Download or read book Deciphering the City written by William A. Schwab and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well-written and extremely topical, Deciphering the City efficiently deals with the large and small issues facing cities today. A focus on globalization's impact on the role of cities, an explicit mission to drive home the applied nature of urban studies to students. This innovative text offers an exciting introduction to the history, issues, problems, potential solutions and challenges, facing cities in the developed and the developing world for the twenty-first century. Globalization has changed the roles of cities in the global economy and this text begins with an introduction to the phenomenon of globalization, and how the changes it has brought about have affected the social, political, and economic institutions of societies. The second section of the text concentrates on the psychology of the city and the community-building process, while the book's third section illustrates the structure of cities and their historical and emerging patterns. Deciphering the City makes studying the city a relevant and interesting subject necessary in understanding the functioning of today's world.

Download or read book Decoding the City written by Dietmar Offenhuber and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2014-09-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The MIT based SENSEable City Lab under Carlo Ratti is one of the research centers that deal with the flow of people and goods, but also of refuse that moves around the world. Experience with large-scale infrastructure projects suggest that more complex and above all flexible answers must be sought to questions of transportation or disposal. This edition, edited by Dietmar Offenhuber and Carlo Ratti, shows how Big Data change reality and, hence, the way we deal with the city. It discusses the impact of real-time data on architecture and urban planning, using examples developed in the SENSEable City Lab. They demonstrate how the Lab interprets digital data as material that can be used for the formulation of a different urban future. It also looks at the negative aspects of the city-related data acquisition and control. The authors address issues with which urban planning disciplines will work intensively in the future: questions that not only radically and critically review, but also change fundamentally, the existing tasks and how the professions view their own roles.

Download or read book City Reading written by David M. Henkin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henkin explores the influential but little-noticed role reading played in New York City's public life between 1825 and 1865. The "ubiquitous urban texts"--from newspapers to paper money, from street signs to handbills--became both indispensable urban guides and apt symbols for a new kind of public life that emerged first in New York.

Download or read book Understanding the City Through Its Margins written by André Chappatte and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 The city and its regulations: Unexpected margins -- Part I Space and state regulation: The urban interstices -- 2 Markets and marginality in Beirut -- 3 The tremendous making and unmaking of the peripheries in current Istanbul -- 4 Resilient forms of urbanity on the margins? Al-Kherba: A vivid market in a damaged section of the medina of Tunis -- 5 Whose margins? Marginality, poverty and the moral geography of pre-Soviet Bukhara -- 6 On the margins of the city: Izmir Prison in the late Ottoman Empire -- Part II Diversity and moral policing: Making claims through marginalisation -- 7 'Texas': An off-centre district at the heart of nightlife in Odienné -- 8 The Manyema in colonial Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) between urban margins and regional connections -- 9 On the margins: Suburban space and religious deviancy in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur -- 10 Ethnic differentiation and conflict dynamics: Uzbeks' marginalisation and non-marginalisation in southern Kyrgyzstan -- Index

Download or read book Understanding the City written by John Eade and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary analysis looks ahead to the direction which urban studies is likely to take during the twenty-first century.

Download or read book The Image of the City written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1964-06-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

Download or read book The Book of Havana written by Daniel Chavarria and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2018-06-21 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a history teacher decides to throw out an old, threadbare Cuban flag, he doesn’t plan for the air of suspicion that quickly descends on him… A woman’s attempt to register ownership of her family home draws her into a bureaucratic labyrinth that requires a grasp of higher mathematics to fully comprehend… On the day of their graduation, a group of students spend the night drinking around the ‘Fountain of Youth’, ironically celebrating the bright future that doesn’t await them… The stories gathered in this anthology reflect the many complex challenges Havana’s citizens have had to endure as a result of their country’s political isolation – from the hardships of the ‘Special Period’, to the pitfalls of Cuba’s schizophrenic currency system, to the indignities of becoming a cheap tourist destination for well-heeled Westerners. Moving through various moments in its recent history, as well as through different neighbourhoods – from the prefab, Soviet-era maze of Alamar, to the bars and nightclubs of the Malecón and Vedado – these stories also demonstrate the defiance of Havana: surviving decades of economic disappointment with a flair for the comic, the surreal and the fantastical that remains as fresh as the first dreams of revolution. Translated from the Spanish by Orsola Casagrande and Séamas Carraher.

