Download or read book What is Urban History written by Shane Ewen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban history is a well-established and flourishing field of historical research. Written by a leading scholar, this short introduction demonstrates how urban history draws upon a wide variety of methodologies and sources, and has been integral to the rise of interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to history since the second half of the twentieth century. Shane Ewen offers an accessible and clearly written guide to the study of urban history for the student, teacher, researcher or general reader who is new to the field and interested in learning about past approaches as well as key themes, concepts and trajectories for future research. He takes a global and comparative viewpoint, combining a discussion of classic texts with the latest literature to illustrate the current debates and controversies across the urban world. The historiography of the field is mapped out by theme, including new topics of interest, with a particular focus on space and social identity, power and governance, the built environment, culture and modernity, and the growth and spread of transnational networking. By discussing a number of historic and fast-growing cities across the world, What is Urban History? demonstrates the importance of the history of urban life to our understanding of the world, both in the present and the future. As a result, urban history remains pivotal for explaining the continued growth of towns and cities in a global context, and is particularly useful for identifying the various problems and solutions faced by fast-growing megacities in the developing world.

Download or read book Real Estate and Global Urban History written by Alexia Yates and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capitalist private property in land and buildings – real estate – is the ground of modern cities, materially, politically, and economically. It is foundational to their development and core to much theoretical work on the urban environment. It is also a central, pressing matter of political contestation in contemporary cities. Yet it remains largely without a history. This Element examines the modern city as a propertied space, defining real estate as a technology of (dis)possession and using it to move across scales of analysis, from the local spatiality of particular built spaces to the networks of legal, political, and economic imperatives that constitute property and operate at national and international levels. This combination of territorial embeddedness with more wide-ranging institutional relationships charts a route to an urban history that allows the city to speak as a global agent and artefact without dispensing with the role of states and local circumstance.

Download or read book Kyoto written by Matthew Stavros and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2014-10-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kyoto was Japan’s political and cultural capital for more than a millennium before the dawn of the modern era. Until about the fifteenth century, it was also among the world’s largest cities and, as the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, it was a place where the political, artistic, and religious currents of Asia coalesced and flourished. Despite these and many other traits that make Kyoto a place of both Japanese and world historical significance, the physical appearance of the premodern city remains largely unknown. Through a synthesis of textual, pictorial, and archeological sources, this work attempts to shed light on Kyoto’s premodern urban landscape with the aim of opening up new ways of thinking about key aspects of premodern Japanese history. The book begins with an examination of Kyoto’s highly idealized urban plan (adapted from Chinese models in the eighth century) and the reasons behind its eventual failure. The formation of the suburbs of Kamigyō and Shimogyō is compared to the creation of large exurban temple-palace complexes by retired emperors from the late eleventh century. Each, it is argued, was a material manifestation of the advancement of privatized power that inspired a medieval discourse aimed at excluding “outsiders.” By examining this discourse, a case is made that medieval power holders, despite growing autonomy, continued to see the emperor and classical state system as the ultimate sources of political legitimacy. This sentiment was shared by the leaders of the Ashikaga shogunate, who established their headquarters in Kyoto in 1336. The narrative examines how these warrior leaders interacted with the capital’s urban landscape, revealing a surprising degree of deference to classical building protocols and urban codes. Remaining chapters look at the dramatic changes that took place during the Age of Warring States (1467–1580s) and Kyoto’s postwar revitalization under the leadership of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Nobunaga’s construction of Nijō Castle in 1569 transformed Kyoto’s fundamental character and, as Japan’s first castle town, it set an example soon replicated throughout the archipelago. In closing, the book explores how Hideyoshi—like so many before him, yet with much greater zeal—used monumentalism to co-opt and leverage the authority of Kyoto’s traditional institutions. Richly illustrated with original maps and diagrams, Kyoto is a panoramic examination of space and architecture spanning eight centuries. It narrates a history of Japan’s premodern capital relevant to the fields of institutional history, material culture, art and architectural history, religion, and urban planning. Students and scholars of Japan will be introduced to new ways of thinking about old historical problems while readers interested in the cities and architecture of East Asia and beyond will benefit from a novel approach that synthesizes a wide variety of sources. For more on Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital, visit www.kyotohistory.com.

