invasive media attention and a relief effort that left them in a state of suspended citizenship as they were forcibly resettled and had to envision a new future. In Citizens without a City, Jan-Jonathan Bock reveals how a disproportionate government response exacerbated survivors' sense of crisis, divided the local population, and induced new types of political action. Italy's disenfranchising emergency reaction relocated citizens to camps and sites across a ruined townscape, without a plan for restoration or return. Through grassroots politics, arts and culture, commemoration rituals, architectural projects, and legal avenues, local people now sought to shape their hometown's recovery. Bock combines an analysis of the catastrophe's impact with insights into post-disaster civic life, urban heritage, the politics of mourning, and community fragmentation. A fascinating read for anyone interested in urban culture, disaster, and politics, Citizens without a City illustrates how survivors battled to retain a sense of purpose and community after the L'Aquila earthquake.

Download or read book Crisis Cities written by Kevin Fox Gotham and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Every urban crisis is also an opportunity, and in this penetrating study of post-disaster New York and New Orleans, Kevin Gotham and Miriam Greenberg show how and why the market-model of redevelopment does so little for the people and places that need it most. Crisis Cities is insightful, sophisticated, and, alas, timely. It belongs not only in the classroom, but on every mayor's desk." --Eric Klinenberg, author of Heat Wave and Going Solo"In this wide-ranging and carefully researched book, Gotham and Greenberg explore the crisis-driven strategies of urbanization that have been pursued in two major post-disaster U.S. cities and their deeply uneven, polarizing and destructive impacts upon the social and ecological fabric. A fundamental and original analysis of early twenty-first century urban transformations in the age of disaster capitalism, this book is a superb demonstration of how the methods of critical urban studies can illuminate the powerful social, political, economic and ideological forces that are reshaping cities and regions today." --Neil Brenner, Professor of Urban Theory, Harvard Graduate School of Design "Crisis Cities is a critical revelation of the political and economic forces that direct the resources offered to cities after catastrophes. The authors clearly show how the resources are not necessarily directed to the rebuilding and recovery projects that serve all segments of the communities and would provide a successful collective future. Drawing on catastrophes in two well-known American cities the dangers of this common path are clearly presented." --Shirley Laska, Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of New Orleans.

Download or read book The Trouble with City Planning written by Kristina Ford and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the vast destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faces a rare chance to rebuild, with an unprecedented opportunity to plan what gets built. As the cityʹs director of planning from 1992 until 2000, Kristina Ford is uniquely placed to use these opportunities as a springboard for an eye-opening discussion of the intransigent problems and promising possibilities facing city planners across the nation and beyond. In The Trouble with City Planning, Ford argues that almost no part of our usual understanding of the phrase "city planning" is accurate: not our conception of the plan itself, nor our sense of what city planners do or who plans are made for or how planners determine what citizens want. Most important, our conventional understanding does not tell us how a plan affects what gets built in any city in America. Ford advances several planning innovations that, if adopted, could be crucial for restoring New Orleans, but also transformative wherever citizens are troubled by the results of their cityʹs plan. This keenly intelligent book is destined to become a classic for planners and citizens alike. -- Publisher description.

Download or read book Unnatural Rebellion written by Ruma Chopra and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-05-29 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of British American mainland colonists rejected the War for American Independence. Shunning rebel violence as unnecessary, unlawful, and unnatural, they emphasized the natural ties of blood, kinship, language, and religion that united the colonies to Britain. They hoped that British military strength would crush the minority rebellion and free the colonies to renegotiate their return to the empire. Of course the loyalists were too American to be of one mind. This is a story of how a cross-section of colonists flocked to the British headquarters of New York City to support their ideal of reunion. Despised by the rebels as enemies or as British appendages, New York’s refugees hoped to partner with the British to restore peaceful government in the colonies. The British confounded their expectations by instituting martial law in the city and marginalizing loyalist leaders. Still, the loyal Americans did not surrender their vision but creatively adapted their rhetoric and accommodated military governance to protect their long-standing bond with the mother country. They never imagined that allegiance to Britain would mean a permanent exile from their homes.

