Studying Cities and City Life

Studying Cities and City Life
Author: Mark Abrahamson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2016-12-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317814282

Studying Cities and City Life is a textbook designed to provide an introduction to the major methods of obtaining data for use when analysing cities and social life in cities. Major chapters focus upon best practices in: field studies (participant observation) natural experiments and quasi-experiments surveys employing probability and non-probability samples secondary analyses of previously published documents. A separate chapter examines a full range of questionnaires and interviews. Each chapter includes discussion of several case studies, and recently published research employing the method being discussed. This discussion highlights the issues and choices made by investigators in actual studies conducted in cities throughout the world. This unique book is designed for use in research methods courses that primarily enroll students majoring in Urban Sociology, Urban Studies, Urban Geography, Urban Planning, and related areas.

Researching City Life

Researching City Life
Author: Tyler Schafer
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 459
Release: 2023-03-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1506355447

Researching City Life: An Urban Field Methods Text-Reader examines the city from a street level perspective and provides readers with tools to conduct research on urbanism—the everyday experiences of people in cities. Contending that culture is central to understanding urbanism, editors Tyler Schafer and Michael Ian Borer address qualitative research in cities and how it provides insights unable to be captured via quantitative methods. Carefully selected and edited readings cover participant observation, interviewing, narrative analysis, visual and sensory methods, and methods for (re)presenting the city. Each section includes an introduction from the editors, a Reflection Essay from one of the authors, and exercises that prompt hands-on experience.

Everyday Life in the Segmented City

Everyday Life in the Segmented City
Author: Camilla Perrone
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2011-11-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1780522592

The conference "Everyday Life in the Segmented City", held in July 2010, Florence, gathered a multiplicity of approaches and points of view dealing with issues of global urbanization. This title contains a selection of the papers presented at the conference.

City Water, City Life

City Water, City Life
Author: Carl Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 022602265X

A city is more than a massing of citizens, a layout of buildings and streets, or an arrangement of political, economic, and social institutions. It is also an infrastructure of ideas that are a support for the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the people who created the city. In City Water, City Life, celebrated historian Carl Smith explores this concept through an insightful examination of the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. By examining the place of water in the nineteenth-century consciousness, Smith illuminates how city dwellers perceived themselves during the great age of American urbanization. But City Water, City Life is more than a history of urbanization. It is also a refreshing meditation on water as a necessity, as a resource for commerce and industry, and as an essential—and central—part of how we define our civilization.

Researching the City

Researching the City
Author: Kevin Ward
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 144629272X

‘Extends a warm welcome to students who have come face-to-face with the daunting task of producing a dissertation. Written in an accessible and engaging style, it deals with the nitty-gritty of researching the city... a must-have for the student!’ - Kim England, University of Washington ‘An invaluable guide to urban research design for undergraduate and graduate students alike. It provides the novice researcher with a wealth of practical advice on theory, methods, writing style, and everything else one needs to know to design and manage a successful urban research project. I wish this book had been available when I started my research career!′ - Byron Miller, University of Calgary ‘Replete with tremendously useful advice and guidance for students of all social-science disciplines undertaking significant research projects on urban issues... students writing undergraduate and master’s theses, or even doctoral dissertations, are likely to find it tremendously useful as well.’ - David L. Imbroscio, University of Louisville This practical guide for students focuses on the city and on the different ways to research it. The authors explains how research is done, from the original idea to design and implementation, through to writing up and representation. Substantive chapters explain each method in detail, from using archival methods, interviews, ethnography, questionnaires, discourse analysis and diaries, to using GIS and visual methods. With real world examples throughout and guided further reading for each chapter, it is an inspiring guide for students carrying out their own research in urban geography, urban planning, urban studies and urban sociology courses.

City Lives and City Forms

City Lives and City Forms
Author: Jon Caulfield
Publisher:
Total Pages: 347
Release: 1996
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780802069504

Focusing on a series of pivotal issues confronting Canadian cities and city-dwellers today, this volume address key themes in urban studies: the interaction between social relations and urban landscape, the status of the city in the new world economy, and the sociocultural complexity of urban populations. The fifteen essays presented here reflect the current preoccupations and perspectives of critically oriented urban researchers in Canada. The essays in Part 1, 'People, Places, Cultures, ' examine the nature of urban space and the links between this space and social relations, illustrating the fundamental principle that urban spaces are 'built values' and 'built politics' - physical expressions of social process. Part 2, 'The Economy of Cities, ' explores recent fundamental shifts in the economic character of Canadian cities, whose effect on the social and physical landscapes has been as dramatic as the explosive onset of industrialism was in the last century. Part 3, 'Urban Social Movements, ' focuses on the practices of social movements, including those oriented to gender, race, and the environment. Consisting largely of applied case studies, rather than broad thematic essays, City Lives and City Forms presents an overall argument for focused critical research in the urban field and suggests possible directions for the future.

Gardens, City Life and Culture

Gardens, City Life and Culture
Author: Michel Conan
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2008
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

Seeks to understand the roles played by gardens from Roman antiquity to approximately 1850, particularly as they relate to public life in large cities.

New City Life

New City Life
Author: Jan Gehl
Publisher:
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2006
Genre: City and town life
ISBN: 9788774073659

How to Study Public Life

How to Study Public Life
Author: Jan Gehl
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781610914239

How do we accommodate a growing urban population in a way that is sustainable, equitable, and inviting? This question is becoming increasingly urgent to answer as we face diminishing fossil-fuel resources and the effects of a changing climate while global cities continue to compete to be the most vibrant centers of culture, knowledge, and finance. Jan Gehl has been examining this question since the 1960s, when few urban designers or planners were thinking about designing cities for people. But given the unpredictable, complex and ephemeral nature of life in cities, how can we best design public infrastructure—vital to cities for getting from place to place, or staying in place—for human use? Studying city life and understanding the factors that encourage or discourage use is the key to designing inviting public space. In How to Study Public Life Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre draw from their combined experience of over 50 years to provide a history of public-life study as well as methods and tools necessary to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. This type of systematic study began in earnest in the 1960s, when several researchers and journalists on different continents criticized urban planning for having forgotten life in the city. City life studies provide knowledge about human behavior in the built environment in an attempt to put it on an equal footing with knowledge about urban elements such as buildings and transport systems. Studies can be used as input in the decision-making process, as part of overall planning, or in designing individual projects such as streets, squares or parks. The original goal is still the goal today: to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. Anyone interested in improving city life will find inspiration, tools, and examples in this invaluable guide.

Researching the City

Researching the City
Author: Kevin Ward
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2020-01-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1529704278

This practical guide for students focuses on the city and on the different ways to research it. The authors explain how urban studies research is done, from the original idea to design and implementation, through to writing up and representation. Substantive chapters explain each method in detail, from using archival methods, interviews, ethnography, questionnaires, discourse analysis and diaries, to using GIS and visual methods. This second edition offers: · A thorough introduction to the research process · Revised and updated discussions of foundational methods · A new chapter on sensory methods · A new chapter on social media as an object or a method of studying the city. With real world examples throughout and guided further reading for each chapter, it is an inspiring guide for students carrying out their own research in urban geography, urban planning, urban sociology and urban studies.