Planning Future Cities by 
After the Flood by
The past three decades have been characterized by vast change and crises in global financial markets and not in politically unstable countries but in the heart of the developed world, from the Great Recession in the United States to the banking crises in Japan and the Eurozone. As we try to make sense of what caused these crises and how we might reduce risk factors and prevent recurrence, the fields of finance and economics have also seen vast change, as scholars and researchers have advanced their thinking to better respond to the recent crises. A momentous collection of the best recent scholarship, "After the Flood" illustrates both the scope of the crises' impact on our understanding of global financial markets and the innovative processes whereby scholars have adapted their research to gain a greater understanding of them. Among the contributors are Jose Scheinkman and Lars Peter Hansen, who bring up to date decades of collaborative research on the mechanisms that tie financial markets to the broader economy; Patrick Bolton, who argues that limiting bankers' pay may be more effective than limiting the activities they can undertake; Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote, who study the social dynamics of markets; and E. Glen Weyl, who argues that economists are influenced by the incentives their consulting opportunities create.
Atlas of Shrinking Cities by 
Back to the City: Issues in Neighborhood Renovation by 
Between the World and Me by
Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men -- bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son -- and readers -- the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder
Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City by
Discusses the modern growth of Phoenix, Arizona focusing on it's lack of sustainability and argues that to become sustainable can only occur through political and social change.
Black Liberation by
In Black Liberation, George Fredrickson offers a fascinating account of how blacks in the United States and South Africa came to grips with the challenge of white supremacy. He reveals a rich history - not merely of parallel developments, but of an intricate, transatlantic web of influences and cross-fertilization. He begins with early moments of hope in both countries - Reconstruction in the United States, and the liberal colonialism of British Cape Colony - when the promise of suffrage led educated black elites to fight for color-blind equality. A rising tide of racism and discrimination at the turn of the century, however, blunted their hopes and encouraged nationalist movements in both countries. Fredrickson teases out the connections between movements and nations, examining the transatlantic appeal of black religious nationalism (known as Ethiopianism), and the pan-Africanism of Du Bois and Garvey.
Black on the Block by
The author presents a comprehensive analysis of the renewal of Chicago's North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood and how the residents banded together to root out the gangs and violent in order to transform their community.
Boston's "Changeful Times": Origins of Preservation & Planning in America by
Boston's "Changeful Times" chronicles the relationship between historic preservation, planning, and the desire for permanence in Boston during the years from 1860 to 1930. Michael Holleran describes Boston as a city aware of its prominent Puritan and Revolutionary history and proud of its role as guardian of the past through institutions such as the Athenaeum and the Massachusetts Historical Society. Exploring Boston's struggles to save now-famous land-marks such as the Old South Church and Boston Common, Holleran traces the preservation movement's growth from its focus on saving historic buildings to its involvement in preserving public green spaces and addressing other large-scale urban issues.
Bourgeois Utopias by
This text traces the story of the suburb from its origins in nineteenth-century London to its twentieth-century demise in decentralized cities like Los Angeles.
Civic Education in the United States by 
Crabgrass Frontier by
Chronicles the development of American suburbs, compares American residential patterns with those of Europe and Japan, and discusses how society's views of the metropolis have changed throughout history.This first full scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. He treats communities in every section of the U.S. and compares American residential patterns with those of Japan and Europe. In conclusion, Jackson offers a controversial prediction: that the future of residential deconcentration will be very different from its past in both the U.S. and Europe.
The Detroit Bankruptcy by
he City of Detroit's bankruptcy was driven by a severe decline in revenues (and, importantly, not an increase in obligations to fund pensions). Depopulation and long-term unemployment caused Detroit's property and income tax revenues to plummet. The state of Michigan exacerbated the problems by slashing revenue it shared with the city. The city's overall expenses have declined over the last five years, although its financial expenses have increased. In addition, Wall Street sold risky financial instruments to the city, which now threaten the resolution of this crisis. To return Detroit to long-term fiscal health, the city must increase revenue and extract itself from the financial transactions that threaten to drain its budget even further.
