Download or read book The Death and Life of Great American Cities written by Jane Jacobs and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book River City and Valley Life written by Christopher J. Castaneda and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2013-12-09 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often referred to as “the Big Tomato,” Sacramento is a city whose makeup is significantly more complex than its agriculture-based sobriquet implies. In River City and Valley Life, seventeen contributors reveal the major transformations to the natural and built environment that have shaped Sacramento and its suburbs, residents, politics, and economics throughout its history. The site that would become Sacramento was settled in 1839, when Johann Augustus Sutter attempted to convert his Mexican land grant into New Helvetia (or “New Switzerland”). It was at Sutter’s sawmill fifty miles to the east that gold was first discovered, leading to the California Gold Rush of 1849. Nearly overnight, Sacramento became a boomtown, and cityhood followed in 1850. Ideally situated at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers, the city was connected by waterway to San Francisco and the surrounding region. Combined with the area’s warm and sunny climate, the rivers provided the necessary water supply for agriculture to flourish. The devastation wrought by floods and cholera, however, took a huge toll on early populations and led to the construction of an extensive levee system that raised the downtown street level to combat flooding. Great fortune came when local entrepreneurs built the Central Pacific Railroad, and in 1869 it connected with the Union Pacific Railroad to form the first transcontinental passage. Sacramento soon became an industrial hub and major food-processing center. By 1879, it was named the state capital and seat of government. In the twentieth century, the Sacramento area benefitted from the federal government’s major investment in the construction and operation of three military bases and other regional public works projects. Rapid suburbanization followed along with the building of highways, bridges, schools, parks, hydroelectric dams, and the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant, which activists would later shut down. Today, several tribal gaming resorts attract patrons to the area, while “Old Sacramento” revitalizes the original downtown as it celebrates Sacramento’s pioneering past. This environmental history of Sacramento provides a compelling case study of urban and suburban development in California and the American West. As the contributors show, Sacramento has seen its landscape both ravaged and reborn. As blighted areas, rail yards, and riverfronts have been reclaimed, and parks and green spaces created and expanded, Sacramento’s identity continues to evolve. As it moves beyond its Gold Rush, Transcontinental Railroad, and government-town heritage, Sacramento remains a city and region deeply rooted in its natural environment.
Download or read book Our Towns written by James Fallows and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BEST SELLER • The basis for the HBO documentary now streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.
Download or read book City Water City Life written by Carl Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A city is more than a massing of citizens, a layout of buildings and streets, or an arrangement of political, economic, and social institutions. It is also an infrastructure of ideas that are a support for the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the people who created the city. In City Water, City Life, celebrated historian Carl Smith explores this concept through an insightful examination of the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. By examining the place of water in the nineteenth-century consciousness, Smith illuminates how city dwellers perceived themselves during the great age of American urbanization. But City Water, City Life is more than a history of urbanization. It is also a refreshing meditation on water as a necessity, as a resource for commerce and industry, and as an essential—and central—part of how we define our civilization.
Download or read book Studying Cities and City Life written by Mark Abrahamson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studying Cities and City Life is a textbook designed to provide an introduction to the major methods of obtaining data for use when analysing cities and social life in cities. Major chapters focus upon best practices in: field studies (participant observation) natural experiments and quasi-experiments surveys employing probability and non-probability samples secondary analyses of previously published documents. A separate chapter examines a full range of questionnaires and interviews. Each chapter includes discussion of several case studies, and recently published research employing the method being discussed. This discussion highlights the issues and choices made by investigators in actual studies conducted in cities throughout the world. This unique book is designed for use in research methods courses that primarily enroll students majoring in Urban Sociology, Urban Studies, Urban Geography, Urban Planning, and related areas.
Download or read book The City and Quality of Life written by Peter K. Kresl and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique and insightful work examines the importance of ‘quality of life’ for the city which has become a key component of urban competitiveness over the past 30 years. It argues that having a high or low ‘quality of life’ will have important consequences for the vitality and status of any city. The book’s six substantive chapters explore this issue by each examining a distinct element that comprises ‘quality of life’, including the approach of economists to quality of life, links to urban competitiveness, the economy, urban amenities and attributes.
Download or read book Turko Mongol Rulers Cities and City Life written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-10-09 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly a millennium, a large part of Asia was ruled by Turkic or Mongol dynasties of nomadic origin. What was the attitude of these dynasties towards the many cities they controlled, some of which were of considerable size? To what extent did they live like their subjects? How did they evolve? Turko-Mongol Rulers, Cities and City-life aims to broaden the perspective on the issue of location of rule in this particular context by bringing together specialists in various periods, from pre-Chingissid Eurasia to nineteenth-century Iran, and of various disciplines (history, archaeology, history of art). Contributors include: Michal Biran, David Durand-Guédy, Kurt Franz, Peter Golden, Minoru Inaba, Nobuaki Kondo, Yuri Karev, Tomoko Masuya, Charles Melville, Jürgen Paul and Andrew Peacock
Download or read book City Life written by Witold Rybczynski and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In City Life, Witold Rybczynski, bestselling author of Now I Sit Me Down, looks at what we want from cities, how they have evolved, and what accounts for their unique identities. In this vivid description of everything from the early colonial settlements to the advent of the skyscraper to the changes wrought by the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and telecommuting, Rybczynski reveals how our urban spaces have been shaped by the landscapes and lifestyles of the New World.
