Urban communities

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020A Spectator Book of the Year‘A literary rendering of the Top Boy generation… I cannot conjure another work which captures this culture in such depth – or with such brutal honesty – as only lived experience can...

From one of the world’s top experts on the economics of skyscrapers—a “fascinating” (Daily Mail, London) and “informative” (Publishers Weekly) account of the ever-growing quest for super tall buildings across the globe.The world’s skyscrapers have...

Globalised urban precarity in Berlin and Abidjan examines urban youth's practices of making do in digital economies, to understand how precarious working conditions reverberate in the coming of age in contemporary cities. Through a comparative analysis...

Bridging the social and life sciences to unlock the mystery of how cities shape mental health and illnessMost of the world's people now live in cities and millions have moved from the countryside to the rapidly growing megacities of the global south. How...

If a city is its people, and its people are what they eat, then shouldn't food play a larger role in our dialogue about how and where we live? The food of a metropolis is essential to its character. Native plants, proximity to farmland, the locations of...

If our planet is going to survive the climate crisis, we need to act rapidly.Taking cues from progressive cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Oslo, Shenzhen, and Sydney, this book is a summons to every city to make small...

Globally renowned architect Tye Farrow bridges the gap in knowledge between the therapeutic medical world and the design community to reveal how the intentional shaping of our environment can support our physical and neurological well-being. Constructing...

Why and how local coffee bars in Italy-those distinctively Italian social and cultural spaces-have been increasingly managed by Chinese baristas since the Great Recession of 2008Italians regard espresso as a quintessentially Italian cultural product-so...

An eloquent and passionate call for educational reparations, from the New York Times bestselling authorWhen Jonathan Kozol'sDeath at an Early Ageappeared in 1967, it rocked the education world. Based on the Rhodes Scholar's first year of teaching in...

It's closing time for an alarming number of gay bars in cities around the globe - but it's definitely not the last dance.In this exhilarating journey into underground parties, pulsating with life and limitless possibility, acclaimed author Amin Ghaziani...

A phenomenology of the mall: If the mall makes us feel bad, why do we keep going back? In a world poisoned by capitalism, is shopping what makes life worth living?Kate Black grew up in West Edmonton Mall - a mall on steroids, notorious for its indoor...

This edited volume asks how the city, with its spatial and temporal configuration and its rhythms, produces and shapes violence, both in terms of the built environment, and through particular 'urban' social relations. The book builds on the insight that...

The role of American hospital expansions in health disparities and medical apartheidHealth Colonialism considers how U.S. urban development policies contribute to the uneven and unjust distribution of health care in this country. Here, Shiloh Krupar...

A panoramic account of the urban politics and deep social divisions that gave rise to UberThe first city to fight back against Uber, Washington, D.C., was also the first city where such resistance was defeated. It was here that the company created a...

This book invites us to rethink architectural and urban models, prioritizing not so much the technical, formal and abstract knowledge sought by urban planners, as the public and civic dimension of citizens' experience when they try to care for...

A neighborhood-by-neighborhood guide to New York City's northern borough, from the award-winning author of The New York Nobody KnowsBill Helmreich walked every block of New York City-some six thousand miles-to write the award-winning The New York Nobody...

A journey through unexplored spaces that foreground new ways of inhabiting the urbanOne of the fundamental dimensions of urbanization is its radical transformation of nature. Today domestic animals make up more than twice the biomass of people on the...

A comprehensive look into how Macau's recent decades of gambling-related growth produced one of the wealthiest territories on the planetBetting on Macau delves into the radical transformation of what was formerly the last remaining European territory in...

Edward Seidensticker's A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 tells the fascinating story of Tokyo's transformation from the Shogun's capital in an isolated Japan to the largest and the most modern city in the world. With the same scholarship and sparkling style...

"The masterful art of chess, Kung-fu sword play, and the sweet science of boxing are all hip-hop expressions that connect us universally.Beatboxingtells the story. It's razor sharp."-Masta Killa, Wu-Tang Clan"I love howTodd Snyder's brain works. Like...

How do we move from defensive tactics that respond to the latest stages of capitalist urbanization, to transformative, strategic revolts, attacking the root causes and putting into practice alternative forms of urban life? One proposal for such a...

Maps poised at the intersection of art, architecture, activism, and geography trace a profound shift in our understanding and experience of space.The maps in this book are drawn with satellites, assembled with pixels radioed from outer space, and...

This volume places the Flint, Michigan, water contamination disaster in the context of a broader crisis created by neoliberal governance in the United States. Authors from a range of disciplines (including sociology, criminal justice, anthropology,...

"I was a Long Island kid that graduated college in 1976 and moved to Greenwich Village. Two years later, I was working The Mudd Club door. Standing outside, staring at the crowd, it was "out there" versus "in here" and I was on the inside. The Mudd Club...

