Urban communities / city life Books

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisA must-read for anyone who has ever wondered why people do what they do, from the popular author of The Naked Ape.This study concerns the city dweller. Morris finds remarkable similarities with captive zoo animals and looks closely at the aggressive, sexual and parental behaviour of the human species under the stresses and pressures of urban living.Compelling and absorbing...Morris is concerned with the tension between our biology and our culture, as it is expressed in power, sex, status and war games' New York Times Trade ReviewCompelling and absorbing...Morris is concerned with the tension between our biology and our culture, as it is expressed in power, sex, status and war games * New York Times *Having startled, amused, and in some cases infuriated his fellow-men by his bestseller The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris now proceeds to contemplate Homo sapiens as he has transformed his environment. He has offended some people with entrenched views, but he has made millions wonder about themselves. Exceedingly well written, with never a dull moment * Observer *I defy you to stop reading it * Liverpool Daily Post *

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Book Synopsis"A clearly articulated manifesto for those trying to preserve Tokyo’s emergent properties, Emergent Tokyo helps distil lessons for other cities" —Benjamin Bansal, Urban Studies Journal This book examines the urban fabric of contemporary Tokyo as a valuable demonstration of permeable, inclusive, and adaptive urban patterns that required neither extensive master planning nor corporate urbanism to develop. These urban patterns are emergent: that is, they are the combined result of numerous modifications and appropriations of space by small agents interacting within a broader socio-economic ecosystem. Together, they create a degree of urban intensity and liveliness that is the envy of the world's cities. This book examines five of these patterns that appear conspicuously throughout Tokyo: yokocho alleyways, multi-tenant zakkyo buildings, undertrack infills, low-rise dense neighbourhoods, and the river-like ankyo streets. Unlike many of the discussions on Tokyo that emphasise cultural uniqueness, this book aims at transcultural validity, with a focus on empirical analysis of the spatial and social conditions that allow these patterns to emerge. The authors of Emergent Tokyo acknowledge the distinct character of Tokyo without essentialising or fetishising it, offering visitors, architects, and urban policy practitioners an unparalleled understanding of Tokyo's urban landscape.Trade Review"A clearly articulated manifesto for those trying to preserve Tokyo’s emergent properties, Emergent Tokyo helps distil lessons for other cities" - Benjamin Bansal, Urban Studies Journal

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Book SynopsisDiscover hidden gems around Manchester with 20 walking routes. Featuring 20 walks in and around the city, including lesser-known circuits and details on popular walks. Accompanied by guided walking instructions and written by a local expert, A-Z Manchester Hidden Walks is the perfect way to explore the city in a new light.

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Book SynopsisPeter Ackroyd is an award-winning historian, biographer, novelist, poet and broadcaster. He is the author of the acclaimed non-fiction bestsellers London: The Biography, Thames: Sacred River and London Under; biographies of figures including Charles Dickens, William Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock; and a multi-volume history of England. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature's William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the South Bank Prize for Literature. He holds a CBE for services to literature.Trade ReviewAfter his mammoth, shamanic aria London: the Biography, the remarkable writer Peter Ackroyd has produced a nimble, uproarious pocket history of sex in his beloved metropolis -- Alasdair Lees * Independent *Ackroyd has an encyclopaedic knowledge of London, and a poet's instinct for its strange, mesmerising drives and urges ... Queer City contains something to alarm or fascinate on every page -- Craig Brown * The Mail on Sunday *Droll, provocative and crammed to busting with startling facts -- Simon Callow * The Guardian *If there was a prize for the most evocative or salacious chapter headings, then Peter Ackroyd's new book, Queer City, would be the undisputed victor. They capture the rudery and naughtiness, although not the erudition of this entertaining history of the 'queer' experience in London -- Robbie Millen * The Times *Succinct, perceptive and robust -- Rupert Christiansen * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisAn outrageous spectacle of love between two untamed poets, a 27-year old man and a teenage boy, written by one of America’s original punks and finest writers. Based on Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine’s notorious affair, but set in the epochal downtown poetry scene of filthy 1970s New York, Godlike is a tribute to poetry and the beauty and mess of art, desire, and New York City.New York poet Paul Vaughn has a trick for enjoying poetry readings: he simply imagines the reader died a long time ago. Paul is twenty-seven, married, and an admired poet himself. R. T. Wode’s mission is to give offense. He’s also a poet, freshly landed in the city, and, at age sixteen, unknown.Paul worships T. They embark on a tempestuous affair, dropping acid and crashing parties and perambulating the grit and grime of New York City ca. 1972 in pursuit of experience that is the nourishment for art. Paul is in love with T., but T. is in love with experience. Their relationship disintegrates.A novel of compelling originality and transcendent beauty by legendary musician and poet Richard Hell, Godlike transposes the notorious romance between Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud to the East Village in its squalid, glorious ’70s heyday. The book comprises a version of Paul’s 1997 hospital notebooks: diaries amidst poems and essays, along with, most pertinently, the poet’s third-person memoir-novelette of his youthful time with the now-famous T. Godlike is infused as well with evocations—and actual poems—of poets such as Ted Berrigan, James Schuyler, Rene Ricard, Edwin Denby, Ron Padgett, and Frank O’Hara. It achieves a lyricism both profane and profound as it conjures the frenetic vitality as well as the existential malaise of an era. It’s a searching meditation on art, life, love and the impossibility of everything.

