Stronger than Steel is the story of a company town, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that used alternative economic development strategies, including arts, tourism, and a casino to propel its way out of devastation of deindustrialization. Bethlehem's strategies have been, rewarded with dramatic results. In 2016, among Pennsylvania cities with a population over 20,000, Bethlehem had the highest median household income, lowest poverty rate and highest residential...

Sustainability may seem like one more buzzword and cities and towns like the last places to change, but The Natural Step for Communities provides inspiring examples of communities that have made dramatic changes toward sustainability and explains how others can emulate their success. Chronicled in the book are towns like Övertorneå, whose government operations recently became 100 percent fossil fuel-free, demonstrating that unsustainable municipal...

The first book devoted to this landmark of architecture, urban planning, and social engineering. Situated in the borough of Queens, New York, Sunnyside Gardens has been an icon of urbanism and planning since its inception in the 1920s. Not the most beautifully planned community, nor the most elegant, and certainly not the most perfectly preserved, Sunnyside Gardens nevertheless endures as significant both in terms of the planning principles that...

BILL DE BLASIO SET THE STAGE FOR THE RUIN OF NEW YORK CITY The Last Days of New York tells the story of how a corrupted political system hollowed out New York City, leaving it especially vulnerable, all in the name of equity and "fairness." When, in the future, people ask how New York City fell to pieces, they can be told-quoting Hemingway-"gradually, then suddenly." New Yorkers awoke from a slumber of ease and prosperity to discover that their...

In this book, Yelena Bailey examines the creation of "the streets" not just as a physical, racialized space produced by segregationist policies but also as a sociocultural entity that has influenced our understanding of blackness in America for decades. Drawing from fields such as media studies, literary studies, history, sociology, film studies, and music studies, this book engages in an interdisciplinary analysis of the how the streets have shaped...

Abandoned lots and litter-strewn pathways, or rows of green beans and pockets of wildflowers? Graffiti-marked walls and desolate bus stops, or shady refuges and comfortable seating? What transforms a dingy, inhospitable area into a dynamic gathering place? How do individuals take back their neighborhood? Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that sense of...

Climate change is real, and extreme weather events are its physical manifestations. These extreme events affect how we live and work in cities, and subsequently the way we design, plan, and govern them. Taking action 'for the environment' is not only a moral imperative; instead, it is activated by our everyday experience in the city. Based on the author's site visits and interviews in Darwin (Australia), Tulsa (Oklahoma), Cleveland (Ohio), and...

Richard Florida, one of the world's leading urbanists and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, confronts the dark side of the back-to-the-city movement In recent years, the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well. In The New Urban Crisis, Richard Florida, one of the first scholars to anticipate this back-to-the-city movement, demonstrates how the...

Cities are central to prosperity: they are hubs of innovation and growth. However, the economic vitality of wealthy cities is marred by persistent and pervasive inequality-and deeply entrenched anti-urban policies and politics limit the options to address it. Structural racism, suburban subsidies, regional government fragmentation, the hostility of state legislatures, and federal policy all contribute to an unequal status quo that underfunds cities...

In the Loop: A Political and Economic History of San Antonio, is the culmination of urban historian David Johnson's extensive research into the development of Texas's oldest city. Beginning with San Antonio's formation more than three hundred years ago, Johnson lays out the factors that drove the largely uneven and unplanned distribution of resources and amenities and analyzes the demographics that transformed the city from a frontier settlement into...