Download or read book Improbable Metropolis written by Barrie Scardino Bradley and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Good Brick Award, Preservation Houston, 2020 Just over 180 years ago, the city of Houston was nothing more than an alligator-infested swamp along the Buffalo Bayou that spread onto a flat, endless plain. Today, it is a sprawling, architecturally and culturally diverse metropolis. How did one transform into the other in such a short period? Improbable Metropolis uses the built environment as a guide to explore the remarkable evolution that Houston has undergone from 1836 to the present. Houston’s architecture, an indicator of its culture and prosperity, has been inconsistent, often predictable, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally extraordinary. Industries from cotton, lumber, sugar, and rail and water transportation, to petroleum, healthcare, biomedical research, and aerospace have each in turn brought profit and attention to Houston. Each created an associated building boom, expanding the city’s architectural sophistication, its footprint, and its cultural breadth. Providing a template for architectural investigations of other American cities, Improbable Metropolis is an important addition to the literature on Texas history.
Download or read book City Improbable Writings R E written by Khushwant and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2010-09 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Delhi is the twin of pure paradise, a prototype of the heavenly throne on an earthlyscroll’—Amir Khusrau A city of contradictions, where ancient traditions and modern aspirations jostle for space, Delhi has often been compared to a phoenix rising from the ashes. Its three thousand years of eventful history have witnessed the rise and fall of several empires, a process that continues today. City Improbable brings together writings by immigrants, residents, refugees, travellers and invaders who have engaged with India’s capital over different epochs. Babur shares his earliest experience of the city and Amir Khusrau praises the fine lads of Delhi; Ibn Battuta and Niccolao Manucci record the glories and follies of prominent rulers; William Dalrymple and Khushwant Singh provide intriguing accounts of the threshold period that saw the coming of the British and the waning of the Mughals. Poets and storytellers—Meer Taqi Meer, Ghalib, Yashpal, Kamleshwar, Ruskin Bond—narrate their versions of the city. Contemporary Delhi is featured in a variety of vignettes: the bureaucracy, the Emergency, the anti-Sikh violence, lovers and joggers in Lodi Gardens, the city’s Sufi legacy as well as its changing cuisine. Among the new pieces in this expanded edition are Sam Miller’s account of his experiences in the suburb of Noida, Manto’s story about a girl from Delhi leaving the city during Partition, Jarnail Singh’s unflinching recollection of the massacre of Sikhs in 1984, a photo essay on Shahpur Jat by Karoki Lewis, and a composite narrative by the young writers of the Cybermohalla Collective about the making of a resettlement colony.
Download or read book Atlas of Improbable Places written by Travis Elborough and published by Aurum Press. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atlas of Improbable Places shows the modern world from surprising new vantage points that will inspire urban explorers and armchair travellers alike to consider a new way of understanding the world we live in.
Download or read book The Accidental City written by Lawrence N. Powell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-13 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the history of the city from its being contended over as swampland through Louisiana's statehood in 1812, discussing its motley identities as a French village, African market town, Spanish fortress, and trade center.
Download or read book City Improbable written by Khushwant Singh and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 2001 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributed articles on history and social life of Delhi, India.
Download or read book Metropolis written by Thomas Elsaesser and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metropolis is a monumental work. On its release in 1925, after sixteen months' filming, it was Germany's most expensive feature film, a canvas for director Fritz Lang's increasingly extravagant ambitions. Lang, inspired by the skyline of New York, created a whole new vision of cities. One of the greatest works of science fiction, the film also tells human stories about love and family. Thomas Elsaesser explores the cultural phenomenon of Metropolis: its different versions (there is no definitive one), its changing meanings, and its role as a database of twentieth-century imagery and ideologies. In his foreword to this special edition, published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BFI Film Classics series, Elsaesser discusses the impact of the 27 minutes of 'lost' footage discovered in Buenos Aires in 2008, and incorporated in a restored edition, which premiered in 2010.