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Book SynopsisThe director of the Design Museum defines the greatest artefact of all time: the cityWe live in a world that is now predominantly urban. So how do we define the city as it evolves in the twenty-first century? Drawing examples from across the globe, Deyan Sudjic decodes the underlying forces that shape our cities, such as resources and land, to the ideas that shape conscious elements of design, whether of buildings or of space. Erudite and entertaining, he considers the differences between capital cities and the rest to understand why it is that we often feel more comfortable in our identities as Londoners, Muscovites, or Mumbaikars than in our national identities.Trade ReviewA deeply original and necessary book—Alain de BottonAn indispensable guide to what makes a city a city—Robert Bevan, Evening StandardDeyan Sudjic remains one of our most insightful commentators—Royal Academy magazineA small, readable guide to what cities are and how they work—Edwin Heathcote, Financial TimesA memoir and a master class in musing on modern design . . . It's a collection of thoughtful, absorbing essays about many aspects of modern design, a subject nobody writes better about than Sudjic—Evening Standard on B Is for Bauhaus

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Book SynopsisBen Judah was born in London. He has travelled widely in Russia, Central Asia and the Levant. His writing has featured widely, including the New York Times, the Evening Standard, the Financial Times and Standpoint. In 2016, Ben was chosen as one of Forbes magazine's 30 under 30 in European media. His first book, Fragile Empire, was published by Yale University Press in 2013.Trade ReviewIt is hard to overstate the value of what Judah has done . . . This is London is an important and impressive book * Sunday Telegraph *A revelatory work, full of nuggets of unexpected information about the lives of others . . . [Judah] is a fine, intrepid reporter * Financial Times *Judah has succeeded in opening reader's eyes to the hardships experienced by many and ignored by most * Independent *This is of my favourite books on London, largely because of the quality of the writing – such sass, such soaring confidence and style . . . Judah listens and observes with acute loyalty to depicting truth, so that no matter who’s talking, the dialogue seems brilliantly accurate. Well researched, it covers all corners of London in forensic detail -- Diana Evans, author of Ordinary PeopleAn epic account of London as a place where global migrants come to scratch a subsistence living or, occasionally, spend a shady fortune. We are far, far beyond the Windrush generation here. Arabs, Afghans, Nigerians, Poles, Romanians and Russians pour out their stories – often terrifying, mostly sad, occasionally funny – while Judah writes it all down in compulsive, shocking detail. We’re back in Mayhew’s London, but now watercress sellers and mudlarks have been replaced by sleepy Africans catching the early morning night bus to their office cleaning jobs four zones over on the other side of town. * Guardian, included in the ten best non-fiction books about London feature *Work of this sort really is necessary; this is the stuff we must think about it we are ever to get to grips (assuming it's not too late already) with what lies ahead for our cities. Every MP should be given a copy immediately. On every page lies and uncomfortable truth, in every paragraph sheer horror. It is a book that demonstrably improves the eyesight. Read it, and the streets will look different: I guarantee it. Above all, more than I can possibly say, I admired its author's pluck, determination, compassion and refusal to judge - and I'd like him to know that some of the stories he told will haunt me for a long time to come -- Rachel Cooke * New Statesman *However well you think you know the city, you’ll see it afresh after reading this immersive account by Judah . . . by turns heartbreaking and heartening, and sometimes both in the space of a page. It’s a fizzing, buzzing, choralaccount of the 21st-century capital * Daily Telegraph *This truly extraordinary book is as raw, powerful, unflinching, witty, engaging, shocking, in-your-face and occasionally both heartwarming and heartbreaking as the great but complex and flawed city it chronicles. I've lived in London for three decades yet found something I didn't know about it on virtually every page -- Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the GreatAn eye-opening investigation into the hidden immigrant life of the city . . . You won't read a more succinct analysis * Sunday Times *Having spent the last year meeting people along several of the world's busiest migration trails, it is fascinating to read Ben Judah's powerful account of where some of them end up. Judah has created an alternative and essential guide to London, and Londoners, in 2015.' -- Patrick Kingsley * Guardian *Mesmerising, trenchant and deeply compassionate -- Book of the Month * Bookseller *A vital, almost overwhelming panorama of brutality and injustice * Metro *Ben Judah offers no answers; but bears witness. He reports the stories of London's immigrants with a smart mind, a light touch and a brave and compassionate heart. These statements deserve to be heard. This is London is an important, state of the nation, eye-opening report from our increasingly ghettoized capital city -- Dan Boothby, author of Island of DreamsThis Is London is an exhilarating account of the British capital . . . His writing is visceral, and at its best echoes the immersive style of the great Polish reporter and author Ryszard Kapuscinski . . . He treats his subjects with great sensitivity . . . an important, unflinching piece of reportage. Judah digs deep into parts of London that a less adventurous journalist would avoid, unearthing some of the many tragic narratives shaping a city at the turbulent forefront of globalisation * The National (Scotland) *[Judah travels through the city, coaxing astonishing interviews from a wide range of migrants . . . He captures the different voices with great skill . . . His observations are acute . . . His interviews are always psychologically telling . . . Most remarkable is Judah's obvious compassion, to which his subjects respond, opening their hearts and letting their voices "tumble" into his tape recorder . . . London emerges from this book as a disturbing, dramatically changing city . . . It is an extraordinary portrait of a city and a rare treat to come across a book in which the ideas are as compelling and fresh as the writing. This is London is a game changer. No longer can we stroll past villages of sleeping Roma and pretend they do not exist. This is London today and Ben Judah is its chronicler * Literary Review *Amazing -- Peter PomerantsevA chronicle of the capital so incisively up-to-date it is disconcerting, invigorating, and depressing all at once . . . Judah allows the new Londoners to speak for themselves and, in so doing, shines a light on the dark corners of the city -- Lilian Pizzichini * Mail on Sunday *Judah is brilliant at winning the confidence of London's immigrant poor and encouraging them to talk . . . In terms of getting under the skin of a small part of England, Judah has written the most impressive book since Nick Davies' Dark Heart . . . Work like this is vital in reminding the middle classes that poverty - the filthy and beggarly poverty of soul-destroying drudgery and an empty stomach - is more than a set of figures in the negative column of the UK PLC balance sheet. It is an ineradicable feature of the economic system on which much of the middle classes' own prosperity depends * Little Atoms *Compassionate, fresh and courageous * Spectator *Judah grabs hold of London and shakes out its secrets. He has a gift for ingratiating himself into very foreign surroundings and teasing out stories. . .Judah has done an important service in capturing the voices of those swept to the margins by economic forces beyond their control * Economist *A wonderfully-written, fascinating account of modern-day life, offering a glimpse of the world from those arriving in the city hoping for a better life. . .an important, detailed read on the stories of those often unheard -- Simon Peach * Press Association *Astonishing. . .Judah has travelled the length and breadth of the city, talking to and empathising with those too often airbrushed from the picture. . .As a former foreign correspondent, Judah is the ideal guide to this new landscape. . .important and impressive * Sunday Telegraph *People say Ben Judah is Orwellian. They're Right. . . . He's a superb reporter. -- William Leith * Evening Standard *This is an important book - one that should open our eyes to the price others often pay for our comfort. * Daily Telegraph *The lower depths of London today are brilliantly eviscerated in Ben Judah’s This Is London, an Orwell for our grim times. -- Roy Foster * Times Literary Supplement - Books of the Year 2017 *Brilliant -- Hanif Kureishi, author of The Buddha of Suburbia

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Book Synopsis''Thank god for Richard Sennett ... essential reading for all students of the city'' Anna Minton, Prospect''Constantly stimulating ideas from a veteran of urban thinking'' Jonathan Meades, GuardianIn Building and Dwelling, Richard Sennett distils a lifetime''s thinking and practical experience to explore the relationship between the good built environment and the good life. He argues for, and describes in rich detail, the idea of an open city, one in which people learn to manage complexity. He shows how the design of cities can enrich or diminish the everyday experience of those who dwell in them.The book ranges widely - from London, Paris and Barcelona to Shanghai, Mumbai and Medellin in Colombia - and draws on classic thinkers such as Tocqueville, Heidegger, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. It also draws on Sennett''s many decades as a practical planner himself, testing what works, what doesn''t, and why. He shows what wTrade ReviewA lateish-life appraisal of what Richard Sennett has read, written and, most vitally, witnessed on the street or in the marketplace in the tradition of the sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed flâneur taking in every sensation -- Jonathan Meades * Guardian *Sennett leavens the big ideas with snapshots of real life. ... It reads like a summation of a life lived in cities and is, ultimately, a paean to their unpredictability, a call for tolerance and a celebration of difference. -- Edwin Heathcote * Financial Times *He has brought to the study of urban life a perception that includes literature, philosophy, art, sociology and economics, as well as his personal experiences -- Rowan Moore * Observer *Distils into a single volume his thoughts on how urban design shapes the ways in which we relate to one another ... Typically idealistic, typically urbane, it is well-timed for the disputes of our day -- Justin McGuirk * New Yorker *