Download or read book Building Louisiana written by Robert D. Leighninger Jr. and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-09-18 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert D. Leighninger, Jr., believes there may be a model for municipal building projects everywhere in the ambitious and artful structures erected in Louisiana by the Public Works Administration. In the 1930s, the PWA built a tremendous amount of infrastructure in a very short time. Most of the edifices are still in use, yet few people recognize how these schools, courthouses, and other great structures came about. Building Louisiana documents the projects one New Deal agency erected in one southern state and places these in social and political context. Based on extensive research in the National Archives and substantial field work within the state, Leighninger has gathered the story of the establishment of the PWA and the feverish building activity that ensued. He also recounts early tussles with Huey Long and the scandals involving public works discovered during the late New Deal. The book includes looks at individual projects of particular interest--"Big Charity" hospital, the Carville leprosy center, the Shreveport incinerator, and the LSU sugar plant. A concluding chapter draws lessons from the PWA's history that might be applied to current political concerns. Also included is an annotated inventory of every PWA project in the state. Finally, this composite picture honors those workers and policymakers who, in a time of despair, expressed hope for the future with this enduring investment.

Download or read book Walking to New Orleans written by Robert R. N. Ross and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2008-09-22 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two and a half years after the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, New Orleans and south Louisiana continue to struggle in an unsettled gumbo of environmental, social, and rebuilding chaos. Citizens await the fruition of four successive recovery and reconstruction planning processes and the realization of essential infrastructure repairs. Repopulation in Orleans Parish has slowed considerably; the parish remains at best two-thirds of its former size; thousands of former residents who wish to return face barriers of many kinds. Heroic efforts at rebuilding have occurred through the efforts of individual neighborhood associations and voluntary associations who have attempted to address serious losses in affordable housing and health care services. Walking to New Orleans traces how a dominant but paradoxical model of the relation between the human and natural worlds in Western culture has informed many environmental and engineering dilemmas and has contributed to the history of social inequities and injustice that anteceded the disasters of the hurricanes and subsequent flooding. It proposes a model for collaborative recovery that links principles of ethics and engineering, in which citizens become active, ongoing participants in the process of the reconstruction and redesign of their unique locus of habitation. Equally important, it gives voice to the citizens and associations who are desperately working to rebuild their homes and lives both in urban New Orleans and in the villages of coastal Louisiana.

Download or read book Cities Nature and Development written by Dr Gregory Simon and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this book illustrates how and why cities are comprised by a mosaic of vulnerable human and ecological communities. Case studies ranging across various international settings reveal how 'urban vulnerabilities' is an effective metaphor and analytic lens for advancing political ecological theories on the relationships between cities, nature and development. Contributions expand upon conceptions of vulnerability as a static condition and instead present vulnerability as a phenomenon that is produced through complex and contentious planning histories, and which may, in turn, be politicized, exploited and-in some instances-contested. Expanding upon snapshot vulnerability assessments, this volume articulates vulnerability as a process that is marked by the accumulation of risk over time and the transference of risk across space and populations. Moving beyond notions of vulnerability as a singular, case studies demonstrate that social and ecological vulnerabilities are deeply integrated and, as such, are irreducible to one or the other. This volume also highlights how the production of vulnerabilities is frequently achieved through integrated and mutually reinforcing economic development and environmentally driven agendas. This collection thus suggests that vulnerability-and also forms of resilience-are implicated in efforts to plan for and manage sustainable cities. This book provides timely and provocative perspectives on a wide range of urban issues including: park management, gentrification, suburban expansion, sustainability planning, local organic food systems, hazards management, climate change activism and north-south flows of urban environmental externalities. Collectively, these works reveal the complexities of urban vulnerabilities-related to scalar interactions, accumulation and transfer of risk, politicization and governance, and capacity for resistance-and in doing so, provide readers with coherent, robust and well-theorized analysis of the politics and production of urban vulnerabilities.

Download or read book The Sanitary City written by Martin V. Melosi and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2008-04-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immersed in their on-demand, highly consumptive, and disposable lifestyles, most urban Americans take for granted the technologies that provide them with potable water, remove their trash, and process their wastewater. These vital services, however, are the byproduct of many decades of development by engineers, sanitarians, and civic planners. In The Sanitary City, Martin V. Melosi assembles a comprehensive, thoroughly researched and referenced history of sanitary services in urban America. He examines the evolution of water supply, sewage systems, and solid waste disposal during three distinct eras: The Age of Miasmas (pre-1880); The Bacteriological Revolution (1880-1945); and The New Ecology (1945 to present-day). Originally published in 2000, this abridged edition includes updated text and bibliographic materials. The Sanitary City is an essential resource for those interested in environmental history, environmental engineering, science and technology, urban studies, and public health.

