Privatopia

Privatopia
Author: Evan McKenzie
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780300066388

A study of political and social issues posed by the rise of CIDs (common interest housing developments) in the US. The work explores the consequences of CIDs on government and argues that private, residential government has serious implications for civil liberties.

Beyond Privatopia

Beyond Privatopia
Author: Evan McKenzie
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Civil society
ISBN: 9780877667698

The rise of residential private governance may be the most extensive and dramatic privatization of public life in U.S. history. Private communities, often called common interest developments, are now home to almost one-fifth of the U.S. population⿿indeed, many localities have mandated that all new development be encompassed in a CID. The ubiquity of private communities has changed the nature of local governance. Residents may like closer control of neighborhood services but may also find themselves contending with intrusions an elected government would not be allowed to make, like a ban on pets or yard decorations. And if things go wrong, the contracts residents must sign to purchase within the community give them little legal recourse. In Beyond Privatopia: Rethinking Residential Private Government, attorney and political science scholar Evan McKenzie explores emerging trends in private governments and competing schools of thought on how to operate them, from state oversight to laissez-faire libertarianism.

A Field Guide to Sprawl

A Field Guide to Sprawl
Author: Dolores Hayden
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2004
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780393731255

A visual lexicon of the colorful slang, from alligator investment to zoomburb, that defines sprawl in America. May well establish Ms. Hayden as the Roger Tory Peterson of Sprawl. --New York Times

Asset Building and Low-income Families

Asset Building and Low-income Families
Author: Signe-Mary McKernan
Publisher: The Urban Insitute
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780877667544

Low-income families have scant savings to cushion a job loss or illness, and can find economic mobility impossible without funds to invest in education, homes, or businesses. And though a lack of resources leaves such families vulnerable, income-support programs are often closed to those with a bit of savings or even a car. Considering welfare-to-work reforms, the increasingly advanced skill demands of the American workforce, and our stretched Social Security system, such an approach is inadequate to lift families out of poverty. Asset-based policies--allowing or even helping low-income families build wealth--are an increasingly popular strategy to facilitate financial stability.

Urban Sprawl

Urban Sprawl
Author: Gregory D. Squires
Publisher: The Urban Insitute
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2002
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780877667094

Urban Sprawl is not simply a development that undercuts the quality of life for suburbanites. It has raised alarms across the nation, as fair housing advocates, environmentalists, land use planners, and even many suburban employers who cannot find the workers they need, have recognized that the costs go far beyond aesthetics. Despite the agreement that something needs to be done, there is no consensus on what works. Urban Sprawl: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses assembles leading scholars who analyze the major causes and consequences of urban sprawl and the policy initiatives that are being explored in response to these developments.

Fortress America

Fortress America
Author: Edward J. Blakely
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1997-09-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780815791072

Gated communities are a new "hot button" in many North American cities. From Boston to Los Angeles and from Miami to Toronto citizens are taking sides in the debate over whether any neighborhood should be walled and gated, preventing intrusion or inspection by outsiders. This debate has intensified since the hard cover edition of this book was published in 1997. Since then the number of gated communities has risen dramatically. In fact, new homes in over 40 percent of planned developments are gated n the West, the South, and southeastern parts of the United States. Opposition to this phenomenon is growing too. In the small and relatively homogenous town of Worcester, Massachusetts, a band of college students from Brown University and the University of Chicago picketed the Wexford Village in November of 1998 waving placards that read "Gates Divide." These students are symbolic of a much larger wave of citizens asking questions about the need for and the social values of gates that divide one portion of a community from another.

Fenced Off

Fenced Off
Author: Juliet F. Gainsborough
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2001-03-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781589018112

Since the 1980s a distinctive suburban politics has emerged in the United States, Juliet F. Gainsborough argues in Fenced Off . As suburbs have become less economically and socially dependent on the central cities, suburban and urban dwellers have diverged not only in their voting patterns but also in their thinking about national politics. While political reporters have long noted this difference, few quantitative studies have been conducted on suburbanization alone—above and beyond race or class—as a political trend. Using census and public opinion statistics, along with data on congressional districts and party platforms, Gainsborough demonstrates that this "ideology of localism" weakens when suburbs experience city-like problems and strengthens when racial and economic differences with the nearby city increase. In addition, Gainsborough uses national survey data from the 1950s to the 1990s to show that a separate suburban politics has arisen only during the last two decades. Further, she argues, the political differences between urban and suburban voters have found expression in changes in congressional representation and new electoral strategies for the major political parties. As Congressional districts become increasingly suburban, "soccer moms" and liveability agendas come to dominate party platforms, and the needs of the urban poor disappear from political debate. Fenced Off uses the tools of political science to prove what political commentators have sensed—that the suburbs offer a powerful voting bloc that is being courted with sophisticated new strategies.

Surveillance of Public Space

Surveillance of Public Space
Author: Kate Painter
Publisher: Willow Tree Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781881798224

This book assesses the crime prevention impact of varying types of surveillance, including closed-circuit television and improved lighting.

Alternative Urban Futures

Alternative Urban Futures
Author: Raquel Pinderhughes
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780742523678

Alternative Urban Futures challenges existing models of urban development and promotes alternative paradigms, processes, and technologies designed to fulfill human needs and limit the harmful impacts of human activities on the environment. The book focuses on how planners and policy makers can develop and manage essential urban infrastructures in ways that support sustainable development in the areas of waste management, water supply and management, energy production and use, building design and construction, land-use, transportation, and food systems. Each chapter features case studies that provide concrete examples of how ecologically and socially responsible urban and sustainable development planning and policy approaches have been successfully implemented in cities around the world. The book is especially effective in its emphasis on recently published statistics and writing supporting new planning and policy recommendations. Each chapter ends with a summary, accompanied by a list of questions that can be addressed with information provided in the text.

Motherhood, Poverty, and the WIC Program in Urban America

Motherhood, Poverty, and the WIC Program in Urban America
Author: Suzanne Morrissey
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2015-12-24
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0739189344

The study presented here is one of urban poverty, household survival, and social institutions that both enable and control the decision-making of poor women in America. First and foremost, it is about a public health program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known more commonly as WIC, and how the institution re-inscribes persistent stereotypes of the urban poor on the women it eagerly wishes to serve. Despite encountering opposition and occasionally humiliation at the hands of those chosen to serve, many low-income women throughout the United States and Puerto Rico return to WIC every month because it represents a rite of passage that characterizes pregnancy. Enrolling in WIC prenatally signifies to others the importance of providing for one’s family in spite of socioeconomic disadvantage. Yet whether women access WIC benefits or not, their lived realities include a painful and enduring connection between urban poverty and health inequalities, particularly inequalities leading to poor birth outcomes and infant mortality, as explored in this urban ethnography.