Detroit City Is the Place to Be by
nce America's capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city's worst crisis yet (and that's saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neo-pastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists--all have been drawn to Detroit's baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier. With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new, Detroit-area native and Rolling Stone writer Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence.
Downtown America by
Downtown America was once the vibrant urban center romanticized in the Petula Clark song - a place where the lights were brighter, where people went to spend their money and forget their worries. But in the second half of the twentieth century, "downtown" became a shadow of its former self, succumbing to economic and commercial decline. And the death of Main Streets across the country came to be seen as sadly inexorable, like the passing of an aged loved one." "Downtown America cuts beneath this archetypal story of downtown's rise and fall and offers a new story of urban development in the United States. Moving beyond the conventional narratives, Alison Isenberg shows that the downtown's trajectory was not dictated by inevitable free market forces or natural life-and-death cycles. Instead, it was the product of human actors - the contested creation of retailers, developers, government leaders, architects, and planners, as well as political activists, consumers, civic clubs, real estate appraisers, and even postcard artists. Throughout the twentieth century, conflicts over downtown's mundane conditions - what it should look like and who should walk its streets - pointed to fundamental disagreements over American values." "Isenberg reveals how the innovative efforts of these participants infused Main Street with its resonant symbolism, while still accounting for pervasive uncertainty and fears of decline. Readers of this work will find anything but a story of inevitability. Even some of the downtown's darkest moments - the Great Depression's collapse in land values, the rioting and looting of the 1960s, or abandonment and vacancy during the 1970s - illuminate how core cultural values have animated and intertwined with economic investment to reinvent the physical form and social experiences of urban commerce. Downtown America - its empty stores, revitalized marketplaces, and romanticized past - will never look quite the same again." "A book that does away with our most cliched approaches to urban studies, Downtown America will appeal to readers interested in the history of the United States and the mythology surrounding its most cherished institutions
Economic Apartheid in America by
Economic Apartheid in America examines recent changes in income and wealth distribution, as well as the economic policies and shifts in power that have fueled the growing divide.Focusing on the decline of organized labor and civic institutions, the battle over global trade, and the growing inequality of income and wages, Economic Apartheid in America argues that with wealth and power in the hands of a select few, the majority of people in this country will be shut out of the discussion about the rules governing our shared economic lives.""Filled with charts, graphs, and political cartoons, Economic Apartheid in America is an action-oriented, movement-building guide to closing the widening gap between the rich and everyone else in this country.
Gentrification by
This first textbook on the topic of gentrification is written for upper-level undergraduates in geography, sociology, and planning. The gentrification of urban areas has accelerated across the globe to become a central engine of urban development, and it is a topic that has attracted a great deal of interest in both academia and the popular press. Gentrification presents major theoretical ideas and concepts with case studies, and summaries of the ideas in the book as well as offering ideas for future research.
Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island County, Washington by 
Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place by
Over the past decade, Latinos have emerged as one of the fastest-growing ethnic populations in the American South. In a region where culture and class relations have for hundreds of years been constructed along black-white divides and experience absorbing culturally or linguistically foreign immigrants has been limited, today a "New South" is taking shape. This book presents a contemporary and multi-disciplinary examination of the impacts and responses to Latino immigration across the Southeastern United States. The rapid and large-scale movement of Latinos into the region has challenged old precepts and forced Southerners to confront the impacts of globalization and transnationalism in their daily lives. Drawing on theoretical perspectives as well as empirical research, this text provides insights into the Latino experience in both urban and rural locales."
The Limitless City by
One of the great debates of our time concerns the predominant form of land use in America today -- the all too familiar pattern of commercial and residential development known as sprawl. But what do we really know about sprawl? Do we know what it is? Where did it come from? Is it really so bad? If so, what are the alternatives? Can anything be done to make it better? 'The Limitless City' offers an accessible examination of those and related questions. Oliver Gillham, an architect and planner with more than twenty-five years of experience in the field, considers the history and development of sprawl and examines current debates about the issue.
