Private Pleasure, Public Plight

Private Pleasure, Public Plight PDF Author: Hans Kummer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351308068
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This is a social and cultural analysis of community life in metropolitan areas of three nations--the United States, Sweden, and England. The author focuses on how environment and culture interact to shape human behavior. Despite their many similarities, the three societies offer remarkably contrasting urban forms, and thus provide a unique opportunity for comparative research. The findings suggest goals for urban community development in America that can help regain a sense of human scale and establish more meaningful face-to-face contact among urban dwellers. David Popenoe is professor of sociology at Rutgers University. He has had visiting appointments in the Centre for Environment Studies (London), the University of Stockholm, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Among his other books are: Distributing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Societies; The Suburban Environment: Sweden and the United States; Neighborhood, City and Metropolis; The Urban Industrial Frontier and a basic text on sociology that will soon appear in its seventh edition.

Private Pleasure, Public Plight

Private Pleasure, Public Plight PDF Author: Hans Kummer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351308068
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a social and cultural analysis of community life in metropolitan areas of three nations--the United States, Sweden, and England. The author focuses on how environment and culture interact to shape human behavior. Despite their many similarities, the three societies offer remarkably contrasting urban forms, and thus provide a unique opportunity for comparative research. The findings suggest goals for urban community development in America that can help regain a sense of human scale and establish more meaningful face-to-face contact among urban dwellers. David Popenoe is professor of sociology at Rutgers University. He has had visiting appointments in the Centre for Environment Studies (London), the University of Stockholm, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Among his other books are: Distributing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Societies; The Suburban Environment: Sweden and the United States; Neighborhood, City and Metropolis; The Urban Industrial Frontier and a basic text on sociology that will soon appear in its seventh edition.

Private Pleasure, Public Plight

Private Pleasure, Public Plight PDF Author: David Popenoe
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412831901
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
A social and cultural analysis of community life in metropolitan areas of the USA, Sweden and England. The author focuses on how environment and culture interact to shape human behaviour. Despite their similarities, the three societies vary widely, offering opportunities to compare and contrast.

Prairie Crossing

Prairie Crossing PDF Author: John Scott Watson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252097971
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Carved out of century-old farmland near Chicago, the Prairie Crossing development is a novel experiment in urban public policy that preserves 69 percent of the land as open space. The for-profit project has set out to do nothing less than use access to nature as a means to challenge America's failed culture of suburban sprawl. The first comprehensive look at an American conservation community, Prairie Crossing goes beyond windmills and nest boxes to examine an effort to connect adults to the land while creating a healthy and humane setting for raising a new generation attuned to nature. John Scott Watson places Prairie Crossing within the wider context of suburban planning, revealing how two first-time developers implemented a visionary new land ethic that saved green space by building on it. The remarkable achievements include a high rate of resident civic participation, the reestablishment of a thriving prairie ecosystem, the reintroduction of endangered and threatened species, and improved water and air quality. Yet, as Watson shows, considerations like economic uncertainty, lack of racial and class diversity, and politics have challenged, and continue to challenge, Prairie Crossing and its residents.

The Costs of Privacy

The Costs of Privacy PDF Author: Steven L. Nock
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9780202369532
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Americans now enjoy vastly more privacy than in the past. But privacy makes it difficult to know much about other people; more privacy means more strangers. "The Costs of Privacy "begins with these questions: How, in an anonymous society of strangers, is trust possible? What enables both individuals and institutional actors to trust others whom they have never met and do not know? Nock suggests an answer: that "surveillance "establishes reputations, and it is these which permit us to trust strangers. Simply put, actors are willing to trust those whose reputations justify that trust. Not only does surveillance establish reputations, but it also maintains them among strangers. Nock defines such surveillance functionally, as overt and conspicuous forms of "credentials (e.g., "credit cards, educational degrees, drivers' licenses) and/or "ordeals (e.g., "lie detector tests, drug tests, integrity tests). He shows that the use of credentials and ordeals, over time, is correlated with the number of strangers in our society. Anonymity, then, is one of the costs of greater personal privacy; surveillance is another, offsetting cost. Older methods of surveillance have long been staples of our society. The concluding chapter focuses on newer methods of surveillance, those which can record genetic and biochemical information about people. Unlike traditional bases of reputation, genetic information makes it possible to predict future physical illnesses, mental health problems, and various types of behavior. These new forms of surveillance may seem attractive because they make it possible for actors to enter into risky relationships with many more people (i.e., trust them) without ever getting to know them. In so doing, we may be altering the nature of our public life. And that, argues Nock, may be the greatest cost of privacy.

