Author: Charles Platt
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1473219639
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
A novel of a 21st century dystopia where urbanization has reached its limits.

Author: Quill R. Kukla
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190855363
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
City Living is about urban spaces, urban dwellers, and how these spaces and people make, shape, and change one another. More people live in cities than ever before: more than 50% of the earth's people are urban dwellers. As downtown cores gentrify and globalize, they are becoming more diverse than ever, along lines of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexuality, and age. Meanwhile, we are in the early stages of what seems sure to be a period of intense civil unrest. During such periods, cities generally become the primary sites where tensions and resistance are concentrated, negotiated, and performed. For all of these reasons, understanding cities and contemporary city living is pressing and exciting from almost any disciplinary and political perspective. Quill R Kukla offers the first systematic philosophical investigation of the nature of city life and city dwellers. The book draws on empirical and ethnographic work in geography, anthropology, urban planning, and several other disciplines in order to explore the impact that cities have on their dwellers and that dwellers have on their cities. It begins with a philosophical exploration of spatially embodied agency and of the specific forms of agency and spatiality that are distinctive of urban life. It explores how gentrification is enacted and experienced at the level of embodied agency, arguing that gentrifying spaces are contested territories that shape and are shaped by their dwellers. The book then moves to an exploration of repurposed cities, which are cities materially designed to support one sociopolitical order, but in which that order collapsed, leaving new dwellers to use the space in new ways. Through detailed original ethnography of the repurposed cities of Berlin and Johannesburg, Kukla makes the case that in repurposed cities, we can see vividly how material spaces shape and constrain the agency and experience of dwellers, while dwellers creatively shape the spaces they inhabit in accordance with their needs. The book concludes with a reconsideration of the right to the city, asking what would be involved in creating a city that enabled the agency and flourishing of all its diverse inhabitants.

Author: Alissa Hessler
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
ISBN: 1624144101
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
The No-Nonsense Guide For Country Dreamers Though moving to the country takes determination, every ex-urbanite says it was the best decision they ever made. The same rings true for Alissa Hessler, who relocated from Seattle to rural Maine years ago and has never looked back. In this book she uses her wit, charm and experience to help you chart a path to successful country living. Ditch the City and Go Country covers the ins and outs of how to find a home, how to keep your current job remotely or where to look for a new one, how to own livestock and prepare for disasters, how to make a smooth transition and become a part of your new community and how to embrace the seasons. With this must-have guide, you’ll be able to stop daydreaming and finally live the life you’ve always wanted in the country. Alissa Hessler was inspired to launch her blog Urban Exodus after relocating to Maine in 2011. She has been featured in Modern Farmer, Popular Photography, Click Magazine and Maine Home.

Author: Mark Sundeen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101618051
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
“An in-depth and compelling account of diverse Americans living off the grid.” —Los Angeles Times The radical search for the simple life in today’s America. On a frigid April night, a classically trained opera singer, five months pregnant, and her husband, a former marine biologist, disembark an Amtrak train in La Plata, Missouri, assemble two bikes, and pedal off into the night, bound for a homestead they've purchased, sight unseen. Meanwhile, a horticulturist, heir to the Great Migration that brought masses of African Americans to Detroit, and her husband, a product of the white flight from it, have turned to urban farming to revitalize the blighted city they both love. And near Missoula, Montana, a couple who have been at the forefront of organic farming for decades navigate what it means to live and raise a family ethically. A work of immersive journalism steeped in a distinctively American social history and sparked by a personal quest, The Unsettlers traces the search for the simple life through the stories of these new pioneers and what inspired each of them to look for -- or create -- a better existence. Captivating and clear-eyed, it dares us to imagine what a sustainable, ethical, authentic future might actually look like.

Author: John L. Mikesell
Publisher: Irwin Professional Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description

Author: Jonathan Foiles
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1948742489
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Book Description
Jonathan Foiles weaves together psychology and public policy, exploring the trauma underlying urbanization in a book Kirkus Reviews calls an "urgent call for reform." When Jonathan Foiles was a graduate studen

