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Author: Jenny Stuber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520973704
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
How is it possible for a town to exist where the median household income is about $73,000, but the median home price is about $4,000,000? Boring into the "impossible" math of Aspen, Colorado, Stuber explores how middle-class people have found a way to live in this supergentrified town. Interviewing a range of residents, policymakers, and officials, Stuber shows that what resolves the math equation between incomes and home values in Aspen, Colorado—the X-factor that makes middle-class life possible—is the careful orchestration of diverse class interests within local politics and the community. She explores how this is achieved through a highly regulatory and extractive land use code that provides symbolic and material value to highly affluent investors and part-year residents, as well as less-affluent locals, many of whom benefit from an array of subsidies—including an extensive affordable housing program—that redistribute economic resources in ways that make it possible for middle-class residents to live there. Stuber further examines how Latinos, who provide much of the service work in Aspen and who tend to live outside the town, fit into the social geography of one of the most unequal places in the country. Overall, Stuber argues that the Aspen's ability to balance the interests of its diverse class constituencies is not a foregone conclusion; rather, it is the result of efforts by local stakeholders—citizens, government, developers, and vacationers—to preserve the town’s unique feel and value, and "keep Aspen, Aspen" in all its complex dynamics.
Author: Jenny Stuber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520973704
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Get Book Here
Book Description
How is it possible for a town to exist where the median household income is about $73,000, but the median home price is about $4,000,000? Boring into the "impossible" math of Aspen, Colorado, Stuber explores how middle-class people have found a way to live in this supergentrified town. Interviewing a range of residents, policymakers, and officials, Stuber shows that what resolves the math equation between incomes and home values in Aspen, Colorado—the X-factor that makes middle-class life possible—is the careful orchestration of diverse class interests within local politics and the community. She explores how this is achieved through a highly regulatory and extractive land use code that provides symbolic and material value to highly affluent investors and part-year residents, as well as less-affluent locals, many of whom benefit from an array of subsidies—including an extensive affordable housing program—that redistribute economic resources in ways that make it possible for middle-class residents to live there. Stuber further examines how Latinos, who provide much of the service work in Aspen and who tend to live outside the town, fit into the social geography of one of the most unequal places in the country. Overall, Stuber argues that the Aspen's ability to balance the interests of its diverse class constituencies is not a foregone conclusion; rather, it is the result of efforts by local stakeholders—citizens, government, developers, and vacationers—to preserve the town’s unique feel and value, and "keep Aspen, Aspen" in all its complex dynamics.
Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476769907
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
"The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"--
Author: Richard Reeves
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815735499
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America. In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else. The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child. Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it. Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.
Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393239500
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Describes how a Bangladeshi immigrant, shot in the Dallas mini mart where he worked in the days after September 11 in a revenge crime, forgave his assailant and petitioned the state of Texas to spare his attacker the death penalty.
Author: Richard V. Reeves
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815726481
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 26
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Book Description
THE BROOKINGS ESSAY: In the spirit of its commitment to high-quality, independent research, the Brookings Institution has commissioned works on major topics of public policy by distinguished authors, including Brookings scholars. The Brookings Essay is a multi-platform product aimed to engage readers in open dialogue and debate. The views expressed, however, are solely those of the author. Available in ebook only.
Author: Thomas L. Dyja
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143125095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561
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Book Description
Winner of the Chicago Tribune‘s 2013 Heartland Prize A critically acclaimed history of Chicago at mid-century, featuring many of the incredible personalities that shaped American culture Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop in Chicago, and this flow of people and commodities made it the crucible for American culture and innovation. In luminous prose, Chicago native Thomas Dyja re-creates the story of the city in its postwar prime and explains its profound impact on modern America—from Chess Records to Playboy, McDonald’s to the University of Chicago. Populated with an incredible cast of characters, including Mahalia Jackson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Sun Ra, Simone de Beauvoir, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Turkel, and Mayor Richard J. Daley, The Third Coast recalls the prominence of the Windy City in all its grandeur.