Download or read book Urban Code written by Anne Mikoleit and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A primer in urban literacy that teaches us in words and pictures what to notice if we want to understand the city. Cities speak, and this little book helps us understand their language. Considering the urban landscape not from the abstract perspective of an urban planner but from the viewpoint of an attentive observer, Urban Code offers 100 “lessons”—maxims, observations, and bite-size truths, followed by short essays—that teach us how to read the city. This is a user's guide to the city, a primer of urban literacy, at the pedestrian level. The reader (like the observant city stroller) can move from “People walk in the sunshine” (lesson 1) to “Street vendors are positioned according to the path of the sun” (lesson 2); consider possible connections between the fact that “Locals and tourists use the streets at different times” (lesson 41) and “Tourists stand still when they're looking at something” (lesson 68); and weigh the apparent contradiction of lesson 73, “Nightlife hotspots increase pedestrian traffic” and lesson 74, “People are afraid of the dark.” A lesson may seem self-evident (“Grocery stores are important local destinations”—of course they are!) but considered in the context of other lessons, it becomes part of a natural logic. With Urban Code, we learn what to notice if we want to understand the city. We learn to detect patterns in the relationships between people and the urban environment. Each lesson is accompanied by an icon-like image; in addition to these 100 drawings, thirty photographs of street scenes illustrate the text. The photographs are stills from films shot in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo; the lessons are inspired by the authors' observations of SoHo, but hold true for any cityscape.

Download or read book The City with bonus short story The Neighbor written by Dean Koontz and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Includes Dean Koontz’s short story “The Neighbor”—first time in print! Dean Koontz is at the peak of his acclaimed powers with this major new novel. A young boy, a musical prodigy, discovering life’s wonders—and mortal dangers. His best friend, also a gifted musician, who will share his journey into destiny. His remarkable family, tested by the extremes of evil and bound by the depths of love . . . on a collision course with a band of killers about to unleash anarchy. And two unlikely allies, an everyday hero tempered by the past and a woman of mystery who holds the key to the future. These are the people of The City, a place where enchantment and malice entwine, courage and honor are found in the most unexpected quarters, and the way forward lies buried deep inside the heart. Brilliantly illumined by magic dark and light, their unforgettable story is a riveting, soul-stirring saga that speaks to everyone, a major milestone in the celebrated career of #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz and a dazzling realization of the evergreen dreams we all share. Praise for The City “Beautifully crafted and poignant . . . The City is many things: serious, lighthearted, nostalgic, courageous, scary, and mysterious. . . . [It] will have readers staying up late at night.”—New York Journal of Books “[Koontz] can flat-out write. . . . The message of hope and depiction of how the choices you make can change your life ring true and will remain with you once the book has been closed.”—Bookreporter Acclaim for Dean Koontz “Perhaps more than any other author, Koontz writes fiction perfectly suited to the mood of America: novels that acknowledge the reality and tenacity of evil but also the power of good . . . that entertain vastly as they uplift.”—Publishers Weekly “A rarity among bestselling writers, Koontz continues to pursue new ways of telling stories, never content with repeating himself.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Tumbling, hallucinogenic prose. ‘Serious’ writers . . . might do well to examine his technique.”—The New York Times Book Review “[Koontz] has always had near-Dickensian powers of description, and an ability to yank us from one page to the next that few novelists can match.”—Los Angeles Times “Koontz is a superb plotter and wordsmith. He chronicles the hopes and fears of our time in broad strokes and fine detail, using popular fiction to explore the human condition.”—USA Today “Characters and the search for meaning, exquisitely crafted, are the soul of [Koontz’s] work. . . . One of the master storytellers of this or any age.”—The Tampa Tribune “A literary juggler.”—The Times (London)

