EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Urban Dystopias

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jane Burry
  • Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
  • Release : 2023-01-19
  • ISBN : 1119834015
  • Pages : 141 pages

Download or read book Urban Dystopias written by Jane Burry and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2023-01-19 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guest-edited by Marcus White and Jane Burry Cities are facing several coinciding global crises. There is the dominant existential narrative of the impact of and adaptation to climate change, itself powered by cities. In a time of unprecedented urbanisation and growth, resilient architecture and urbanism is needed in response. New modes of transport, renewed anxiety about robots taking jobs, AI, and the humbling recent experience of a global pandemic are all challenging norms and expectations. All of these are forces of social division, all are changing life experience, evoking strong-arm politics, and giving a sense of teetering between radically different possible futures. This is a story about reclaiming the urban design narrative and being alert to the potential impacts of socio-technical decision-making and design in cities. It is a story for its time. The issue explores the dichotomy of idealised visions for the design of urban settlements and the potentially shocking realities that may emerge from the same impulses and intentions. It examines the slippery territory between utopias and some of the ensuing dystopias that may unfold. Contributors: Tridib Banerjee, Daniele Belleri and Carlo Ratti, Steve Glackin, Justyna Karakiewicz, Nano Langenheim and Kongjian Yu, Mehrnoush Latifi, Andong Lu, Dan Nyandega, Jordi Oliveras, Kas Oosterhuis, Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, Ian Woodcock, and Tianyi Yang. Featured architects: Carlo Ratti Associati, ecoLogicStudio, Harrison and White, Turenscape, and Anton Markus Pasing, Remote Control Studio.

Book Sporting Dystopias

Download or read book Sporting Dystopias written by Ralph C. Wilcox and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reaching beyond the popular celebration of commercial gains often associated with the proliferation of stadiums, events, and teams in the city, Sporting Dystopias explores the role of sport in the process of community building. Scholars from various fields, including anthropology, cultural studies, history, marketing, media studies, and sociology, examine the cultural, economic, and political interplay of sport and the city. The book systematically challenges the overwhelming claims of sport's benefit to the city as it scrutinizes the various tensions inherent in the relationship. Grounded in economic means, racial and ethnic affiliation, and the contestation for space, sport is seen as precipitating a broad range of human challenges.

Book Hidden Topographies

Download or read book Hidden Topographies written by Raphael Zähringer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines dystopian fiction’s recent paradigm shift towards urban dystopias. It links the dystopian tradition with the literary history of the novel, spatio-philosophical concepts against the backdrop of the spatial turn, and systems-theory. Five dystopian novels are discussed in great detail: China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station (2000) and The City & The City (2009), City of Bohane (2011) by Kevin Barry, John Berger’s Lilac and Flag (1992), and Divided Kingdom (2005) by Rupert Thomson. The book includes chapters on the literary history of the dystopian tradition, the referential interplay of maps and literature, urban spaces in literature, borders and transgressions, and on systems-theory as a tool for charting dystopian fiction. The result is a detailed overview of how dystopian fiction constantly adapts to – and reflects on – the actual world.

Book The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature written by Kevin R. McNamara and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-06 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion offers readers an accessible survey of the historical and symbolic relationships between literature and the city.

Book Threatening Dystopias

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kasia Paprocki
  • Publisher : Cornell University Press
  • Release : 2021-12-15
  • ISBN : 1501759175
  • Pages : 271 pages

Download or read book Threatening Dystopias written by Kasia Paprocki and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bangladesh is currently ranked as one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. In Threatening Dystopias, Kasia Paprocki investigates the politics of climate change adaptation throughout the South Asian nation. Drawing on ethnographic and archival fieldwork, she engages with developers, policy makers, scientists, farmers, and rural migrants to show how Bangladeshi and global elites ignore the history of landscape transformation and its attendant political conflicts. Paprocki looks at how groups craft economic narratives and strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities. Although these groups claim that increased production of export commodities will reframe the threat of climate change into an opportunity for economic development and growth, the reality is not so simple. For the country's rural poor, these promises ring hollow. As development dispossesses the poor from agrarian livelihoods, outmigration from peasant communities leads to precarious existences in urban centers. And a vision of development in which urbanization and export-led growth are both desirable and inevitable is not one the land and its people can sustain. Threatening Dystopias shows how a powerful rural movement, although hampered by an all-consuming climate emergency, is seeking climate justice in Bangladesh.

