Community as Urban Practice

Community as Urban Practice PDF Author: Talja Blokland
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509504850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
Community is a central idea in urban studies but remains conceptually vague and empirically difficult to work with. Building on existing theories of community, Talja Blokland offers an important contribution to defining and understanding this key theme. Blokland argues that there has been too much focus on community as a stable construct, formed by durable relationships with kin, friends, social groups or neighbours. She draws attention to the non-durable, fluid encounters that constitute community, theorizing communities as shared urban practices in a globalizing world. The book proposes two core ways of thinking about community: the dimension of familiarity, defined by our ability to construct identities, and the dimension of access, defined by our freedom to enter and leave urban spaces. These dimensions form various urban configurations which enable us to experience and practise community in diverse ways. As this book maintains, community is after all an urban practice, not a fixed state of affairs.

Community as Urban Practice

Community as Urban Practice PDF Author: Talja Blokland
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509504850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Get Book Here

Book Description
Community is a central idea in urban studies but remains conceptually vague and empirically difficult to work with. Building on existing theories of community, Talja Blokland offers an important contribution to defining and understanding this key theme. Blokland argues that there has been too much focus on community as a stable construct, formed by durable relationships with kin, friends, social groups or neighbours. She draws attention to the non-durable, fluid encounters that constitute community, theorizing communities as shared urban practices in a globalizing world. The book proposes two core ways of thinking about community: the dimension of familiarity, defined by our ability to construct identities, and the dimension of access, defined by our freedom to enter and leave urban spaces. These dimensions form various urban configurations which enable us to experience and practise community in diverse ways. As this book maintains, community is after all an urban practice, not a fixed state of affairs.

Practicing Community

Practicing Community PDF Author: Rhoda H. Halperin
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 9780292731172
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Cincinnati's East End river community has been home to generations of working-class people. This racially mixed community has roots that reach back as far as seven generations. But the community is vulnerable. Developers bulldoze "raggedy" but affordable housing to build upscale condos, even as East Enders fight to preserve the community by participating in urban development planning controlled by powerful outsiders. This book portrays how East Enders practice the preservation of community. Drawing on more than six years of anthropological research and advocacy in the East End, Rhoda Halperin argues for redefining community not merely as a place, but as a set of culturally embedded and class-marked practices that give priority to caring for children and the elderly, procuring livelihood, and providing support for family, friends, and neighbors. These practices create the structures of community within the larger urban power structure. Halperin uses different genres to weave the voices of East Enders throughout the book. Poems and narratives offer poignant insights into the daily struggles against impersonal market forces that work against the struggle for livelihood. This firsthand account questions commonly held assumptions about working-class people. In a fresh way, it reveals the cultural construction of marginality, from the viewpoints of both "real East Enders" and the urban power structure.

Latino City

Latino City PDF Author: Erualdo R. Gonzalez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317590228
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
American cities are increasingly turning to revitalization strategies that embrace the ideas of new urbanism and the so-called creative class in an attempt to boost economic growth and prosperity to downtown areas. These efforts stir controversy over residential and commercial gentrification of working class, ethnic areas. Spanning forty years, Latino City provides an in-depth case study of the new urbanism, creative class, and transit-oriented models of planning and their implementation in Santa Ana, California, one of the United States’ most Mexican communities. It provides an intimate analysis of how revitalization plans re-imagine and alienate a place, and how community-based participation approaches address the needs and aspirations of lower-income Latino urban areas undergoing revitalization. The book provides a critical introduction to the main theoretical debates and key thinkers related to the new urbanism, transit-oriented, and creative class models of urban revitalization. It is the first book to examine contemporary models of choice for revitalization of US cities from the point of view of a Latina/o-majority central city, and thus initiates new lines of analysis and critique of models for Latino inner city neighborhood and downtown revitalization in the current period of socio-economic and cultural change. Latino City will appeal to students and scholars in urban planning, urban studies, urban history, urban policy, neighborhood and community development, central city development, urban politics, urban sociology, geography, and ethnic/Latino Studies, as well as practitioners, community organizations, and grassroots leaders immersed in these fields.

Community Planning

Community Planning PDF Author: Stephanie B. Kelly
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742574482
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Community Planning: How to Solve Urban and Environmental Problems covers the basic theoretical principles of community planning and how planning has evolved in the United States. The book defines the interdisciplinary nature of the field, identifies the forces that shape the planning process, and explains the sub-specialized areas of community planning. Throughout the text, the author draws connections between the theoretical principles of planning and their practical applications, leading to an emphasis on the essential skill that links theory to implementation and practice— problem solving. After reading each chapter and corresponding exercises, students learn to link the theoretical concepts with real world planning problems on their campus, downtown, and hometowns. Several major themes run throughout the text. First, understanding the theoretical principles of community planning leads to effective practical applications in problem solving. Second, using the problem-oriented approach is an effective way of dealing with the immediate situations that confront community planners, and lastly, planners are confronted with their political implications, therefore discussions about the role of federal, state, and local regulations on planning practice are woven into the text. Community Planning: How to Solve Urban and Environmental Problems provides students with an understanding of the events that shape community planning, the particular forces that impact the planning process, and the knowledge that is needed to link content areas together to solve planning problems. The book is suitable for students in regional, environmental, city, and community planning courses, as well as for students in related fields including geography, sociology, criminal justice, public administration, and economics. The content and problem solving techniques are valuable for all students in order to participate in community service activities in the future, and the practical aspects of the text make it suitable as a reference for professional planners and local planning board members as well.