Download or read book African American Urban History since World War II written by Kenneth L. Kusmer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have devoted surprisingly little attention to African American urban history ofthe postwar period, especially compared with earlier decades. Correcting this imbalance, African American Urban History since World War II features an exciting mix of seasoned scholars and fresh new voices whose combined efforts provide the first comprehensive assessment of this important subject. The first of this volume’s five groundbreaking sections focuses on black migration and Latino immigration, examining tensions and alliances that emerged between African Americans and other groups. Exploring the challenges of residential segregation and deindustrialization, later sections tackle such topics as the real estate industry’s discriminatory practices, the movement of middle-class blacks to the suburbs, and the influence of black urban activists on national employment and social welfare policies. Another group of contributors examines these themes through the lens of gender, chronicling deindustrialization’s disproportionate impact on women and women’s leading roles in movements for social change. Concluding with a set of essays on black culture and consumption, this volume fully realizes its goal of linking local transformations with the national and global processes that affect urban class and race relations.

Download or read book An Urban History of China written by Toby Lincoln and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this accessible new study, Toby Lincoln offers the first history of Chinese cities from their origins to the present. Despite being an agricultural society for thousands of years, China had an imperial urban civilization. Over the last century, this urban civilization has been transformed into the world's largest modern urban society. Throughout their long history, Chinese cities have been shaped by interactions with those around the world, and the story of urban China is a crucial part of the history of how the world has become an urban society. Exploring the global connections of Chinese cities, the urban system, urban governance, and daily life alongside introductions to major historical debates and extracts from primary sources, this is essential reading for all those interested in China and in urban history.

Download or read book Urban Green written by Colin Fisher and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early twentieth-century America, affluent city-dwellers made a habit of venturing out of doors and vacationing in resorts and national parks. Yet the rich and the privileged were not the only ones who sought respite in nature. In this pathbreaking book, historian Colin Fisher demonstrates that working-class white immigrants and African Americans in rapidly industrializing Chicago also fled the urban environment during their scarce leisure time. If they had the means, they traveled to wilderness parks just past the city limits as well as to rural resorts in Wisconsin and Michigan. But lacking time and money, they most often sought out nature within the city itself--at urban parks and commercial groves, along the Lake Michigan shore, even in vacant lots. Chicagoans enjoyed a variety of outdoor recreational activities in these green spaces, and they used them to forge ethnic and working-class community. While narrating a crucial era in the history of Chicago's urban development, Fisher makes important interventions in debates about working-class leisure, the history of urban parks, environmental justice, the African American experience, immigration history, and the cultural history of nature.

Download or read book An Urban History of China written by Chonglan Fu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers urban development in China, highlighting links between China’s history and civilization and the rapid evolution of its urban forms. It explores the early days of urban dwelling in China, progressing to an analysis of residential environments in the industrial age. It also examines China’s modern and postmodern architecture, considered as derivative or lacking spiritual meaning or personality, and showcases how China's traditional culture underpins the emergence of China’s modern cities. Focusing on the notion of “courtyard spirit” in China, it offers a study of the urban public squares central to Chinese society, and examines the disruption of the traditional Square model and the rise and growth of new architectural models.

Download or read book Nonprofit Neighborhoods written by Claire Dunning and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-06-23 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how and why American city governments delegated the responsibility for solving urban inequality to the nonprofit sector. American cities are rife with nonprofit organizations that provide services ranging from arts to parks, and health to housing. These organizations have become so ubiquitous, it can be difficult to envision a time when they were fewer, smaller, and more limited in their roles. Turning back the clock, however, uncovers both an eye-opening story of how the nonprofit sector became such a dominant force in American society, as well as a troubling one of why this growth occurred alongside persistent poverty and widening inequality. Claire Dunning's book connects these two stories in histories of race, democracy, and capitalism, revealing an underexplored transformation in urban governance: how the federal government funded and deputized nonprofits to help individuals in need, and in so doing avoided addressing the structural inequities that necessitated such action in the first place. ​Nonprofit Neighborhoods begins in the decades after World War II, when a mix of suburbanization, segregation, and deindustrialization spelled disaster for urban areas and inaugurated a new era of policymaking that aimed to solve public problems with private solutions. From deep archival research, Dunning introduces readers to the activists, corporate executives, and politicians who advocated addressing poverty and racial exclusion through local organizations, while also raising provocative questions about the politics and possibilities of social change. The lessons of Nonprofit Neighborhoods exceed the municipal bounds of Boston, where much of the story unfolds, providing a timely history of the shift from urban crisis to urban renaissance for anyone concerned about American inequality--past, present, or future.