Download or read book The Illusory Boundary written by Martin Reuss and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-09-20 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The view of nature and technology inhabiting totally different, even opposite, spheres persists across time and cultures. Most people would consider an English countryside or a Louisiana bayou to be "natural," though each is to an extent the product of technology. Pollution, widely thought to be a purely man-made phenomenon, results partly from natural processes. All around us, things from the natural world are brought into the human world. At what point do we consider them part of culture rather than nature? And does such a distinction illuminate our world or obscure its workings? This compelling new book challenges the view that a clear and unwavering boundary exists between nature and technology. Rejecting this dichotomy, the contributors show how the history of each can be united in a constantly shifting panorama where definitions of "nature" and "technology" alter and overlap. In addition to recognizing the artificial divide between these two concepts, the essays in this book demonstrate how such thinking may affect societies’ ability to survive and prosper. The answers and ideas are as numerous as the landscapes they consider, for there is no single path toward a more harmonious vision of technology and nature. Technologies that work in one place may not in another. Nature that is preserved in one community might become the raw material of technological progress somewhere else. Add to this the fact that the natural world and technology are not passive players, but are profoundly involved in cultural construction. Understanding such dynamics not only reveals a new historical complexity; it prepares us for coping with many of the most difficult and pressing social issues facing us today. Contributors Peter Coates * Craig E. Colten * Stephen H. Cutcliffe * Hugh S. Gorman * Betsy Mendelsohn * Joy Parr * Peter C. Perdue * Sara B. Pritchard * Martin Reuss * William D. Rowley * Edmund Russell * Joel A. Tarr * Ann Vileisis * James C. Williams * Thomas Zeller

Download or read book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

Download or read book Public Religion and the Urban Environment written by Richard Bohannon and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Nature' and the 'city' have most often functioned as opposites within Western culture, a dichotomy that has been reinforced (and sometimes challenged) by religious images. Bohannon argues here that cities and natural environments, however, are both connected and continually affected by one another. He shows how such connections become overt during natural disasters, which disrupt the narratives people use to make sense of the world,including especially religious narratives, and make them more visible. This book offers both a theoretical exploration of the intersection of the city, nature, and religion, as well as a sociological analysis of the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, ND, USA. This case study shows how religious factors have influenced how the relationship between nature and the city is perceived, and in particular have helped to justify the urban control of nature. The narratives found in Grand Forks also reveal a broader understanding of the nature of Western cities, highlighting the potent and ethically-rich intersections between religion, cities and nature.

Download or read book City of Lake and Prairie written by Kathleen A. Brosnan and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known as the Windy City and the Hog Butcher to the World, Chicago has earned a more apt sobriquet—City of Lake and Prairie—with this compelling, innovative, and deeply researched environmental history. Sitting at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan, one of the largest freshwater bodies in the world, and on the eastern edge of the tallgrass prairies that fill much of the North American interior, early residents in the land that Chicago now occupies enjoyed natural advantages, economic opportunities, and global connections over centuries, from the Native Americans who first inhabited the region to the urban dwellers who built a metropolis in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As one millennium ended and a new one began, these same features sparked a distinctive Midwestern environmentalism aimed at preserving local ecosystems. Drawing on its contributors’ interdisciplinary talents, this volume reveals a rich but often troubled landscape shaped by communities of color, workers, and activists as well as complex human relations with industry, waterways, animals, and disease.

Download or read book The Horse in the City written by Clay McShane and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2007-07-16 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable mention, 2007 Lewis Mumford Prize, American Society of City and Regional Planning The nineteenth century was the golden age of the horse. In urban America, the indispensable horse provided the power for not only vehicles that moved freight, transported passengers, and fought fires but also equipment in breweries, mills, foundries, and machine shops. Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, prominent scholars of American urban life, here explore the critical role that the horse played in the growing nineteenth-century metropolis. Using such diverse sources as veterinary manuals, stable periodicals, teamster magazines, city newspapers, and agricultural yearbooks, they examine how the horses were housed and fed and how workers bred, trained, marketed, and employed their four-legged assets. Not omitting the problems of waste removal and corpse disposal, they touch on the municipal challenges of maintaining a safe and productive living environment for both horses and people and the rise of organizations like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In addition to providing an insightful account of life and work in nineteenth-century urban America, The Horse in the City brings us to a richer understanding of how the animal fared in this unnatural and presumably uncomfortable setting.