Download or read book Soft City written by David Sim and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites—separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources—to support a soft city approach? In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions. Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society. Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond. Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.
Download or read book The Margins of City Life written by John M. Merriman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on the social margins of city life - the "faubourgs", or suburbs, where rural migrants and the labouring poor of French cities congregated in growing numbers in the first half of the 19th century. The text examines the cultural and social traditions which took root in these areas.
Download or read book Edge City written by Joel Garreau and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First there was downtown. Then there were suburbs. Then there were malls. Then Americans launched the most sweeping change in 100 years in how they live, work, and play. The Edge City.
Download or read book City Life written by Adrian Franklin and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A brave foray into the interdisciplinary and a serious attempt to cover city life in all its complexity... Franklin′s optimism about the city is refreshing. He revels in the growing human and cultural diversity and the ′re-emergence and spread of a more tolerant, carnivalesque, culture-driven city life′, and he celebrates the city′s ability to offer shelter to the unexpected and the fragile. For Franklin, the city is a product of nature, with all its vicissitudes." - Times Higher Education "Franklin writes with barely restrained optimism as he emphasizes the excitement, vitality and potential of cities. This advances the idea of city lives as assemblages of ‘human and non-human networks of texts, software, culture, behaviour, architecture, trees and gardens’... Franklin uses a wide range of sources in making his case. Historical accounts, search engine statistics and social and cultural theory are all smoothly integrated into the narrative." - Sociology Cities are more important as cultural entities than their mere function as dormitories and industrial sites. Yet, the understanding of what makes a city ′alive′ and appealing in cultural terms is still hotly contested - why are some cities so much more interesting, popular and successful than others? In this engaging discussion of ′city life′ Adrian Franklin takes the reader on a tour of contemporary western cities exploring their historical development and arguing that it is the transformative, ritual and performative qualities of successful cities that makes a difference. Here is a new urban culture characterized by ecological frames of reference; tracking the making of contemporary city life from traditional times, through early modern, machinic and modernised stages of development. Adopting dynamic narrative structures and stories to develop its critical position this book creates a vibrant synthesis of city life from its key components of leisure and tourism, recreation and play, arts and culture, nature and environment, and architecture and public space. Emphasising the importance of experience the book represents the fluid complexity of the city as a living space, an environment and a posthumanist space of transformation. It will be of interest to all those engaging with the difficulties of urban life in sociology, human geography, tourism and cultural studies.
Download or read book The Guys Guide to Making City Life More Awesome written by Eric Braun and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2014 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Describes various tips, activities, and useful information for making life in the city more fun and interesting"--
Download or read book Researching City Life written by Tyler Schafer and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2023-03-17 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Researching City Life: An Urban Field Methods Text-Reader examines the city from a street level perspective and provides readers with tools to conduct research on urbanism—the everyday experiences of people in cities. Contending that culture is central to understanding urbanism, editors Tyler Schafer and Michael Ian Borer address qualitative research in cities and how it provides insights unable to be captured via quantitative methods. Carefully selected and edited readings cover participant observation, interviewing, narrative analysis, visual and sensory methods, and methods for (re)presenting the city. Each section includes an introduction from the editors, a Reflection Essay from one of the authors, and exercises that prompt hands-on experience.
Download or read book City Life in Africa written by Katja Werthmann and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-27 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces readers to the anthropology of urban life in Africa, showing what ethnography can teach us about African city dwellers’ own notions, practices, and reflections. Social anthropologists have studied city life in Africa since the early 20th century. Their works have addressed a number of questions that are relevant until today: What happens to rural people who move to the city? What kinds of livelihoods do they pursue? How does city life affect moralities and practices connected with gender roles, marriage, parenthood, and intergenerational relations? In which social situations are ethnic and other collective identifications relevant? How do people make a home in the city? What forms of authority and leadership become relevant in urban governance? How do people talk about city life? This book asks what anthropologists have come to learn about Africans’ views on city life. It provides a critical acclaim of ethnographies in English, French, and German and elucidates anthropology’s contribution to understanding city life in Africa. It highlights the significance of female, African and Diaspora scholars for an emerging urban anthropology of Africa. The chapters are organized according to everyday activities of city dwellers: moving, connecting, governing, working, dwelling, and wayfinding. The book will be an essential read for students and researchers of social anthropology, African and urban studies, but also for professionals in research and development organizations, thinktanks, and other institutions concerned with urban Africa.
Download or read book City Life in Japan written by R. P. Dore and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1958.
Download or read book Life in America s First Cities written by Sally Senzell Isaacs and published by Capstone Classroom. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces the daily lives of people who settled in the first cities in the United States, discussing houses, clothing, schools, and work.