Download or read book Leading the Inclusive City written by Hambleton, Robin and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2014-11-24 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities are often seen as helpless victims in a global flow of events and many view growing inequality in cities as inevitable. This engaging book rejects this gloomy prognosis and argues that imaginative place-based leadership can enable citizens to shape the urban future in accordance with progressive values – advancing social justice, promoting care for the environment and bolstering community empowerment. This international and comparative book, written by an experienced author, shows how inspirational civic leaders are making a major difference in cities across the world. The analysis provides practical lessons for local leaders and a significant contribution to thinking on public service innovation for anyone who wants to change urban society for the better.
Download or read book Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories written by Sandra McDonald and published by Lethe Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A beautiful adventuress from the ancient city of New Dalli sets off to reclaim her missing lover. What secrets does she hide beneath her silk skirts? A gay cowboy flees the Great War in search of true love and the elusive undead poet Whit Waltman, but at what cost? A talking statue sends an abused boy spinning through a great metropolis, dodging pirates and search for a home. On these quests, you will meet macho firefighters, tiny fairies, collapsible musicians, lady devils and vengeful sea witches.""--Cover, p. [4].
Download or read book Dreamers and Schemers written by Barry Siegel and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dreamers and Schemers chronicles how Los Angeles’s pursuit and staging of the 1932 Olympic Games during the depths of the Great Depression helped fuel the city’s transformation from a seedy frontier village to a world-famous metropolis. Leading that pursuit was the “Prince of Realtors,” William May (Billy) Garland, a prominent figure in early Los Angeles. In important respects, the story of Billy Garland is the story of Los Angeles. After arriving in Southern California in 1890, he and his allies drove much of the city’s historic expansion in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Then, from 1920 to 1932, he directed the city’s bid for the 1932 Olympic Games. Garland’s quest to host the Olympics provides an unusually revealing window onto a particular time, place, and way of life. Reconstructing the narrative from Garland’s visionary notion to its consequential aftermath, Barry Siegel shows how one man’s grit and imagination made California history.
Download or read book A Paradise of Small Houses written by Max Podemski and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Haitian-style “shotgun” houses of the 19th century to the lavish high-rises of the 21st century, a walk through the streets of America’s neighborhoods that reveals the rich history—and future—of urban housing The Philadelphia row house. The New York tenement. The Boston triple-decker. Every American city has its own iconic housing style, structures that have been home to generations of families and are symbols of identity and pride. Max Podemski, an urban planner for the city of Los Angeles and lifelong architecture buff, has spent his career in and around these buildings. Deftly combining his years of experience with extensive research, Podemski walks the reader through the history of our dwelling spaces—and offers a blueprint for how time-tested urban planning models can help us build the homes the United States so desperately needs. In A Paradise of Small Houses, Podemski charts how these dwellings have evolved over the centuries according to the geography, climate, population, and culture of each city. He introduces the reader to styles like Chicago’s prefabricated workers cottages and LA’s car-friendly dingbats, illuminating the human stories behind each city’s iconic housing type. Through it all, Podemski interrogates the American values that have equated home ownership with success and led to the US housing crisis, asking, “How can we look to the past to build the homes, neighborhoods, and cities of the future that our communities deserve?”
Download or read book Metropolitan Economic Development written by Alejandra Trejo Nieto and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-28 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metropolitan areas are home to a significant proportion of the world’s population and its economic output. Taking Mexico as a case study and weaving in comparisons from Latin America and developed countries, this book explores current trends and policy issues around urbanisation, metropolisation, economic development and city-region governance. Despite their fundamental economic relevance, the analysis and monitoring of metropolitan economies in Mexico and other countries in the Global South under a comparative perspective are relatively scarce. This volume contains empirical analysis based on comparative perspectives with relation to international experiences. It will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and policymakers in urban policy, urban economics, regional studies, economic geography and Latin American studies.