Download or read book The Book of Gaza written by Atef Abu Saif and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the Israeli occupation of the '70s and '80s, writers in Gaza had to go to considerable lengths to ever have a chance of seeing their work in print. Manuscripts were written out longhand, invariably under pseudonyms, and smuggled out of the Strip to Jerusalem, Cairo or Beirut, where they then had to be typed up. Consequently, fiction grew shorter, novels became novellas, and short stories flourished as the city's form of choice. Indeed, to Palestinians elsewhere, Gaza became known as 'the exporter of oranges and short stories'. This anthology brings together some of the pioneers of the Gazan short story from that era, as well as younger exponents of the form, with ten stories that offer glimpses of life in the Strip that go beyond the global media headlines; stories of anxiety, oppression, and violence, but also of resilience and hope, of what it means to be a Palestinian, and how that identity is continually being reforged; stories of ordinary characters struggling to live with dignity in what many have called 'the largest prison in the world'.

Download or read book The Book of Riga written by Pauls Bankovskis and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A suicide attempt, staged to attract as much attention as possible, from the top of St. Peter’s Church, quickly evolves into an outlandish and absurd, televised spectacle... When a PA is invited into her boss’s office one day to observe a protest unfold, just as he predicts, in the streets below, she begins to suspect his powers of foresight might extend beyond mere business matters... Finally moving into the house of her dreams, on the island of Kīpsala, a single mother discovers a strange affinity with the previous occupant... Riga may be over 800 years old as a city, but its status as capital of an independent Latvia is only a century old, with half of that time spent under Soviet rule. Despite this, it has established itself as a vibrant, creative hub, attracting artists, performers, and writers from across the Baltic region. The stories gathered here chronicle this growth and on-going transformation, and offer glimpses into the dark humour, rich history, contrasting perspectives, and love of the mythic, that sets the city’s artistic community apart. As its history might suggest, Riga is a work in progress; and for many of the characters in these stories, it is the possibilities of what the city might become, more than merely what it is now, that drives the imagination of its people. This book is published with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia and The Latvian Writers Union. Foreword by former President of Latvia (1999-2007) Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga. Translated from the Latvian by Kaija Straumanis, Suzanne McQuade, Uldis Balodis, Ieva Lešinska, Mārta Ziemelis and Žanete Vēvere Pasqualini.

Download or read book Cities for People Not for Profit written by Neil Brenner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The worldwide financial crisis has sent shock-waves of accelerated economic restructuring, regulatory reorganization and sociopolitical conflict through cities around the world. It has also given new impetus to the struggles of urban social movements emphasizing the injustice, destructiveness and unsustainability of capitalist forms of urbanization. This book contributes analyses intended to be useful for efforts to roll back contemporary profit-based forms of urbanization, and to promote alternative, radically democratic and sustainable forms of urbanism. The contributors provide cutting-edge analyses of contemporary urban restructuring, including the issues of neoliberalization, gentrification, colonization, "creative" cities, architecture and political power, sub-prime mortgage foreclosures and the ongoing struggles of "right to the city" movements. At the same time, the book explores the diverse interpretive frameworks – critical and otherwise – that are currently being used in academic discourse, in political struggles, and in everyday life to decipher contemporary urban transformations and contestations. The slogan, "cities for people, not for profit," sets into stark relief what the contributors view as a central political question involved in efforts, at once theoretical and practical, to address the global urban crises of our time. Drawing upon European and North American scholarship in sociology, politics, geography, urban planning and urban design, the book provides useful insights and perspectives for citizens, activists and intellectuals interested in exploring alternatives to contemporary forms of capitalist urbanization.