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Book SynopsisUnderstanding the modern city and the powerful forces within it is the life’s work of Harvard urban economist Edward Glaeser, who at forty is hailed as one of the world’s most exciting urban thinkers. Travelling from city to city, speaking to planners and politicians across the world, he uncovers questions large and small whose answers are both counterintuitive and deeply significant. Should New Orleans be rebuilt? Why can’t my nephew afford an apartment in New York? Is London the new financial capital of the world? Is my job headed to Bangalore? In Triumph of the City, Glaeser takes us around the world and into the mind of the modern city - from Mumbai to Paris to Rio to Detroit to Shanghai, and to any number of points in between - to reveal how cities think, why they behave in the manners that they do, and what wisdom they share with the people who inhabit them. 'A masterpiece' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'A brilliant read: persuasive and

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Book Synopsis"Condensed yet energetic and substantial history of Chicago. Spinney has a firm sense of historical narrative as well as a keen eye for entertaining and illuminating detail."-Publishers Weekly A city of immigrants and entrepreneurs, Chicago is quintessentially American. Spinney brings it to life and highlights the key people, moments, and special places-from Fort Dearborn to Cabrini-Green, Marquette to Mayor Daley, the Union Stock Yards to the Chicago Bulls-that make this incredible city one of the best places in the world. City of Big Shoulders links key events in Chicago's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600s to today's robust metropolis. Robert G. Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city-from the tycoons and the politicians to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world. In this revised and updated second edition that brings Chicago's story into the twenty-first century, Spinney sweeps his historian's gaze across the colorful and dramatic panorama of the city's explosive past. How did the pungent swamplands that the Native Americans called "the wild-garlic place" burgeon into one of the world's largest and most sophisticated cities? What is the real story behind the Great Chicago Fire? What aspects of American industry exploded with the bomb in Haymarket Square? Could the gritty blue-collar hometown of Al Capone become a visionary global city?Trade ReviewCondensed yet energetic and substantial history of Chicago. Spinney has a firm sense of historical narrative as well as a keen eye for entertaining and illuminating detail. * Publishers Weekly *A much-needed, brief yet comprehensive analytical history of Chicago. * Journal of Illinois History *Table of Contents1. The Early World of Chigagou, 1600–1750 2. Chigagou Becomes Chicago, 1750–1835 3. Boom, Bust, and Recovery in Early Chicago, 1835–1850 4. Chicago Conquers the Midwest, 1850–1890 5. Life in a City on the Make, 1850–1900 6. The Fire, the Bomb, and the Fair, 1871–1893 7. The New Immigration, 1880–1920 8. Progressivism and Urban Reform, 1890–1915 9. World War I and the Roaring Twenties, 1915–1929 10. The Great Depression, World War II, and Suburban Growth, 1929–1955 11. Richard J. Daley and the City That Works, 1955–1976 12. The Challenges of the Post-Machine Years, 1976–1997 13. Glamorous and Grim: Chicago in the Twenty-First Century

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Book SynopsisFrom Hackney, With Love is both a unique love letter to one of the most vibrant parts of London and a warning that its very existence is in jeopardy.

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Book SynopsisFrom the Sunday Times bestselling author, a dazzling, globe-spanning history of humankind's greatest invention: the city.'Brilliant...enchanting' Evening Standard 'Exhilarating' New York TimesThe story of the city is the story of civilisation. From Uruk and Babylon to Baghdad and Venice, and on to London, New York, Shanghai and Lagos, Ben Wilson takes us through millennia on a thrilling global tour of the key urban centres of history.Rich with individual characters, scenes and snapshots of daily life, Metropolis is at once the story of these extraordinary places and of the vital role they have played in making us who we are.'Panoramic...entertaining and rich in wondrous detail' Tom Holland'A towering achievement... Reading this book is like visiting an exhilarating city for the first time' Wall Street JournalTrade ReviewBrilliant... Enchanting... This is a history of the world told through its most buccaneering units... And it is full of quirky facts about London. -- Arjun Neil Alim * Evening Standard *Compendious and fascinating... Metropolis is crammed with local colour; and what gives the historical schema its real flavour is the deviations it allows... It makes you understand why we opted for cities in the first place, and why, despite the doom and gloom, I doubt we will be quitting them any time soon. -- Tim Smith-Laing * Daily Telegraph *Wilson [is] an erudite, creative guide to the history of civilization through its great urban areas... He broadens the book's focus beyond the usual Western suspects... An excellent account. -- Eben Shapiro * Time Magazine *Wilson sets out to match Mumford's sweep in Metropolis, and he brilliantly synthesises the forces that make cities hum. -- John Gapper * Financial Times *Capacious, entertaining and rich in wondrous detail, this is a work of history that pulls off the startling feat of measuring up to the immensity of its subject matter. -- Tom Holland * Literary Review *