Creative Participation

Creative Participation PDF Author: Michele Micheletti
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317261895
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Creative Participation presents the theory and practice of new innovative forms of political participation. Examples covered in the book include consumers engaging in political shopping, capitalists building green developments, UK Muslim youth campaigning on the internet, Sicilian housewives taking on the Mafia, young evangelical ministers becoming concerned with social change and vegetarians making political statements. The authors show how in these new campaigns individuals swarm like honeybees around particular issues, causing those in power to sit up and take notice. This is the essential guide to the new politics of participation.

Swedish Mentality

Swedish Mentality PDF Author: Åke Daun
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271071915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Is there a distinctly Swedish national character? Are Swedes truly shy, unemotional, conflict-avoiding, melancholy, and dour? Swedish Mentality, the English translation of the hugely successful book published in Sweden in 1989, considers the reality behind the myth. The author, Åke Daun, is a respected ethnologist who is sometimes referred to as the "guru" of Swedish character. In recent years, it has become popular to discuss Swedishness and Swedish identity. The advent of the European Union and the increasing presence of immigrant refugees in Sweden have fueled public debate on the distinctiveness of Swedish culture. Daun, however, goes beyond stereotype, drawing upon statistics gathered over more than a decade of research. The result is an entertaining and engagingly written book. Throughout, Daun quotes from interviews with native Swedes and immigrants as well as from travel accounts, folklore, and proverbs. We learn why some Swedes might prefer to walk up a flight of stairs rather than share an elevator with a neighbor and why some gain satisfaction from walking alone in the woods or going fishing. Daun describes a range of factors influencing Swedish character, including population composition, rural background, and even climate. He recognizes behavioral variations related to gender, age, class, and region, and he considers subtleties of individual character as well. Swedish Mentality should interest a wide array of readers, whether of Swedish descent or not.

Housing Needs and Policy Approaches

Housing Needs and Policy Approaches PDF Author: Willem Van Vliet
Publisher: Durham : Duke University Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Drawing upon research from six continents, Housing Needs and Policy Approaches analyzes the social problems involved with providing housing in the industrialized nations and in the Third World. The book focuses on four areas of concern: current trends in housing in specific Western countries, the role of Western governments in creating this housing, housing provisions in less developed nations, and the relationship of societal structure and housing, particularly with respect to the decentralization of population occurring in many regions.

Strangers in This Land

Strangers in This Land PDF Author: E. Allen Richardson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786457279
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This updated, revised version of the important 1988 first edition ("must reading for anyone seriously probing religious pluralism in our society"--Theology Today) examines the complex relationship between American ideals and increasing religious diversity. In the past two decades, American religion has become more pluralistic and the central dynamic of welcoming versus rejecting religious diversity is even more prominent and nuanced. Explored here are two competing visions of the American Dream as it relates to religion: America as a pluralistic society shaped by its diversity, and America as an assimilative society in which people of all backgrounds become "American."

Growing Compact

Growing Compact PDF Author: Joo Hwa P. Bay
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317190866
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Growing Compact: Urban Form, Density and Sustainability explores and unravels the phenomena, links and benefits between density, compactness and the sustainability of cities. It looks at the socio-climatic implications of density and takes a more holistic approach to sustainable urbanism by understanding the correlations between the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the city, and the challenges and opportunities with density. The book presents contributions from internationally well-known scholars, thinkers and practitioners whose theoretical and practical works address city planning, urban and architectural design for density and sustainability at various levels, including challenges in building resilience against climate change and natural disasters, capacity and integration for growth and adaptability, ageing, community and security, vegetation, food production, compact resource systems and regeneration.

Rates, Trends, Causes, and Consequences of Urban Land-use Change in the United States

Rates, Trends, Causes, and Consequences of Urban Land-use Change in the United States PDF Author: William Acevedo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Land use, Urban
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description