The Making of Urban America by
This new edition of the Making of Urban America highlights recent scholarship and shows the continued vitality of U.S. urban history. The methodological variety of the selections and the comprehensive bibliographic essay make the volume valuable to students and scholars alike.
Making the Second Ghetto by
Arnold Hirsch argues that in the postdepression years Chicago was a "pioneer in developing concepts and devices" for housing segregation and that the legal framework for the national urban renewal effort was forged in the heat generated by the racial struggles on Chicago's South Side. In chronicling the strategies used by ethnic, political, and business interests threatened by the great migration of southern blacks in the 1940s, Hirsch reveals how the violent reaction of an emergent "white" population combined with public policy to segregate the city.
Merchant of Illusion: James Rouse, America's Salesman of the Businessman's Utopia by 
My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 by 
Old Values in a New Town: The Politics of Race and Class in Columbia, Maryland by 
On Social Structure and Science by 
Our Town by
An account of the legal battle to open up New Jersey's suburbs to the poor, looking at the views of lawyers on both sides of the controversy. It is a case study of judicial activism and its consequences and an analysis of suburban attitudes regarding race, class and property.
Places of Their Own by
Tracing the contours of black migration to the suburbs over the course of the whole last century and across the entire United States, Places of Their Own will be a foundational book for anyone interested in the African American experience or the role of race and class in the making of America's suburbs.
PowerNomics by
PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America is a five-year plan to make Black America a prosperous and empowered race that is self-sufficient and competitive as a group by the year 2005. In this book, Dr. Anderson obliterates the myths and illusions of black progress and brings together data and information from many different sources to construct a framework for solutions to the dilemma of Black America. In PowerNomics: The National Plan, Dr. Anderson proposes new principles, strategies and concepts that show blacks a new way to see, think, and behave in race matters. The new mind set prepares blacks to take strategic steps to create a new reality for their race.
The Production of Space by
Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live).
Rebuilding the Inner City: A History of Neighborhood Initiatives to Address Poverty in the United States by 
Redevelopment and Race by
In the decades following World War II, professional city planners in Detroit made a concerted effort to halt the city's physical and economic decline. Their successes included an award-winning master plan, a number of laudable redevelopment projects, and exemplary planning leadership in the city and the nation. Yet in those same decades, Detroit was transformed from a city that enjoyed liveable neighborhoods, healthy commercial strips, a bustling downtown, and beautiful parks into the notorious symbol of urban decay that it is today.In Redevelopment and Race, June Manning Thomas explains what went wrong.
Sisters in the Struggle by 
Suburban Erasure by
For generations, historians believed that the study of the African-American experience centered on the questions about the processes and consequences of enslavement. Even after this phase passed, the modern Civil Rights Movement took center stage and filled hundreds of pages, creating a new framework for understanding both the history of the United States and of the world. Suburban Erasure by Walter David Greason contributes to the most recent developments in historical writing by recovering dozens of previously undiscovered works about the African-American experience in New Jersey. More importantly, his interpretation of these documents complicates the traditional understandings about the Great Migration, civil rights activism, and the transformation of the United States as a global, economic superpower.
Suburbs Under Siege: Race, Space, and Audacious Judges by
In Suburbs under Siege Charles Haar argues passionately that all people--rich or poor, black or white--have a constitutional right to live in the suburbs and that a socially responsible judiciary should vigorously uphold that right. For various reasons, American courts have generally failed to question local zoning regulations that trap the urban poor in the squalor of inner cities, away from decent housing and jobs in the suburbs. No U.S. Supreme Court case, for instance, has confronted exclusionary zoning rules, as Brown v. Board of Education once attacked school segregation. Instead, judges at all levels have most often reinforced the residential segregation that may well destroy American society. In this provocative book on the landmark Mount Laurel cases, Haar shows how the N.J. state judiciary broke out of this pattern of judicial behavior.
Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics and the Transformation of American Politics by
Historian Elizabeth Tandy Shermer examines how Barry Goldwater and elite Phoenix businessmen used policy and federal funds to fashion a postwar "business climate," setting off an interstate competition for investment that transformed American politics.
There Goes the 'Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up by
Annotation In this revealing book, Lance Freeman sets out to answer a seemingly simple question: how does gentrification actually affect residents of neighborhoods in transition? To find out, Freeman does what no scholar before him has done. He interviews the indigenous residents of two predominantly black neighborhoods that are in the process of gentrification: Harlem and Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. By listening closely to what people tell him, he creates a more nuanced picture of the impacts of gentrification on the perceptions, attitudes and behaviors of the people who stay in their neighborhoods. Freeman describes the theoretical and planning/policy implications of his findings, both for New York City and for any gentrifying urban area. There Goes the 'Hood provides a more complete, and complicated, understanding of the gentrification process, highlighting the reactions of long-term residents. It suggests new ways of limiting gentrification's negative effects and of creating more positive experiences for newcomers and natives alike.
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by
If one street in America can claim to be the most infamous, it is surely Forty-second Street. Once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers, and movie houses, Forty-second Street has been overwhelmed by the quest for safety - from safe sex and safe neighborhoods to safe cities and safe relationships. Now defined by corporate theme stores and large, neon-lit cafes, Forty-second Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester County, and the New Jersey suburbs.Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance, not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there; the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space.
Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by
A pioneering urban economist offers fascinating, even inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest invention and our best hope for the future.
Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. by 
Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land-Use. by 
African American Urban History Since World War II by
Historians have devoted surprisingly little attention to African American urban history of the 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.
Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought by 
An Architecture of Education by
This volume focuses broadly on the history of the social welfare reform work of nineteenth-century African American women who founded industrial and normal schools in the American South. Through their work in architecture and education, these women helped to memorialize the trauma and struggle of black Americans. Author Angel David Nieves tells the story of women such as Elizabeth Evelyn Wright (1872-1906), founder of the Voorhees Industrial School (now Voorhees College) in Denmark, South Carolina, in 1897, who not only promoted a program of race uplift through industrial education but also engaged with many of the pioneering African American architects of the period to design a school and surrounding community. Similarly, Jane (Jennie) Serepta Dean (1848-1913), a former slave, networked with elite Northern white designers to found the Manassas Industrial School in Manassas, Virginia, in 1892. An Architecture of Education examines the work of these women educators and reformers as a form of nascent nation building, noting the ways in which the social and political ideology of race uplift and gendered agency that they embodied was inscribed on the built environment through the design and construction of these model schools. In uncovering these women's role in the shaping of African American public spheres in the post-Reconstruction South, the book makes an important contribution to the history of African Americans' long struggle for equality and civil rights in the United States.
Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California by 
Design after Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities by
In Design After Decline, Brent D. Ryan chronicles the fraught and intermittently successful rebuilding of Detroit and Philadelphia in recent decades, concluding that small-scale strategies must give way to a revived combination of innovative urban design and social planning.
Developer's Frontier: The Making of the Western New York Landscape by
The publication of the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas marks the return of a reference work that is an essential tool to make the often complex history of "what we think" accessible to students and general readers. The original 1974 Dictionary of the History of Ideas has long been admired as a landmark document encapsulating the thinking of an era. This thoroughly re-envisioned New Dictionary of the History of Ideas brings fresh intelligence and a global perspective to bear on timeless questions about the individual and society. A distinguished team of international scholars explore new thinking in areas previously covered (communism, linguistics, physics) and present cross-cultural perspectives on more recent topics such as postmodernism, deconstruction and post-colonialism.
The Fate of Cities: Urban America and the Federal Government, 1945-2000 by
This impressive treatise provides a telling critique of how in the long run the government turned a blind eye to the fate of the cities. No other work offers such a useful narrative of presidential action or inaction and Washington political maneuvering with regard to urban issues. This comprehensive history will become the standard source for understanding the development and trajectory of federal policymaking affecting America's urban centers.
Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six by
This is the most important book I've read about Katrina and what came after. In the tradition of Howard Zinn this could be called 'The People's History of the Storm.' Jordan Flaherty was there on the front lines."--Eve Ensler, playwright of The Vagina Monologues and activist and founder of V-Day Floodlines is a firsthand account of community, culture, and resistance in New Orleans. The book weaves the stories of gay rappers, Mardi Gras Indians, Arab and Latino immigrants, public housing residents, and grassroots activists in the years before and after Katrina.
Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936-75 by 
Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940 by 
Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York by
The gentrification of Brooklyn has been one of the most striking developments in recent urban history. Considered one of the city's most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive townhouses. In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation. Challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's renaissance started in the 1990s, Osman locates the origins of gentrification in Brooklyn in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Long Default: New York City and the Urban Fiscal Crisis by 
Mapping Decline by
Mapping Decline examines the causes and consequences of St. Louis's urban crisis. It traces the complicity of private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, and federal housing policies in the "white flight" of people and wealth from the central city. And it traces the inadequacy-and often sheer folly-of a generation of urban renewal, in which even programs and resources aimed at eradicating blight in the city ended up encouraging flight to the suburbs.
Metropolitan Phoenix: Place Making and Community Building in the Desert by 
Neighborhood Change: Lessons in the Dynamics of Urban Decay. by 
Neighborhood Renewal: Middle-Class Resettlement and Incumbent Upgrading in American Neighborhood by 
Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream by
Americans are voting with their feet to abandon strip malls and suburban sprawl, and embrace instead a new type of community where they can live, work, shop, and play within easy walking distance. In The Option of Urbanism visionary developer and strategist Christopher B. Leinberger explains how government has favored one form of development over the last sixty years: the drivable suburb. Rooted in the driving forces of the economy - car manufacturing and the oil industry - this development has fostered the decline of community, contributed to urban decay, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and contributed to the rise in obesity and asthma.
Phoenix: The History of a Southwestern Metropolis by
A comprehensive history of America's ninth-largest city, a metropolitan area predicted to reach population of three million-plus by the end of the century. Luckingham covers the region's economic, political, social, and cultural history from mid-1860s to the present day.
A Plague on Your Houses: How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled by 
The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles by
In twelve engaging essays, William Fulton chronicles the history of urban planning in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, tracing the legacy of short-sighted political and financial gains that has resulted in a vast urban region on the brink of disaster. Looking at such diverse topics as shady real estate speculations, the construction of the Los Angeles subway, the battle over the future of South Central L.A. after the 1992 riots, and the emergence of Las Vegas as "the new Los Angeles," Fulton offers a fresh perspective on the city's epic sprawl. The only way to reverse the historical trends that have made Los Angeles increasingly unliveable, Fulton concludes, is to confront the prevailing "cocoon citizenship," the mind-set that prevents the city's inhabitants and leaders from recognizing Los Angeles's patchwork of communities as a single metropolis.
Searching for the Sunbelt: Historical Perspectives on a Region by 
Southwestern Homelands by
A collection of essays on the desert landscape between Santa Fe, Yuma, the Grand Canyon, and Nogales considers such topics as the Native American competition for space with cotton plantation farmers, new-age hippie garden and craft enclaves, and Hopi village life.
Suburban Nation by
Suburban Nation has given voice to a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and replace the last century's automobile-based settlement patterns with a return to more traditional planning.
Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit by
The Detroit Unreal Estate Agency was founded in 2008 as an open-access platform for research on urban crisis, using Detroit as a focal point. Against the apprehension of Detroit as a problem that needs to be solved, the Agency has regarded Detroit as a site where new ways of imagining, inhabiting and constructing the contemporary city are being invented, tested and advanced.
We Shall Not Be Moved: Rebuilding Home in the Wake of Katrina by 