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Book Synopsis'A lyrical meditation on landscapes and cities, vivid reportage and a memoir. And also a beautifully realised and moving read.' Financial Times'A beguiling mix of history, geology, folklore and memoir that captivated me from the first page.' Lara Maiklem, author of Mudlarking'Tom Chivers brings a poet's sensibility to this book about the hidden parts of the capital, mixing the past with the present, the known with the unknown and his personal story with social history and geology.' Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, OtherWhat secrets lie beneath a city?Tom Chivers follows hidden pathways, explores lost islands and uncovers the geological mysteries that burst up through the pavement and bubble to the surface of our streets. From Roman ruins to a submerged playhouse, from an abandoned Tube station to underground rivers, Chivers leads us on a journey into the depths of the city he loves.A lyrical interrogation of a capital city, a landscape and our connection to place, London Clay celebrates urban edgelands: in-between spaces where the natural world and the metropolis collide. Through a combination of historical research, vivid reportage and personal memoir, it will transform how you see London, and cities everywhere.'Tom Chivers, with the forensic eye of an investigator, the soul of a poet, is an engaging presence; a guide we would do well to follow.' Iain Sinclair, author of The Last LondonTrade ReviewWill open readers' eyes to what is around and below them ... Its delight in exploration is matched by a thoughtful meditation on grief. * Economist *Periodic surprises even for the most dedicated student of this subject ... movingly written. -- Caroline Crampton * Spectator *Incredible ... More than a simply a cracking read, it's a book that will inspire you to go out and make your own discoveries. You'll never look at the city in the same way again. * Londonist *London Clay by Tom Chivers, is perfect. He brings a poet's sensibility to this prose nonfiction book about the hidden parts of the capital, mixing the past with the present, the known with the unknown and his personal story with social history and geology. -- Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other[Chivers] combines the modern phenomenon of psycho-geographer with the ancient trade of poet ...Action-packed, erudite... an audiobook to savour slowly. -- Christina Hardyment * The Times *

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Book SynopsisAccording to the United Nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world. From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, and even from economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly unforeseen development, and asks whether the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, are volcanoes waiting to erupt.Trade ReviewA profound enquiry into an urgent subject . a brilliant book. -- Arundhati RoyWith cool indignation, Davis argues that the exponential growth of slums is no accident but the result of a perfect storm of corrupt leadership, institutional failure, and IMF-imposed programs leading to a massive transfer of wealth from rich to poor . Like the work of Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens over a century ago, this searing indictment makes the shame of our cities urgently clear. -- Michael SorkinThe Raymond Chandler of urban geography . In Planet of Slums, Davis's genre is the global disaster movie, as directed by the chroniclers of Victorian poverty: Engels, Booth and Dickens. The scale of modern squalor revealed in his brilliant survey dwarfs its predecessors . a coruscating tragedy. * Independent *The astonishing facts hit like anvil blows . Davis has produced a heartbreaking book that hammers the reader a little further into the ground with the blow of each new and shocking statistic. * Financial Times *A terrifying, magisterial work. * Harper’s *There can be no doubt about the achievement of Planet of Slums . it forces us, angrily, to confront the deplorable realities of slum existence and the limitations of slum policies in many developing countries. * Times (London) *While many case studies have described what it means to reside in a favela, basti, kampung, gecekondu or bidonville, Davis provides a properly global portrait . And whereas urban specialists have focused on questions of space and land use in their discussions of slums, and developmentalists on the issue of their 'informal economies', Planet of Slums commands our attention as a broader historical synthesis of the two. * New Left Review *Davis's descriptions of the conditions endured by slum-dwellers provide reason enough to read this book. His analysis is full of gripping stories from globalization's frontline. * New Statesman *Packed with rigorous analysis and heart-stopping facts, this is a brilliant exploration of how millions of poor city-dwellers worldwide are being driven to the squalid periurban shadowlands of today's megaslums . Davis's book is absolutely vital reading. * Big Issue *