Book Noir Urbanisms

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gyan Prakash
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2010-09-27
  • ISBN : 140083662X
  • Pages : 286 pages

Download or read book Noir Urbanisms written by Gyan Prakash and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-27 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dystopic imagery has figured prominently in modern depictions of the urban landscape. The city is often portrayed as a terrifying world of darkness, crisis, and catastrophe. Noir Urbanisms traces the history of the modern city through its critical representations in art, cinema, print journalism, literature, sociology, and architecture. It focuses on visual forms of dystopic representation--because the history of the modern city is inseparable from the production and circulation of images--and examines their strengths and limits as urban criticism. Contributors explore dystopic images of the modern city in Germany, Mexico, Japan, India, South Africa, China, and the United States. Their topics include Weimar representations of urban dystopia in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis; 1960s modernist architecture in Mexico City; Hollywood film noir of the 1940s and 1950s; the recurring fictional destruction of Tokyo in postwar Japan's sci-fi doom culture; the urban fringe in Bombay cinema; fictional explorations of urban dystopia in postapartheid Johannesburg; and Delhi's out-of-control and media-saturated urbanism in the 1980s and 1990s. What emerges in Noir Urbanisms is the unsettling and disorienting alchemy between dark representations and the modern urban experience. In addition to the editor, the contributors are David R. Ambaras, James Donald, Rubén Gallo, Anton Kaes, Ranjani Mazumdar, Jennifer Robinson, Mark Shiel, Ravi Sundaram, William M. Tsutsui, and Li Zhang.

Book Broken Mirrors

Download or read book Broken Mirrors written by Joe Trotta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dystopian stories and visions of the Apocalypse are nothing new; however in recent years there has been a noticeable surge in the output of this type of theme in literature, art, comic books/graphic novels, video games, TV shows, etc. The reasons for this are not exactly clear; it may partly be as a result of post 9/11 anxieties, the increasing incidence of extreme weather and/or environmental anomalies, chaotic fluctuations in the economy and the uncertain and shifting political landscape in the west in general. Investigating this highly topical and pervasive theme from interdisciplinary perspectives this volume presents various angles on the main topic through critical analyses of selected works of fiction, film, TV shows, video games and more.

Book Hidden Topographies

Download or read book Hidden Topographies written by Raphael Zähringer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines dystopian fiction’s recent paradigm shift towards urban dystopias. It links the dystopian tradition with the literary history of the novel, spatio-philosophical concepts against the backdrop of the spatial turn, and systems-theory. Five dystopian novels are discussed in great detail: China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station (2000) and The City & The City (2009), City of Bohane (2011) by Kevin Barry, John Berger’s Lilac and Flag (1992), and Divided Kingdom (2005) by Rupert Thomson. The book includes chapters on the literary history of the dystopian tradition, the referential interplay of maps and literature, urban spaces in literature, borders and transgressions, and on systems-theory as a tool for charting dystopian fiction. The result is a detailed overview of how dystopian fiction constantly adapts to – and reflects on – the actual world.

Book Urban Futures

    Book Details:
  • Author : Timothy J. Dixon
  • Publisher : Policy Press
  • Release : 2023-11
  • ISBN : 1447371674
  • Pages : 300 pages

Download or read book Urban Futures written by Timothy J. Dixon and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2023-11 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: C2023-0-00037-3

Book Contemporary British Poetry and the City

Download or read book Contemporary British Poetry and the City written by Peter Barry and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Barry explores a range of poets who visit and celebrate the "mean streets" of the contemporary urban scene. Poets discussed include Ken Smith, Iain Sinclair, Roy Fisher, Edwin Morgan, Sean O'Brien, Ciaran Carson, Peter Reading, Matt Simpson, Douglas Houston, Deryn Rees-Jones, Denise Riley, Ken Edwards, Levi Tafari, Aidan Hun, and Robert Hampson writing on Hull, Liverpool, London, Birmingham, Belfast, Glasgow, and Dundee.

Book Cities and Literature

Download or read book Cities and Literature written by Malcolm Miles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a critical introduction to the relation between cities and literature (fiction, poetry and literary criticism) from the late eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. It examines examples of writing from Europe, North America and post-colonial countries, juxtaposed with key ideas from urban cultural and critical theories. Cities and Literature shows how literature frames real and imagined constructs and experiences of cities. Arranged thematically each chapter offers a narrative which introduces a number of key thinkers and writers whose vision illuminates the prevailing idea of the city at the time. The themes are extended or challenged by boxed cases of specific texts or images accompanied by short critical commentaries; the structure provides readers with a map of the terrain enabling connections across time and place within manageable limits, and offers elements of critical discussion to serve a growing number of university courses which involve the intersections of cities and literature. This volume offers access to literature from an urban perspective for the social sciences, and access to urbanism from a literary viewpoint. It is an excellent resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of urban studies and English literature, planning, cultural and human geographies, architecture, cultural studies and cultural policy.