Author: Michael Bennett
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816519491
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Cities are often thought to be separate from nature, but recent trends in ecocriticism demand that we consider them as part of the total environment. This new collection of essays sharpens the focus on the nature of cities by exploring the facets of an urban ecocriticism, by reminding city dwellers of their place in ecosystems, and by emphasizing the importance of this connection in understanding urban life and culture. The editorsÑboth raised in small towns but now living in major urban areasÑare especially concerned with the sociopolitical construction of all environments, both natural and manmade. Following an opening interview with Andrew Ross exploring the general parameters of urban ecocriticism, they present essays that explore urban nature writing, city parks, urban "wilderness," ecofeminism and the city, and urban space. The volume includes contributions on topics as wide-ranging as the urban poetry of English writers from Donne to Gay, the manufactured wildness of a gambling casino, and the marketing of cosmetics to urban women by idealizing Third World "naturalness." These essays seek to reconceive nature and its cultural representations in ways that contribute to understanding the contemporary cityscape. They explore the theoretical issues that arise when one attempts to adopt and adapt an environmental perspective for analyzing urban life. The Nature of Cities offers the ecological component often missing from cultural analyses of the city and the urban perspective often lacking in environmental approaches to contemporary culture. By bridging the historical gap between environmentalism, cultural studies, and urban experience, the book makes a statement of lasting importance to the development of the ecocritical movement. CONTENTS Part 1ÑThe Nature of Cities 1. Urban Ecocriticism: An Introduction, Michael Bennett & David Teague 2. The Social Claim on Urban Ecology, Andrew Ross (interviewed by Michael Bennett) Part 2ÑUrban Nature Writing 3. London Here and Now: Walking, Streets, and Urban Environments in English Poetry from Donne to Gay, Gary Roberts 4. "All Things Natural Are Strange": Audre Lorde, Urban Nature, and Cultural Place, Kathleen R. Wallace 5. Inculcating Wildness: Ecocomposition, Nature Writing, and the Regreening of the American Suburb, Terrell Dixon Part 3ÑCity Parks 6. Writers and Dilettantes: Central Park and the Literary Origins of Antebellum Urban Nature, Adam W. Sweeting 7. Postindustrial Park or Bourgeois Playground? Preservation and Urban Restructuring at Seattle's Gas Works Park, Richard Heyman Part 4ÑUrban "Wilderness" 8. Boyz in the Woods: Urban Wilderness in American Cinema, Andrew Light 9. Central High and the Suburban Landscape: The Ecology of White Flight, David Teague 10. Manufacturing the Ghetto: Anti-urbanism and the Spatialization of Race, Michael Bennett Part 5ÑEcofeminism and the City 11. An Ecofeminist Perspective on the Urban Environment, Catherine Villanueva Gardner 12. "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman": The Political Economy of Contemporary Cosmetics Discourse, Laura L. Sullivan Part 6ÑTheorizing Urban Space 13. Darwin's City, or Life Underground: Evolution, Progress, and the Shapes of Things to Come, Joanne Gottlieb 14. Nature in the Apartment: Humans, Pets, and the Value of Incommensurability, David R. Shumway 15. Cosmology in the Casino: Simulacra of Nature in the Interiorized Wilderness, Michael P. Branch

Author: Christina McDowell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982132809
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This “delicious take on the one percent in our nation’s capital” (Town & Country) and clever combination of The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Nest explores what Washington, DC’s high society members do behind the closed doors of their stately homes. They are the families considered worthy of a listing in the exclusive Green Book—a discriminative diary created by the niece of Edith Roosevelt’s social secretary. Their aristocratic bloodlines are woven into the very fabric of Washington—generation after generation. Their old money and manner lurk through the cobblestone streets of Georgetown, Kalorama, and Capitol Hill. They only socialize within their inner circle, turning a blind eye to those who come and go on the political merry-go-round. These parents and their children live in gilded existences of power and privilege. But what they have failed to understand is that the world is changing. And when the family of one of their own is held hostage and brutally murdered, everything about their legacy is called into question in this unputdownable novel that “combines social satire with moral outrage to offer a masterfully crafted, absorbing read that can simply entertain on one level and provoke reasoned discourse on another” (Booklist, starred review).

Author: Christopher Nyerges
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510763155
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Practical Guidelines to Resourceful City Living, Self-reliance, Emergency Preparedness, and Getting More for Less A survival guidebook that reflects the world in which we now find ourselves. The post 9/11 world seems a bit more hostile, as terrorist threats and attacks are no longer a surprise. The Great Tsunami of Christmas 2004 showed us that quick extinctions (like Noah’s flood) can and do happen without apparent warning. Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy not only told us that it can happen to us, but that it is foolhardy to make no preparations and pretend that the government will take care of you in the post-disaster landscape. The price of gold id rising again. War, rumors of war, famines, political instability, economic instability, global pandemics – all these and more are causes of concern to the average family. Economic survival is also addresses, since this is such a fundamental building block of everything else in modern society. Money cannot be ignored.

Author: Ned Kaufman
Publisher: ORO Applied Research + Design
ISBN: 9780615412702
Category : Architecture and society
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Pressures and Distortions provides a close-up look at how residents of cities in the developing world are reshaping their environments in response to social, economic, and environmental changes. The cities chronicled range from China through Indonesia to Latin America. In each of the book's four sections, a team of researchers explores how an urban phenomenon of global importance is playing out in a specific city. The studies analyze the impacts of housing shortages on the residents of Shenzhen's vanishing urban villages and Shanghai's deteriorating lanes; the production of self-built housing and neighborhoods in Mexico City (as well as Lima, Rio de Janeiro, and Bogotá); the performance of disaster relief housing constructed in Banda Aceh after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami of 2004; and the reception of Bogota's award-winning new public buildings and spaces by urban residents. Throughout, the authors take a resident-centered view of urbanism and architecture. They interview city dwellers and painstakingly document their living environments as well as their self-built home improvements, using photography and measured drawings. They follow city dwellers with video cameras, recording their day-to-day interactions with urban spaces and with other inhabitants. They carefully chart the stages through which self-built communities are established and consolidated. In each case, the authors use critical examination of policy frameworks and statistical evidence to situate fine-grained observation within a larger context of urban production. Their findings avoid simplistic prescriptions while prompting constructive proposals for governments, NGOs, designers, and communities. Pressures and Distortions is a publication of the Research Program of Rafael Viñoly Architects, a global practice with headquarters in New York. The authors, based in Mexico, Colombia, China, Australia, France, and the US, were selected through a competitive process to receive grants that enabled them to pursue their independent research. The Research Program is proud to present their findings in this handsomely produce volume, containing more than 500 original full-color photographs, plans, and drawings, as well as a DVD with over 100 video and audio recordings.Authors include: Jay Bargmann (Foreword), Ned Kaufman (Editor), Hai Zhang, Marcel Baumler, Richard De Pirro, Ana Rota Garcia Lascuráin, Mayra Gamboa, Juan Carlos Zavala, David O'Brien, Ahmed Iftekhar, Nicolas Tixier, Ida Assefa, Camilo Cifuentes, Sandra Fiori, juL mcOisans, and Céline Rouchy.