The Provisional City

The Provisional City
Author: Dana Cuff
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2000
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262532020

A look at urban transformation through the architecture and land development of large-scale residential projects.

Provisional Cities

Provisional Cities
Author: Renata Tyszczuk
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2017-11-02
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317074041

This book considers the provisional nature of cities in relation to the Anthropocene – the proposed geological epoch of human-induced changes to the Earth system. It charts an environmental history of curfews, admonitions and alarms about dwelling on Earth. ‘Provisional cities’ are explored as exemplary sites for thinking about living in this unsettled time. Each chapter focuses on cities, settlements or proxy urbanisations, including past disaster zones, remote outposts in the present and future urban fossils. The book explores the dynamic, changing and contradictory relationship between architecture and the global environmental crisis and looks at how to re-position architectural and urban practice in relation to wider intellectual, environmental, political and cultural shifts. The book argues that these rounder and richer accounts can better equip humanity to think through questions of vulnerability, responsibility and opportunity that are presented by immense processes of planetary change. These are cautionary tales for the Anthropocene. Central to this project is the proposition that living with uncertainty requires that architecture is reframed as a provisional practice. This book would be beneficial to students and academics working in architecture, geography, planning and environmental humanities as well as professionals working to shape the future of cities.

The Resilient City

The Resilient City
Author: Lawrence J. Vale
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2005-01-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780198039136

In 1871, the city of Chicago was almost entirely destroyed by what became known as The Great Fire. Thirty-five years later, San Francisco lay in smoldering ruins after the catastrophic earthquake of 1906. Or consider the case of the Jerusalem, the greatest site of physical destruction and renewal in history, which, over three millennia, has suffered wars, earthquakes, fires, twenty sieges, eighteen reconstructions, and at least eleven transitions from one religious faith to another. Yet this ancient city has regenerated itself time and again, and still endures. Throughout history, cities have been sacked, burned, torched, bombed, flooded, besieged, and leveled. And yet they almost always rise from the ashes to rebuild. Viewing a wide array of urban disasters in global historical perspective, The Resilient City traces the aftermath of such cataclysms as: --the British invasion of Washington in 1814 --the devastation wrought on Berlin, Warsaw, and Tokyo during World War II --the late-20th century earthquakes that shattered Mexico City and the Chinese city of Tangshan --Los Angeles after the 1992 riots --the Oklahoma City bombing --the destruction of the World Trade Center Revealing how traumatized city-dwellers consistently develop narratives of resilience and how the pragmatic process of urban recovery is always fueled by highly symbolic actions, The Resilient City offers a deeply informative and unsentimental tribute to the dogged persistence of the city, and indeed of the human spirit.

The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics

The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics
Author: Kevin Ward
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 845
Release: 2018-04-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317495012

The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics provides a comprehensive statement and reference point for urban politics. The scope of this handbook’s coverage and contributions engages with and reflects upon the most important, innovative and recent critical developments to the interdisciplinary field of urban politics, drawing upon a range of examples from within and across the Global North and Global South. This handbook is organized into nine interrelated sections, with an introductory chapter setting out the rationale, aims and structure of the Handbook, and short introductory commentaries at the beginning of each part. It questions the eliding of ‘urban politics’ into the ‘politics of the city’, reconsidering the usefulness of the distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ urban politics, considering issues of ‘class’, ‘gender’, ‘race’ and the ways in which they intersect, appear and reappear in matters of urban politics, how best to theorize the roles of capital, the state and other actors, such as social movements, in the production of the city and, finally, issues of doing urban political research. The various chapters explore the issues of urban politics of economic development, environment and nature in the city, governance and planning, the politics of labour as well as living spaces. The concluding sections of the Handbook examine the politics over alternative visions of cities of the future and provide concluding discussions and reflections, particularly on the futures for urban politics in an increasingly ‘global’ and multidisciplinary context. With over forty-five contributions from leading international scholars in the field, this handbook provides critical reviews and appraisals of current conceptual and theoretical approaches and future developments in urban politics. It is a key reference to all researchers and policy-makers with an interest in urban politics.

City of Extremes

City of Extremes
Author: Martin J. Murray
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2011-06-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822347687

A powerful critique of urban development in greater Johannesburg since the end of apartheid in 1994.

The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900-1940

The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900-1940
Author: Max Page
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 1999
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780226644691

"The oxymoron "creative destruction" suggests the tensions that are at the heart of urban life: between stability and change, between particular places and undifferentiated spaces, between market forces and planning controls, and between the "natural" and "unnatural" in city growth. Page investigates these cultural counter weights through case studies of Manhattan's development, with depictions ranging from private real estate development along Fifth Avenue to Jacob Riis's slum clearance efforts on the Lower East Side, from the elimination of street trees to the efforts to save City Hall from demolition. Contrary to the popular sense of New York as an ahistorical city - the past as recalled by powerful citizens - was in fact, at the heart of defining how the city would be built."--BOOK JACKET.

The WPA Guide to Oklahoma

The WPA Guide to Oklahoma
Author: Federal Writers' Project
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1595342346

During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors—many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures—were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor. The WPA Guide to Oklahoma is filled with descriptions of Native American life in the region, accompanied by many photographs. From Black Mesa to Cavanal Hill, this guide to the Sooner State takes the reader on a journey across the state’s vast and varied landscape. Also, notable in this guide is an essay by prominent historian Edward Everett Dale entitled “The Spirit of Oklahoma.”

Oklahoma

Oklahoma
Author: Oklahoma
Publisher: US History Publishers
Total Pages: 550
Release: 1976
Genre: Rock music
ISBN: 1603540350

Chen Jiongming and the Federalist Movement

Chen Jiongming and the Federalist Movement
Author: Leslie Chen
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 1999
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0892641355

The local self-government movement in China began in the late Qing, and by the Revolution of 1911 no less than five thousand self-government councils had formed around the country. While the idea of a federated state was cherished by early revolutionaries, a growing conflict between federalist and centralist leaders culminated in the defeat of federalism in the mid-1920s. The story of this movement has since remained hidden behind Nationalist and Communist accounts of the early revolutionary struggle. This study of Chen Jiongming's political career reopens the record on federalist efforts, focusing on Chen's policies and administrative achievements in Fujian and Guangdong. It describes Chen's role in the tumultuous politics of southern China from 1909 until his death in 1933, including his relationship and notorious break with Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the centralist revolutionaries. Leslie Chen argues that his father's attempts to create a democratic, federalist system in Guangdong were aimed at providing a model for China as a whole. His account is lively and readable; it gives an intimate, yet historically accurate, account of Chen Jiongming's considerable role in early twentieth-century Chinese history. Leslie Chen was born in Guangdong, China. In 1988 he compiled "A Collection of Historiographic Materials for a Biography of Chen Chiung-ming Jiongming], 1878-1933." He has published two Chinese-language biographies of Chen Jiongming.