Download or read book Supreme City written by Donald L. Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning historian surveys the astonishing cast of characters who helped turn Manhattan into the world capital of commerce, communication and entertainment --
Download or read book The Berlin Wall written by Fred Taylor and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2006 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the morning of August 13, 1961, the residents of East Berlin found themselves cut off from family, friends and jobs in the West by a tangle of barbed wire that ruthlessly cut a city of four million in two. Within days the barbed-wire entanglement would undergo an extraordinary metamorphosis: it became an imposing 103-mile-long wall guarded by three hundred watchtowers. A physical manifestation of the struggle between Soviet Communism and American capitalism—totalitarianism and freedom—that would stand for nearly thirty years, the Berlin Wall was the high-risk fault line between East and West on which rested the fate of all humanity. Many brave people risked their lives to overcome this lethal barrier, and some paid the ultimate price. In this captivating work, sure to be the definitive history on the subject, Frederick Taylor weaves together official history, archival materials and personal accounts to tell the complete story of the Wall's rise and fall, from the postwar political tensions that created a divided Berlin to the internal and external pressures that led to the Wall's demise. In addition, he explores the geopolitical ramifications as well as the impact the wall had on ordinary lives that is still felt today. For the first time the entire world faced the threat of imminent nuclear apocalypse, a fear that would be eased only when the very people the Wall had been built to imprison breached it on the historic night of November 9, 1989. Gripping and authoritative, The Berlin Wall is the first comprehensive account of a divided city and its people in a time when the world seemed to stand permanently on the edge of destruction.
Download or read book The Berlin Wall August 13 1961 November 9 1989 written by Frederick Taylor and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 719 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This vivid account of the Wall and all that it meant reminds us that symbolism can be double-edged, as a potent emblem of isolation and repression became, in its destruction, an even more powerful totem of freedom.” — The Atlantic Monthly NOW WITH AN UPDATED EPILOGUE 30 YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF THE WALL On the morning of August 13, 1961, the residents of East Berlin found themselves cut off from family, friends, and jobs in the West by a tangle of barbed wire that ruthlessly split a city of four million in two. Within days the barbed-wire entanglement would undergo an extraordinary metamorphosis: it became an imposing 103-mile-long wall guarded by three hundred watchtowers. A physical manifestation of the struggle between Soviet Communism and American capitalism that stood for nearly thirty years, the Berlin Wall was the high-risk fault line between East and West on which rested the fate of all humanity. In the definitive history on the subject, Frederick Taylor weaves together official history, archival materials, and personal accounts to tell the complete story of the Wall's rise and fall.
Download or read book The Fractured Metropolis written by Gregory R. Weiher and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1991-07-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Timing the Future Metropolis written by Peter Ekman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2024-11-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timing the Future Metropolis—an intellectual history of planning, urbanism, design, and social science—explores the network of postwar institutions, formed amid specters of urban "crisis" and "renewal," that set out to envision the future of the American city. Peter Ekman focuses on one decisive node in the network: the Joint Center for Urban Studies, founded in 1959 by scholars at Harvard and MIT. Through its sprawling programs of "organized research," its manifold connections to universities, foundations, publishers, and policymakers, and its years of consultation on the planning of a new city in Venezuela—Ciudad Guayana—the Joint Center became preoccupied with the question of how to conceptualize the urban future as an object of knowledge. Timing the Future Metropolis ultimately compels a broader reflection on temporality in urban planning, rethinking how we might imagine cities yet to come—and the consequences of deciding not to.
Download or read book Metropolis written by Thea von Harbou and published by Hyweb Technology Co. Ltd.. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 952 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable novel, the basis for the world's greatest science-fiction movie, has long been a rare but ardently sought-after collector's item. It is an unforgettable vision of the 21st century and the awe-inspiring city of the future. Metropolis has been compared to such classics as George Orwell's 1984, H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, Samuel Butler's Erewhon, and Karel Capek's R.U.R. Science fiction writer and editor Forrest J Ackerman called it "a work of genius," noting, "The language of the novel is sometimes as thesauric as Shiel, as kaliedoscopic as Merritt, as bone-spare as Bradbury, as poetic as Poe, as macabre as Machen. . . . You will have an experience in reading that will last you all the rest of your life."