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Book SynopsisA highly-illustrated, pocket-sized guide to understanding the forces that have shaped the world’s cities from the dawn of civilisation to the present day. The fortunes of towns and cities rise and fall along with the fate of the civilisations to which they belong. Some are lost entirely, now no more than ruins; others have thrived as urban centres for millennia; and all contain vital clues embedded in their streets and skylines which reveal why their inhabitants grouped together, and tell of their unique social, political and cultural histories. Packed with plans, maps, and drawings, this book takes you on an international journey of discovery to explore the history of cities from our earliest urban origins to the contemporary world city – from Babylon to Beijing, London to Paris, and from the skyscrapers of New York to the streets of their own home town. A must-read for anyone interested in history, cities, and travel, this fascinating book turns you into an urban detective to see how our towns and cities grew the way they are.Table of ContentsPart One: The Grammar of Urban Architecture Elements of the City Part Two: City Types & Styles First Cities Classical Cities China & the Far East The Americas Muslim Era Cities Medieval Towns The Baroque City Italian Hill Towns Cities of God Tidal Cities Hanseatic Towns Industrial Towns Politics & Power Ideal Towns Ideal Cities Organic Growth Shanty Towns Garrison Towns Island Towns & Cities Cities of Towers Underground Cities Megalopolis New Towns Green Towns Abandoned Cities Future Cities Glossary Resources Index

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Book SynopsisTwentieth anniversary edition of a landmark book that cataloged a vibrant but disappearing neighborhood in New York CityIn the two decades that preceded the original publication of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Forty-second Street, then the most infamous street in America, was being remade into a sanitized tourist haven. In the forced disappearance of porn theaters, peep shows, and street hustlers to make room for a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes, Samuel R. Delany saw a disappearance, not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there.Samuel R. Delany bore witness to the dismantling of the institutions that promoted points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space, and in this hybrid text, argues for the necessity of public restrooms and tree-filled parks to a city''s physical and psychological landscape.This twentieth anniversary editionTrade ReviewRepublished in a 20th anniversary edition by NYU Press, Times Square Red is both a thoughtful remembrance and a serious study of Times Square’s infamous porn theaters and the gay hookup scene therein during their pre-AIDS 1970s-‘80s heyday. … alongside Times Square Red, Times Square Blue’s hand and blow jobs, there are both provocative arguments and charmingly observed tidbits of lore and history… a clear-headed and intimate view of a New York that is irretrievably gone. * Gothamist *[A] classic of queer history. -- Jordy Rosenberg * The New York Times *Remarkable. -- SalonIn a provocative and persuasively argued cri de coeur against New York City's gentrification and the redevelopment of Times Square in the name of 'family values and safety,' acclaimed science fiction writer Delany proves himself a dazzlingly eloquent and original social commentator. . . . This bracing and well-calibrated blend of journalism, personal history and cultural criticism will challenge readers of every persuasion. -- Publishers WeeklyMeasured but emotional, illuminating but challenging. -- The San Francisco ChronicleEssential. * The Nation *Reading this book reminds me, as few others in a lifetime of reading have done, just why it is that we so love our cities, what we value in them, and why the great ones become so. [Delany is] one of our finest social critics and one of our great writers. -- James Sallis * Rain Taxi *A landmark critique of gentrification. * The New Yorker *

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Book SynopsisAn abridged edition of Peter Ackroyd''s magisterial biography of the city of London.Prize-winning historian, novelist and broadcaster, Peter Ackroyd takes us on a journey - historical, geographical and imaginative - through the city of London. Moving back and forth through time, Ackroyd is an effortless, exuberant guide to times of plague and pestilence, fire and floods, crime and punishment, and sex and theatre. He brings the ever changing streets alive for the reader and shows us what lies beneath our feet and above our heads. His biography is as rich in detail and fizzing with vitality as the city itself.Trade ReviewPeter Ackroyd is the greatest living chronicler of London * Independent *Peter Ackroyd was born to write the biography of London...a brilliant book * Sunday Telegraph *It would be no exaggeration to say that Peter Ackroyd's 'biography' of our captial is the book about London -- A N Wilson * Daily Mail *You will not find a better, more visionary book about a place we take for granted * Observer *[London] may be several years old but it remains one of the leading narratives as he cleverly weaves through centuries of history to reveal to us the hundreds of different cities within a city. -- Fiona Hamilton * The Times *