Urban Renewal, Community and Participation

Urban Renewal, Community and Participation PDF Author: Julie Clark
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319723111
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
This edited collection investigates the human dimension of urban renewal, using a range of case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, India and North America, to explore how the conception and delivery of regeneration initiatives can strengthen or undermine local communities. Ultimately aiming to understand how urban residents can successfully influence or manage change in their own communities, contributing authors interrogate the complex relationships between policy, planning, economic development, governance systems, history and urban morphology. Alongside more conventional methods, analytical approaches include built form analysis, participant observation, photographic analysis and urban labs. Appealing to upper level undergraduate and masters' students, academics and others involved in urban renewal, the book offers a rich combination of theoretical insight and empirical analysis, contributing to literature on gentrification, the right to the city, and community participation in neighbourhood change.

We Own the City

We Own the City PDF Author: Francesca Miazzo
Publisher: Valiz
ISBN: 9789078088912
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Result of a collaboration between CITIES and ARCAM, the Amsterdam Center of Architecture, in order to show the results of a joint investigation into the development of bottom-up initiatives and their relationships with the history of the city, brought to life in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Moscow, New York and Taipei.

Urban Health and Society

Urban Health and Society PDF Author: Nicholas Freudenberg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470483032
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
Praise for Urban Health and Society "This is a spectacular resource for practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and students interested in improving the lives and health of individuals and families in urban settings. This book provides the most current frameworks, research, and approaches for understanding how unique features of the urban physical and social environments that shape the health of over half of the world's population that is already residing in large cities. Its interdisciplinary research and practice focus is a welcome innovation." Hortensia Amaro, associate dean, Urban Health Research; Distinguished Professor, Bouve College of Health Sciences; and director, Institute on Urban Health Research, Northeastern University "Urban Health and Society: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research and Practice provides students in public health, urban planning, social work, and other professions with the critical knowledge and practical guidance they need to work as effective members of interdisciplinary teams aimed at studying and addressing urban health problems. Throughout the chapters, the book's attention to community participation, social justice, and equity as well as interdisciplinary research methods make it an invaluable resource." Barbara A. Israel, professor, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan "The book will be of great interest to academics, politicians, planners, and public health professionals attempting to understand or reduce urban health risks, create safe urban environments, and deliver effective and sustainable health services and programs to urban populations." Stephen Lepore, professor and PhD program director, Department of Public Health, Temple University

Cities for Life

Cities for Life PDF Author: Jason Corburn
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831727
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
In cities around the world, planning and health experts are beginning to understand the role of social and environmental conditions that lead to trauma. By respecting the lived experience of those who were most impacted by harms, some cities have developed innovative solutions for urban trauma. In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-makers in these cities over a ten-year period, as individuals and communities worked to heal from trauma--including from gun violence, housing and food insecurity, poverty, and other harms. Cities for Life is about a new way forward with urban communities that rebuilds our social institutions, practices, and policies to be more focused on healing and health.

Arts in Place

Arts in Place PDF Author: Cara Courage
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317333624
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary book explores the role of art in placemaking in urban environments, analysing how artists and communities use arts to improve their quality of life. It explores the concept of social practice placemaking, where artists and community members are seen as equal experts in the process. Drawing on examples of local level projects from the USA and Europe, the book explores the impact of these projects on the people involved, on their relationship to the place around them, and on city policy and planning practice. Case studies include Art Tunnel Smithfield, Dublin, an outdoor art gallery and community space in an impoverished area of the city; The Drawing Shed, London, a contemporary arts practice operating in housing estates and parks in Walthamstow; and Big Car, Indianapolis, an arts organisation operating across the whole of this Midwest city. This book offers a timely contribution, bridging the gap between cultural studies and placemaking. It will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners working in geography, urban studies, architecture, planning, sociology, cultural studies and the arts.

Toward the Healthy City

Toward the Healthy City PDF Author: Jason Corburn
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262258099
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
A call to reconnect the fields of urban planning and public health that offers a new decision-making framework for healthy city planning. In distressed urban neighborhoods where residential segregation concentrates poverty, liquor stores outnumber supermarkets, toxic sites are next to playgrounds, and more money is spent on prisons than schools, residents also suffer disproportionately from disease and premature death. Recognizing that city environments and the planning processes that shape them are powerful determinants of population health, urban planners today are beginning to take on the added challenge of revitalizing neglected urban neighborhoods in ways that improve health and promote greater equity. In Toward the Healthy City, Jason Corburn argues that city planning must return to its roots in public health and social justice. The first book to provide a detailed account of how city planning and public health practices can reconnect to address health disparities, Toward the Healthy City offers a new decision-making framework called “healthy city planning” that reframes traditional planning and development issues and offers a new scientific evidence base for participatory action, coalition building, and ongoing monitoring. To show healthy city planning in action, Corburn examines collaborations between government agencies and community coalitions in the San Francisco Bay area, including efforts to link environmental justice, residents' chronic illnesses, housing and real estate development projects, and planning processes with public health. Initiatives like these, Corburn points out, go well beyond recent attempts by urban planners to promote public health by changing the design of cities to encourage physical activity. Corburn argues for a broader conception of healthy urban governance that addresses the root causes of health inequities.