Download or read book Concepts of Urban Environmental History written by Sebastian Haumann and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In history, cities and nature are often treated as two separate fields of research. »Concepts of Urban-Environmental History« aims to bridge this gap. The contributions to this volume survey major concepts and key issues which have shaped recent debates in the field. They address unresolved questions and future challenges. As a handbook, the collection offers a comprehensive overview for researchers and students, both from a historical and an interdisciplinary background.

Download or read book China s Urban Billion written by Tom Miller and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 2030, China's cities will be home to 1 billion people - one in every eight people on earth. What kind of lives will China's urban billion lead? And what will China's cities be like? Over the past thirty years, China's urban population expanded by 500 million people, and is on track to swell by a further 300 million by 2030. Hundreds of millions of these new urban residents are rural migrants, who lead second-class lives without access to urban benefits. Even those lucky citizens who live in modern tower blocks must put up with clogged roads, polluted skies and cityscapes of unremitting ugliness. The rapid expansion of urban China is astonishing, but new policies are urgently needed to create healthier cities. Combining on-the-ground reportage and up-to-date research, this pivotal book explains why China has failed to reap many of the economic and social benefits of urbanization, and suggests how these problems can be resolved. If its leaders get urbanization right, China will surpass the United States and cement its position as the world's largest economy. But if they get it wrong, China could spend the next twenty years languishing in middle-income torpor, its cities pockmarked by giant slums.

Download or read book Cities Beyond Borders written by Nicolas Kenny and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a body of research covering primarily Europe and the Americas, but stretching also to Asia and Africa, from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, this book explores the methodological and heuristic implications of studying cities in relation to one another. Moving fluidly between comparative and transnational methods, as well as across regional and national lines, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the necessity of this broader view in assessing not just the fundamentals of urban life, the way cities are occupied and organised on a daily basis, but also the urban mindscape, the way cities are imagined and represented. In doing so the volume provides valuable insights into the advantages and limitations of using multiple cities to form historical inquiries.

Download or read book Planning Abu Dhabi written by Alamira Reem Bani Hashim and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abu Dhabi’s urban development path contrasts sharply with its exuberant neighbour, Dubai. As Alamira Reem puts it, Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates since 1971, ‘has been quietly devising its own plans ... to manifest its role and stature as a capital city’. Alamira Reem, a native Abu Dhabian and urban planner and researcher who has studied the emirate’s development for more than a decade, is uniquely placed to write its urban history. Following the introduction and description of Abu Dhabi’s early modern history, she focuses on three distinct periods dating from the discovery of oil in 1960, and coinciding with periods in power of the three rulers since then: Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1960–1966), Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1966–2004), and Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (2004–). Based on archival research, key interviews and spatial mapping, she analyses the different approaches of each ruler to development; investigates the role of planning consultants, architects, developers, construction companies and government agencies; examines the emergence of comprehensive development plans and the policies underlying them; and assesses the effects of these many and varied influences on Abu Dhabi’s development. She concludes that, while much still needs to be done, Abu Dhabi’s progress towards becoming a global, sustainable city provides lessons for cities elsewhere.

