Cities Are Good for You

Cities Are Good for You PDF Author: Leo Hollis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620402076
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Cities are where the twenty-first century is really going to happen. Already at the beginning of the century, we became 50% urban as a global population, and by 2050 we're going to be up to 70% urban. So cities could either be our coffin or our ark. Leo Hollis presents evidence that cities can deliver a better life and a better world in the future. From exploring what slime mold can tell us about traffic flow, to looking at how traditional civic power structures are being overturned by Twitter, to investigating how cities all over the world are tackling climate change, population growth, poverty, shifting work patterns and the maintenance of the fragile trust of their citizens, Cities Are Good for You offers a new perspective on the city. Combining anecdote, scientific studies, historical portraits, first-hand interviews and observations of some of the most exciting world cities, Hollis upends long-held assumptions with new questions: Where do cities come from? Can we build a city from scratch? Does living in the city make you happier or fitter? Is the metropolis of the future female? What is the relationship between cities and creativity? And are slums really all that bad? Cities Are Good for You introduces us to dreamers, planners, revolutionaries, writers, scientists, architects, slum-dwellers and kings. Ranging globally and through time in search of answers--from the archive to the laboratory, from City Hall to the architect's desk--it is above all driven by the idea that cities are for people and by people.

Cities Are Good for You

Cities Are Good for You PDF Author: Leo Hollis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620402076
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cities are where the twenty-first century is really going to happen. Already at the beginning of the century, we became 50% urban as a global population, and by 2050 we're going to be up to 70% urban. So cities could either be our coffin or our ark. Leo Hollis presents evidence that cities can deliver a better life and a better world in the future. From exploring what slime mold can tell us about traffic flow, to looking at how traditional civic power structures are being overturned by Twitter, to investigating how cities all over the world are tackling climate change, population growth, poverty, shifting work patterns and the maintenance of the fragile trust of their citizens, Cities Are Good for You offers a new perspective on the city. Combining anecdote, scientific studies, historical portraits, first-hand interviews and observations of some of the most exciting world cities, Hollis upends long-held assumptions with new questions: Where do cities come from? Can we build a city from scratch? Does living in the city make you happier or fitter? Is the metropolis of the future female? What is the relationship between cities and creativity? And are slums really all that bad? Cities Are Good for You introduces us to dreamers, planners, revolutionaries, writers, scientists, architects, slum-dwellers and kings. Ranging globally and through time in search of answers--from the archive to the laboratory, from City Hall to the architect's desk--it is above all driven by the idea that cities are for people and by people.

Walkable City

Walkable City PDF Author: Jeff Speck
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0865477728
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Presents a plan for American cities that focuses on making downtowns walkable and less attractive to drivers through smart growth and sustainable design

Cities for People

Cities for People PDF Author: Jan Gehl
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1597269840
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use—or could use—the spaces where they live and work. In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people. Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl emphasizes four human issues that he sees as essential to successful city planning. He explains how to develop cities that are Lively, Safe, Sustainable, and Healthy. Focusing on these issues leads Gehl to think of even the largest city on a very small scale. For Gehl, the urban landscape must be considered through the five human senses and experienced at the speed of walking rather than at the speed of riding in a car or bus or train. This small-scale view, he argues, is too frequently neglected in contemporary projects. In a final chapter, Gehl makes a plea for city planning on a human scale in the fast- growing cities of developing countries. A “Toolbox,” presenting key principles, overviews of methods, and keyword lists, concludes the book. The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl’s work around the globe.

Fit Cities

Fit Cities PDF Author: Karen K. Lee
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
ISBN: 0385685335
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Dr. Karen K. Lee is a force for good around the world, working behind the scenes to help people improve their diets, get in shape, and live longer. In the arena of public health, this Canadian woman is an international superstar. In the early 2000s, she went to the US to join a team of "health detectives" for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smoking was in decline, and so the US CDC's attention had turned to the next biggest causes of premature death: over-eating and under-exercising. Dr. Lee's zeal in seeking out the root causes--in schools, restaurants, and environments that encourage a sedentary, calorie-packed way of life--was matched by her inspired approach to finding solutions. She was next recruited by the City of New York, where she was instrumental in introducing Active Design, an initiative for creating opportunities for healthy living in everyday life that has helped reverse childhood obesity and lengthen life expectancies. Her influence has since spread around the world. Dr. Lee has always known that health education, public service announcements, and our individual struggles are not enough. The world around us needs to change to support us in taking steps (literally and figuratively) to save our own lives. Working with civic leaders, city planners, and architects, she has been a pioneer in addressing today's leading health problems, such as obesity, heart disease, strokes, cancers, and diabetes. Fit Cities is a riveting memoir of that work--the story of how Dr. Lee and her many teams of brilliant collaborators uncovered, and set about eradicating, the causes of a pandemic of unhealthy living. And every step of the way, it offers invaluable advice on how we can all help ourselves to live healthier lives.