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Book SynopsisLynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe, and she has lived for years on an estate in London's East End. Writing with passion, humour and a sense of history, she recounts the rise of social housing a century ago, its adoption as a fundamental right by leaders of the social welfare state in the mid-century and its decline - as both idea and reality - in the 1960s and '70s. Throughout, Hanley focuses on how shifting trends in urban planning and changing government policies - from Homes Fit for Heroes to Le Corbusier's concrete tower blocks, to the Right to Buy - affected those so often left out of the argument over council estates: the millions of people who live on them. What emerges is a vivid mix of memoir and social history, an engaging and illuminating book about a corner of society that the rest of Britain has left in the dark.Trade ReviewA rich, thought-provoking book * Observer *Estates, a journey through the world of British social housing, is both a history and a personal reckoning * Financial Times *A wonderful book ... explains with verve and insight how one's mental landscape is moulded by physical environment ... Simple lessons for planners, architects and developers leap off the pages * Guardian *Lynsey Hanley's vivid, powerful book is about a dream gone sour. Her descriptions of hopelessness, drunkenness and yobbery in Tower Hamlets cry out to be engraved by a new Hogarth * Independent *Hanley's Estates is many things - social history, memoir, mild polemic ... she catalogues her experience in a manner that is honest, informed and never whimsical. A well-timed and truthful book * Daily Telegraph *[A] celebrated slice of myth-busting * Metro *

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Book Synopsis*According to the Trussell Trust, food bank use between April and Sept 2018 was up 13% on the same period in 2017.* *Every year in the UK 18 million tonnes of food end up in landfill.*Why is this the case and what can we do about it?The relationship between food and cities is fundamental to our everyday lives. Food shapes cities and through them it moulds us - along with the countryside that feeds us. Yet few of us are conscious of the process and we rarely stop to wonder how food reaches our plates.Hungry City examines the way in which modern food production has damaged the balance of human existence, and reveals that we have yet to resolve a centuries-old dilemma - one which holds the key to a host of current problems, from obesity and the inexorable rise of the supermarkets, to the destruction of the natural world.Original, inspiring and written with infectious enthusiasm and belief, Hungry City illuminates an issue that is fundamental to us all.Trade ReviewExuberant, provocative... her desire that we understand better and think more about our food, how much we waste, how much energy it consumes and how we dispose of it... It is - in the real sense of the word - vital -- David Aaronovitch * The Times *Hungry City is a sinister real-life sequel to Animal Farm with the plot turned upside down by time in ways even George Orwell could not have foreseen * Observer *Lively, wide-ranging, endlessly inquisitive... Hungry City is a smorgasbord of a book: dip into it and you will emerge with something fascinating * Independent *Absolutely crammed with eye-opening facts and figures, a hugely readable account of the part we individually play in a global problem. Highly Recommended * Publishing News *She can précis her specialist sources briskly, and her own direct research (e.g. a mega kitchen for cooking ready meals) is lively -- Vera Rule * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisThe economic and political situation of cities has shifted in recent years in light ofrapid growth amidst infrastructure decline, the suburbanization of poverty and inner city revitalization.At the same time, the way that data are used to understand urban systems has changed dramatically. Urban Analyticsoffers a field-defining look at thechallenges and opportunities of using new and emerging data to study contemporary and future cities through methods including GIS, Remote Sensing, Big Data and Geodemographics. Written in an accessible style and packed with illustrations and interviews from key urban analysts, this is a groundbreaking new textbook for students of urban planning, urban design, geography, and the information sciences.Trade ReviewThis is a comprehensive and timely consolidation of current thinking about urban analytics. The book is fizzing with new ideas, and brimming with practical examples of the science of doing. Compulsive student reading. -- Paul LongleyUrban analytics is fast emerging as the core set of tools employed to deal with problems of big data, urban simulation, and demographics. This book is essential reading to all those involved in this newly emergent field, providing a new arsenal of analytic tools to make sense of how cities are being restructured. -- Michael BattyUrban Analytics neatly interweaves an introduction to this emerging field, with an accessible discussion of enduring themes and new approaches in quantitative geography. An engaging text that will appeal to students in a range of disciplines. -- David O′SullivanThis excellent starter text captures the excitement and enthusiasm of a new kind of urban research: one that exploits the vast new data resources that are becoming available, from social media, crowdsourcing, and sensor networks; and makes use of the unprecedented power of today′s computer technology. It fills an important gap, and will be an essential text for students in a wide range of disciplines, from civil, infrastructure, and transportation engineering to geography, planning, and urban studies. -- Michael GoodchildUrban analytics has come of age! This textbook by three leading scholars in data-driven and computational urban science is needed and welcome. It is a fantastic resource for educating the next generation of urban scholars. -- Harvey J. MillerUrban Analytics is a great introductory text for getting familiar with logics and perspectives characterising the analysis, interpretation and representation of urban data. It is a highly valuable work for urban scholars who are familiar with qualitative approaches, but would like to gain a deeper understanding of the ways data and computational techniques allow us to understand and gain meaningful knowledge of cities and urban phenomena. -- Alberto VanoloUrban analytics is integral to city infrastructure, and it is hugely important that people understand the implication and uses of City data. This book accessibly explains the underlying concepts of urban analytics for students and interested professionals. I believe this book will be very helpful, and will recommend it for my students and (business) partners in city data projects. -- Nanda PiersmaTable of ContentsQuestioning the City through Urban Analytics Sensing the City Urban Data Infrastructure Visualizing the City Differences within Cities Explaining the City Generative Urban Systems Cities as Networks and Flows The Future of Urban Analytics