First published in 2008, (as Contro l'architettura), Against Architecture has been translated into French and Greek, with editions forthcoming in Polish and Portuguese. The book is a passionate and erudite charge against the celebrities of the current...

The spaces we inhabit from homes and workspaces to city streets-mediate community, creativity, and our very identity. Using insights from environmental psychology, design, and architecture, The Shaping of Us shows how the built and natural worlds subtly...

We are building cities without thinking about the people who live in them, argues The Human City. It's time to change our approach to one that is centered on human values.In The Human City, internationally recognized urbanist Joel...

WINNER OF THE 2022 WRITERS' TRUST BALSILLIE PRIZE FOR PUBLIC POLICY SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 DONNER BOOK PRIZE WINNER OF THE PATTIS FAMILY FOUNDATION GLOBAL CITIES BOOK AWARD Is the 'smart city' the utopia we've been waiting for? The promise of the...

Part civic history and part memoir from this veteran scene-builder and co-founder of the acclaimed Wavelength concert series, Any Night of the Week charts the evolution of Toronto's diverse independent music scene in the latter half of the nineteenth...

Decades before the emergence of a French self-styled 'hood' film around 1995, French filmmakers looked beyond the gates of the capital for inspiration and content. In the Paris suburbs they found an inexhaustible reservoir of forms, landscapes and social...

Based on 15 years of ethnographic fieldwork, the book understands the increasing violence seen in cities as a product of the emergence of transnational illegal markets since the 1970's, followed by the suppression of unskilled workers, in many places...

Chic, sophisticated, seductive and enigmatic, the Parisienne possesses a je ne sais quoi that makes her difficult to define. But who or what is the Parisienne, and how is she depicted in cinema? The first book-length study on the subject combines...

An alternative history of capitalist urbanization through the lens of the commonsCharacterized by shared, self-managed access to food, housing, and the basic conditions for a creative life, the commons are essential for communities to flourish and...

A powerful new understanding of cooperation as an antidote to alienation and inequalityFrom the crises of racial inequity and capitalism that inspired the Black Lives Matter movement and the Green New Deal to the coronavirus pandemic, stories of mutual...

Practical Guidelines to Resourceful City Living, Self-reliance, Emergency Preparedness, and Getting More for LessA survival guidebook that reflects the world in which we now find ourselves. The post 9/11 world seems a bit more hostile, as terrorist...

Henri Lefebvrereviews the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for analysis on the life andgrowth of the city, describing its transition from life under feudalism tomodern industrial capitalism. Now available in English, Marxist Thought andthe City...

Historic Capital shows how Washington, D.C.'s historic buildings and neighborhoodshave been a site of contestation between local interests and the expansion ofthe federal government's footprint. It ultimately makes the case that...

A presentation of over one hundred documents, selected and coordinated from the urban civilization of Middle Ages Italy. By connecting documents in translation to recent scholarship and debates, this book serves to introduce topics, to illustrate themes...

An up-close account of how Nigerians' self-reliance in the absence of reliable government services enables official dysfunction to strengthen state power.When Nigerians say that every household is its own local government, what they mean is that the...

The exorbitant costs of urban housing and the widening gap in income inequality are fueling a combative new movement in cities around the world. A growing number of influential activists aren't waiting for new public housing to be built. Instead, they're...

A vivid history of the controversial building of Dodger Stadium and how it helped transform Los AngelesWhen Walter O'Malley moved his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957 with plans to construct a new ballpark, he ignited a bitter half-decade dispute...

In today's new economy-in which "good" jobs are typically knowledge or technology based-many well-educated and culturally savvy young people are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual labor occupations as careers. Masters of Craft...

How ordinary urban objects influence our behavior, exacerbate inequality, and encourage social changeAssumptions about human behavior lie hidden in plain sight all around us, programmed into the design and regulation of the material objects we encounter...

As a child growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line, ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood. Decades later, his love for exploring the city is as...

A one-of-a-kind walking guide to Manhattan, from the man who walked every block in New York CityBill Helmreich walked every block of New York City-six-thousand miles in all-to write the award-winning The New York Nobody Knows. Later, he re-walked most of...

Bill Helmreich walked every block of New York City--6,000 miles in all--to write the award-winning The New York Nobody Knows. Now he has re-walked Brooklyn--some 816 miles--to write this one-of-a-kind walking guide to the city's hottest borough. Drawing...

In Seeking Spatial Justice, Soja argues that justice has a geography and that the equitable distribution of resources, services, and access is a basic human right. Building on current concerns in critical geography and the new spatial consciousness, Soja...

In a series of penetrating reflections on the United States and its institutions in the post-9/11 world, this book offers some answers to questions that people at home and abroad have begun to ask about our country. How did it attain its international...