Good Cities, Better Lives

Good Cities, Better Lives PDF Author: Peter Hall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134545673
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
This book has one central theme: how, in the United Kingdom, can we create better cities and towns in which to live and work and play? What can we learn from other countries, especially our near neighbours in Europe? And, in turn, can we provide lessons for other countries facing similar dilemmas? Urban Britain is not functioning as it should. Social inequalities and regional disparities show little sign of going away. Efforts to generate growth, and spread it to the poorer areas of cities, have failed dismally. Much new urban development and redevelopment is not up to standard. Yet there are cities in mainland Europe, which have set new standards of high-quality sustainable urban development. This book looks at these best-practice examples – in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Scandinavia, – and suggests ways in which the UK and other countries could do the same. The book is in three parts. Part 1 analyses the main issues for urban planning and development – in economic development and job generation, sustainable development, housing policy, transport and development mechanisms – and probes how practice in the UK has fallen short. Part Two embarks on a tour of best-practice cities in Europe, starting in Germany with the country’s boosting of its cities’ economies, moving to the spectacularly successful new housing developments in the Netherlands, from there to France’s integrated city transport, then to Scandinavia’s pursuit of sustainability for its cities, and finally back to Germany, to Freiburg – the city that ‘did it all’. Part Three sums up the lessons of Part Two and sets out the key steps needed to launch a new wave of urban development and regeneration on a radically different basis.

Planning Cities With Young People and Schools

Planning Cities With Young People and Schools PDF Author: Deborah L. McKoy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000467058
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Offering the overlooked but essential viewpoint of young people from low-income communities of color and their public schools, Planning Cities With Young People and Schools offers an urgently needed set of best-practice recommendations for urban planners to change the status quo and reimagine the future of our cities for and with young people. Working with more than 10,000 students over two decades from the San Francisco Bay Area, to New York, to Tohoku, Japan, this work produces a wealth of insights on issues ranging from environmental planning, housing, transportation, regional planning, and urban education. Part I presents a theory of change for planning more equitable, youth-friendly cities by cultivating intergenerational communities of practice where young people work alongside city planners and adult professionals. Part II explores youth engagement in resilience, housing, and transportation planning through an analysis of literature and international examples of engaging children and youth in city planning. Part III speaks directly to practitioners, scholars, and students alike, presenting "Six Essentials for Planning Just and Joyful Cities" as necessary precursors to effective city planning with and for our most marginalized, children, youth, and public schools. For academics, policy makers, and practitioners, this book raises the importance of education systems and young people as critical to urban planning and the future of our cities.

City

City PDF Author: Douglas W. Rae
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300134754
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
How did neighborhood groceries, parish halls, factories, and even saloons contribute more to urban vitality than did the fiscal might of postwar urban renewal? With a novelist’s eye for telling detail, Douglas Rae depicts the features that contributed most to city life in the early “urbanist” decades of the twentieth century. Rae’s subject is New Haven, Connecticut, but the lessons he draws apply to many American cities. City: Urbanism and Its End begins with a richly textured portrait of New Haven in the early twentieth century, a period of centralized manufacturing, civic vitality, and mixed-use neighborhoods. As social and economic conditions changed, the city confronted its end of urbanism first during the Depression, and then very aggressively during the mayoral reign of Richard C. Lee (1954–70), when New Haven led the nation in urban renewal spending. But government spending has repeatedly failed to restore urban vitality. Rae argues that strategies for the urban future should focus on nurturing the unplanned civic engagements that make mixed-use city life so appealing and so civilized. Cities need not reach their old peaks of population, or look like thriving suburbs, to be once again splendid places for human beings to live and work.

The Unsettlers

The Unsettlers PDF 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.

The Problem with Feeding Cities

The Problem with Feeding Cities PDF Author: Andrew Deener
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022670307X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
For most people, grocery shopping is a mundane activity. Few stop to think about the massive, global infrastructure that makes it possible to buy Chilean grapes in a Philadelphia supermarket in the middle of winter. Yet every piece of food represents an interlocking system of agriculture, manufacturing, shipping, logistics, retailing, and nonprofits that controls what we eat—or don’t. The Problem with Feeding Cities is a sociological and historical examination of how this remarkable network of abundance and convenience came into being over the last century. It looks at how the US food system transformed from feeding communities to feeding the entire nation, and it reveals how a process that was once about fulfilling basic needs became focused on satisfying profit margins. It is also a story of how this system fails to feed people, especially in the creation of food deserts. Andrew Deener shows that problems with food access are the result of infrastructural failings stemming from how markets and cities were developed, how distribution systems were built, and how organizations coordinate the quality and movement of food. He profiles hundreds of people connected through the food chain, from farmers, wholesalers, and supermarket executives, to global shippers, logistics experts, and cold-storage operators, to food bank employees and public health advocates. It is a book that will change the way we see our grocery store trips and will encourage us all to rethink the way we eat in this country.

Cities Ranked & Rated

Cities Ranked & Rated PDF Author: Bert Sperling
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470068647
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 866

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Book Description
Evaluates more than four hundred metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada, rating such factors as job market, housing costs, crime rates, climate, health care, education, and quality of life.