Download or read book The Book of Tehran written by Fereshteh Ahmadi and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. For the capital city of one of the most powerful nations in the Middle East, its literary output is rarely acknowledged in the West. This unique celebration of its writing brings together ten stories exploring the tensions and pressures that make the city what it is: tensions between the public and the private, pressures from without – judgemental neighbours, the expectations of religion and society – and from within – family feuds, thwarted ambitions, destructive relationships. The psychological impact of these pressures manifests in different ways: a man wakes up to find a stranger relaxing in his living room and starts to wonder if this is his house at all; a struggling writer decides only when his girlfriend breaks his heart will his work have depth... In all cases, coping with these pressures leads us, the readers, into an unexpected trove of cultural treasures – like the burglar, in one story, descending into the basement of a mysterious antique collector’s house – treasures of which we, in the West, are almost wholly ignorant. Translated by: Sara Khalili, Sholeh Wolpé, Alireza Abiz, Caroline Croskery, Farzaneh Doosti, Shahab Vaezzadeh, Niloufar Talebi, Lida Nosrati, Susan Niazi and Poupeh Missaghi. Foreword by Orkideh Behrouzan. Developed in partnership with Visiting Arts. 'The aesthetic sensibility of Iranian culture appears, to the West, as mainly pre-modern, if not actually anti-modern... The fiction showcased in The Book of Tehran is a welcome corrective to this tendency... These stories feel decidedly contemporary in style and subject matter alike, with their protagonists' inner lives and interpersonal relationships at the fore.' - The Times Literary Supplement 'Fiction exploring the interior life of contemporary Iranians is not well represented in translations readily available in the West. The Book of Tehran aims to begin to redress the shortage...' - Asian Review of Books

Download or read book The Book of Tokyo written by Hideo Furukawa and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’

Download or read book Understanding the City written by Gülçin Erdi-Lelandais and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henri Lefebvre is undoubtedly one of the most influential thinkers in the field of urban space and its organization; his theories offer reflections still valid for analyzing social relations in urban areas affected by the crisis of the neoliberal economic system. Lefebvre’s ideal of the “right to the city” is now more widely accepted given today’s current cultural and social situation. Most current research on Henri Lefebvre refers solely to his ideas and their theoretical discussion, without focusing on the empirical transcription of the philosopher. This book fills this gap, and proposes examples about the empirical use of Henri Lefebvre’s sociology from the perspective of different cities and researchers in order to understand the city and its evolutions in the context of neoliberal globalization. The book’s main purpose is to revisit Lefebvre’s still-relevant key concepts to propose new comprehensions of the contemporary city. Case studies in this book will show also that the reception of Lefebvrian concepts differs across different contexts, depending on the social and political circumstances of each country. The debates in this book both expand the scope of urban imagination, and help to reinvigorate, unify, and empower shared desires for just urban outcomes. The contributions to this book also illuminate the everyday choices concerning the form and social processes of the city, and the inspiration that they draw from Lefebvre’s theoretical legacy in the realm of urban sociology.

Download or read book Decipher written by Stel Pavlou and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-03-11 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient monuments all over the world - from the Pyramids of Giza, to Mexico, to the ancient sites of China - are also awakening, reacting to a brewing crisis not of this earth, connecting to each other in some kind of ancient global network. A small group of scientists is assembled to attempt to unravel the mystery. What they discover will change the world. Imagine that 12,000 years ago it really did rain for 40 days and 40 nights. That storms reigned supreme. Imagine that survivors of human civilization really were forced to take to boats or hide out in caves on mountaintops. Then consider that these same myths from around the world predict this kind of devastation will occur time and again. What could cause such a catastrophe? What occurs in nature with such frightening and predictable regularity? A pulsar. But this is not just any pulsar - the ordinary type that pulses once a second, a minute, or even a week. This pulses once every 12,000 years and sends out a gravity wave of such ferocity it beggars belief. Not only that, it's closer than anybody has ever imagined. For it lives in our own backyard. It is the Sun.

Download or read book The City as Action written by Narendar Pani and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In constructing the urban as a set of interconnected actions, this book presents a less travelled route to understanding the city. It leads to a fresh perspective on several issues central to urban theory, including the uniqueness of a city alongside practices it shares with other urban places. This book presents an innovative theoretical contribution to the field of urban studies, bridging the gap between western centric scholarship and perspectives from the global South. It offers conceptually rich insights, combining notions of cities as organisms, and references to postcolonial urban studies, with insights around aspirations, capabilities, agency and social identity. It develops concepts, like the proximity principle, that help explain the experience of a city. This conceptualization of the city as a process should interest all who are sensitive to cities, whether they study them in academia or simply develop close associations with specific urban places"--