Download or read book La Calle written by Lydia R. Otero and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On March 1, 1966, the voters of Tucson approved the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project—Arizona’s first major urban renewal project—which targeted the most densely populated eighty acres in the state. For close to one hundred years, tucsonenses had created their own spatial reality in the historical, predominantly Mexican American heart of the city, an area most called “la calle.” Here, amid small retail and service shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues, they openly lived and celebrated their culture. To make way for the Pueblo Center’s new buildings, city officials proceeded to displace la calle’s residents and to demolish their ethnically diverse neighborhoods, which, contends Lydia Otero, challenged the spatial and cultural assumptions of postwar modernity, suburbia, and urban planning. Otero examines conflicting claims to urban space, place, and history as advanced by two opposing historic preservationist groups: the La Placita Committee and the Tucson Heritage Foundation. She gives voice to those who lived in, experienced, or remembered this contested area, and analyzes the historical narratives promoted by Anglo American elites in the service of tourism and cultural dominance. La Calle explores the forces behind the mass displacement: an unrelenting desire for order, a local economy increasingly dependent on tourism, and the pivotal power of federal housing policies. To understand how urban renewal resulted in the spatial reconfiguration of downtown Tucson, Otero draws on scholarship from a wide range of disciplines: Chicana/o, ethnic, and cultural studies; urban history, sociology, and anthropology; city planning; and cultural and feminist geography.

Download or read book The New Suburban History written by Kevin M. Kruse and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2006-07-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: The new suburban history / Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue -- Marketing the free market : state intervention and the politics of prosperity in metropolitan America / David M.P. Freund -- Less than plessy : the inner city, suburbs, and state-sanctioned residential segregation in the age of Brown / Arnold R. Hirsch -- Uncovering the city in the suburb : Cold War politics, scientific elites, and high-tech spaces / Margaret Pugh O'Mara -- How hell moved from the city to the suburbs : urban scholars and changing perceptions of authentic community / Becky Nicolaides -- "The house I live in" : race, class, and African American suburban dreams in the postwar United States / Andrew Wiese -- "Socioeconomic integration" in the suburbs : from reactionary populism to class fairness in metropolitan Charlotte / Matthew D. Lassiter -- Prelude to the tax revolt : the politics of the "tax dollar" in postwar California / Robert O. Self -- Suburban growth and its discontents : the logic and limits of reform on the postwar Northeast corridor / Peter Siskind -- Reshaping the American dream : immigrants, ethnic minorities, and the politics of the new suburbs / Michael Jones-Correa -- The legal technology of exclusion in metropolitan America / Gerald Frug.

Download or read book Cityscapes in History written by Heléna Tóth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cityscapes in History: Creating the Urban Experience explores the ways in which scholars from a variety of disciplines - history, history of art, geography and architecture - think about and study the urban environment. The concept ’cityscapes’ refers to three different dynamics that shape the development of the urban environment: the interplay between conscious planning and organic development, the tension between social control and its unintended consequences and the relationship between projection and self-presentation, as articulated through civic ceremony and ritual. The book is structured around three sections, each covering a particular aspect of the urban experience. ’The City Planned’ looks at issues related to agency, self-perception, the transfer of knowledge and the construction of space. ’The City Lived’ explores the experience of urbanity and the construction of space as a means of social control. And finally, ’The City as a Stage’ examines the ways in which cultural practices and power-relations shape - and are in turn shaped by - the construction of space. Each section combines the work of scholars from different fields who examine these dynamics through both theoretical essays and empirical research, and provides a coherent framework in which to assess a wide range of chronological and geographical subjects. Taken together the essays in this volume provide a truly interdisciplinary investigation of the urban phenomenon. By making fascinating connections between such seemingly diverse topics as 15th century France and modern America, the collection raises valuable questions about scholarly approaches to urban studies.

Download or read book History of Urban Planning and Design written by Mirle Rabinowitz Bussell and published by Cognella Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive introduction to the historical evolution--from antiquity to the present--of the city and the built environment. It considers the forces that influence the city's form and content and explores the wide variety of city designs and built forms that have evolved throughout history.

Download or read book The Autonomous City written by Alexander Vasudevan and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical history of squatting and the struggle for the right to remake the city The Autonomous City is the first popular history of squatting as practised in Europe and North America. Alex Vasudevan retraces the struggle for housing in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Detroit, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, and Vancouver. He looks at the organisation of alternative forms of housing—from Copenhagen’s Freetown Christiana to the squats of the Lower East Side—as well as the official response, including the recent criminalisation of squatting, the brutal eviction of squatters and their widespread vilification. Pictured as a way to reimagine and reclaim the city, squatting offers an alternative to housing insecurity, oppressive property speculation and the negative effects of urban regeneration. We must, more than ever, reanimate and remake the urban environment as a site of radical social transformation.