Book Urban Regeneration   Sustainability

Download or read book Urban Regeneration Sustainability written by C.A. Brebbia and published by WIT Press. This book was released on 2016-12-28 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including papers presented at the 11th International Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability held in Alicante, Spain, this book addresses the multidisciplinary aspects of urban planning; a result of the increasing size of cities, the amount of resources and services required and the complexity of modern society. Most of the earth’s population live in cities and the process of urbanisation continues generating problems originating from the drift of the population towards them. These problems can be resolved by cities becoming efficient habitats, saving resources in a way that improves the standard of living. The process faces a number of challenges related to reducing pollution, improving main transportation and infrastructure systems and these challenges can contribute to the development of social and economic imbalances and require the development of new solutions. Large cities are probably the most complex mechanisms to manage, nevertheless they represent a productive ground for architects, engineers, city planners, social and political scientists able to conceive new ideas and time them according to technological advances and human requirements. The papers in this book cover such topics as: Appropriate technologies for smart cities; Architectural issues; Case studies - sustainable practices; Cultural quarters and interventions; Disaster and emergency response; Eco-town planning; Environmental management; Landscape planning and design; Planning for resilience; Quality of life; Socio-economic and political considerations; Pedestrians behaviour in different situation of traffic, modelling and safety; Sustainable urban regeneration and public space; City and beach; Sustainability and the built environment; Sustainable energy and the city; The community and the city; Transportation; Urban conservation and regeneration; Urban development and management; Urban infrastructure; Urban metabolism; Urban planning and design; Urban safety and security; Urban strategies; Waterfront development.

Book Imagining Cities

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sallie Westwood
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2018-05-11
  • ISBN : 1351171186
  • Pages : 498 pages

Download or read book Imagining Cities written by Sallie Westwood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1997, Imagining Cities gives students access to the most exciting recent work on the city from within sociology, cultural studies and cultural geography. Contributions are grouped around four major themes: The theoretical imagination Ethnic diversity and the politics of difference Memory and nostalgia The city as narrative The book considers the interplay of past and present, imagined and substantive, and links present and future in examining the idea of the virtual city. Here, the world of cyberspace not only recasts views of space and communication, but has a profound impact on the sociological imagination itself.

Book Marxism and Urban Culture

Download or read book Marxism and Urban Culture written by Benjamin Fraser and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marxism and Urban Culture is the first volume to reconcile social science and humanities perspectives on culture. Covering a range of global cities—Bologna, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mahalla al-Kubra, Mexico City, Montreal, Osaka, Strasbourg, Vienna—the contributions fuse political and theoretical concerns with analyses of urban cultural practices and historical movements, as well as urban-themed literary and filmic art. Conceived as a response to the persistent rift between disciplinary Marxist approaches to culture, this book prioritizes the urban problematic and builds implicitly and explicitly on work by numerous thinkers: not only Karl Marx but also David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Friedrich Engels and Antonio Gramsci, among others. Rather than reanimate reductive views either of Marx or of urban theory, the chapters in Marxism and Urban Culture speak broadly to the interdisciplinary connections that are increasingly the concern of cultural scholars working across and beyond the boundaries of geography, sociology, history, political science, language and literature fields, film studies, and more. A foreword written by Andy Merrifield (the author of Metromarxism) and an introduction by Benjamin Fraser (the author of Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience) situate the book’s chapters firmly in interdisciplinary terrain.

Book Signs and Cities

    Book Details:
  • Author : Madhu Dubey
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2007-11-01
  • ISBN : 0226167283
  • Pages : 295 pages

Download or read book Signs and Cities written by Madhu Dubey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Signs and Cities is the first book to consider what it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African-American literature. Dubey argues that for African-American studies, postmodernity best names a period, beginning in the early 1970s, marked by acute disenchantment with the promises of urban modernity and of print literacy. Dubey shows how black novelists from the last three decades have reconsidered the modern urban legacy and thus articulated a distinctly African-American strain of postmodernism. She argues that novelists such as Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Ishmael Reed, Sapphire, and John Edgar Wideman probe the disillusionment of urban modernity through repeated recourse to tropes of the book and scenes of reading and writing. Ultimately, she demonstrates that these writers view the book with profound ambivalence, construing it as an urban medium that cannot recapture the face-to-face communities assumed by oral and folk forms of expression.

Book Radicals in Power

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gianpaolo Baiocchi
  • Publisher : Zed Books
  • Release : 2003-10-17
  • ISBN : 9781842771730
  • Pages : 278 pages

Download or read book Radicals in Power written by Gianpaolo Baiocchi and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2003-10-17 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book throws real light on the single most strategic tendency in Brazilian politics in recent years.

Book HOLODECK architects works

Download or read book HOLODECK architects works written by Marlies Breuss and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2023-04-03 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analytical thinking and holistic concepts Low-tech buildings with strong architectural identities Selected works from 25 years of international architectural practice HOLODECK architects work on a wide variety of projects, from urban development to exhibitions. Their impressive body of work is proof that sophisticated architecture need not ignore ecological and social issues. The latter are consciously reflected from concept to realization. For example, HOLODECK have developed strategic solutions as alternatives to single-family homes, apply a sensitive approach to existing structures, and design buildings that make consistent use of natural conditions such as passive solar energy, airflow, cross-ventilation, and natural lighting. This volume also reinterprets the typical architecture book. It consists of two separate yet connected parts; the first presents sketches, plans, studies and models, while the second features texts and lavish photo series.