Author: Eric Liu
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610391950
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
From Tony Hsieh to Amy Chua to Jeremy Lin, Chinese Americans are now arriving at the highest levels of American business, civic life, and culture. But what makes this story of immigrant ascent unique is that Chinese Americans are emerging at just the same moment when China has emerged -- and indeed may displace America -- at the center of the global scene. What does it mean to be Chinese American in this moment? And how does exploring that question alter our notions of just what an American is and will be? In many ways, Chinese Americans today are exemplars of the American Dream: during a crowded century and a half, this community has gone from indentured servitude, second-class status and outright exclusion to economic and social integration and achievement. But this narrative obscures too much: the Chinese Americans still left behind, the erosion of the American Dream in general, the emergence -- perhaps -- of a Chinese Dream, and how other Americans will look at their countrymen of Chinese descent if China and America ever become adversaries. As Chinese Americans reconcile competing beliefs about what constitutes success, virtue, power, and purpose, they hold a mirror up to their country in a time of deep flux. In searching, often personal essays that range from the meaning of Confucius to the role of Chinese Americans in shaping how we read the Constitution to why he hates the hyphen in "Chinese-American," Eric Liu pieces together a sense of the Chinese American identity in these auspicious years for both countries. He considers his own public career in American media and government; his daughter's efforts to hold and release aspects of her Chinese inheritance; and the still-recent history that made anyone Chinese in America seem foreign and disloyal until proven otherwise. Provocative, often playful but always thoughtful, Liu breaks down his vast subject into bite-sized chunks, along the way providing insights into universal matters: identity, nationalism, family, and more.
Author: Eric L. Motley
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0310349648
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
In this inspiring memoir, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush recounts the lessons he learned from his small Southern hometown. Welcome to Madison Park, a small community in Alabama founded by freed slaves in 1880. Eric Motley came of age in this remarkable place, where lessons in self-determination, hope, and an unceasing belief in the American dream taught him everything he needed for his life’s journey—a journey that led him to the Oval Office as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush. Eric grew up among people who believed in giving and never turning away from a neighbor’s need. There was Aunt Shine, the goodly matriarch who cared so much about young Motley’s schooling that she would stand up in a crowded church and announce Eric’s progress—or shortcomings; Old Man Salery, who secretly siphoned gasoline from his beat-up car into the Motleys’ tank at night; Motley’s grandparents, who spent the last of their seed money on books for Eric; and Reverend Brinkley, a man of enormous faith and simple living. It was said that whenever the Reverend came your way, light abounded. Life in Madison Park wasn’t always easy or fair, and Motley reveals personal and heartbreaking stories of racial injustice and segregation. But Eric shows how the community taught him everything he needed to know about love and faith.
Author: M. Jeffrey Hardwick
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812292995
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
The shopping mall is both the most visible and the most contentious symbol of American prosperity. Despite their convenience, malls are routinely criticized for representing much that is wrong in America—sprawl, conspicuous consumption, the loss of regional character, and the decline of Mom and Pop stores. So ubiquitous are malls that most people would be suprised to learn that they are the brainchild of a single person, architect Victor Gruen. An immigrant from Austria who fled the Nazis in 1938, Gruen based his idea for the mall on an idealized America: the dream of concentrated shops that would benefit the businessperson as well as the consumer and that would foster a sense of shared community. Modernist Philip Johnson applauded Gruen for creating a true civic art and architecture that enriched Americans' daily lives, and for decades he received praise from luminaries such as Lewis Mumford, Winthrop Rockefeller, and Lady Bird Johnson. Yet, in the end, Gruen returned to Europe, thoroughly disillusioned with his American dream. In Mall Maker, the first biography of this visionary spirit, M. Jeffrey Hardwick relates Gruen's successes and failures—his work at the 1939 World's Fair, his makeover of New York's Fifth Avenue boutiques, his rejected plans for reworking entire communities, such as Fort Worth, Texas, and his crowning achievement, the enclosed shopping mall. Throughout Hardwick illuminates the dramatic shifts in American culture during the mid-twentieth century, notably the rise of suburbia and automobiles, the death of downtown, and the effect these changes had on American life. Gruen championed the redesign of suburbs and cities through giant shopping malls, earnestly believing that he was promoting an American ideal, the ability to build a community. Yet, as malls began covering the landscape and downtowns became more depressed, Gruen became painfully aware that his dream of overcoming social problems through architecture and commerce was slipping away. By the tumultuous year of 1968, it had disappeared. Victor Gruen made America depend upon its shopping malls. While they did not provide an invigorated sense of community as he had hoped, they are enduring monuments to the lure of consumer culture.
Author: Mia Birdsong
Publisher: Hachette Go
ISBN: 158005806X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
An Invitation to Community and Models for Connection After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied. It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life"--the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility--can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community. In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete. Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up--literally and figuratively--points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.