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Book SynopsisThe Houston Chinatown’s dramatic transformation from a Chinese enclave decades ago to a continually expanding multiethnic boomtown today contrasts development stagnation in many other traditional American Chinatowns. This pioneer study delineates the evolution of Houston’s two Chinatowns, from the emergence and decline of Old Chinatown to the subsequent development and vibrant growth of New Chinatown – spanning nearly a century. Zheng and Zou delve into the distinctive character of New Chinatown, underscoring its innovative progress that sets it apart from the nation’s oldest major Chinatowns, a quintessentially Houston story. They also probe the immigrant experience, political landscape, and socioeconomic dynamics that influenced the Chinatowns’ metamorphoses. Scanning the community’s collective response to the dire impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on New Chinatown, the chapters examine the latest development trends in the New Chinatown areas, shedding light on the extent to which they are upholding, or deviating from, traditional practices. Furthermore, the book explores the significance of these trends to the local community and beyond, alongside their wider implications. Amidst the growth challenges encountered by numerous Chinatowns across America, this timely work offers insightful perspectives on a sustainable model for urban and community development, as demonstrated by the transformative journey of Houston’s New Chinatown.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Prologue: A Tale of Lost and Found Chapter 2. Chinatown Studies and Research Approaches Chapter 3. The Chinese in Texas and Houston Chapter 4. The Development of the Original Houston Chinatown Chapter 5. New Chinatown: Its Rise and Years of Expansion Chapter 6. The Roles of Social and Cultural Institutions in New Chinatown Chapter 7. Beyond Chinatown: Asiatown and New Development Trends Chapter 8. Epilogue: Toward a Multicultural America

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Book SynopsisBorn in Lubbock, Texas, Kimberly King Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for fiction. Her debut collection, Black Light (2019), was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and her fiction has been published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children. We Were the Universe is her first novel.

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Book Synopsis'A Mumbai slum understood and imagined as never before in language of intense beauty' Salman Rushdie 'If Bollywood ever decides to do its own version of The Wire, this would be it' Barbara Ehrenreich Annawadi is a slum at the edge of Mumbai Airport, in the shadow of shining new luxury hotels. Its residents are garbage recyclers and construction workers, economic migrants, all of them living in the hope that a small part of India's booming future will eventually be theirs. But when a crime rocks the slum community and global recession and terrorism shocks the city, tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy begin to turn brutal. As Boo gets to know those who dwell in Mumbai's margins, she evokes an extraordinarily vivid group of individuals flourishing against the odds amid the complications, corruptions and gross inequalities of the new India. 'A triumph of a book. A beautiful account of the sorrows and joys, anxieties and stamina, in the lives of the precarious and powerless in urban India' Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics 'Magnificent...a masterpiece... Quite simply, one of the finest works on contemporary India yet written' Sunday TelegraphTrade ReviewA triumph of a book. A beautiful account of the sorrows and joys, anxieties and stamina, in the lives of the precarious and powerless in urban India... A brilliant book that simultaneously informs, agitates, angers, inspires and instigates. -- Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize for EconomicsOne's first reaction is disbelief followed by stunned silence... takes us into the very engine room of the undercity and shines a light on each of the cogs and ratchets... Adamantine, unignorable, truthful. -- Neel Mukherjee * The Times *Magnificent... Boo does not flinch from addressing Mumbai's social inequalities, in particular the plight of its underclass... A masterpiece... quite simply, one of the finest works on contemporary India yet written. -- Ian Thomson * Sunday Telegraph *One of the most powerful indictments of economic inequality I've ever read. If Bollywood ever decides to do its own version of The Wire, this would be it. -- Barbara EhrenreichBehind the Beautiful Forevers is already a legend...It cannot be dismissed as yet another lazy excursion into slum poverty tourism, or as an outsider's account of India... Unforgettable. -- Nilanjana Roy * Business Standard *It might surprise you how completely enjoyable this book is, as rich and beautifully written as a novel. In the hierarchy of long form reporting, Katherine Boo is right up there. -- David SedarisNovelists dream of defining characters this swiftly and beautifully, but Boo is not a novelist. She is a rare deep-digging journalists who can make truth surpass fiction, a documentarian with a superb sense of human drama. -- Janet Maslin * New York Times *Kate Boo's reporting is a form of kinship. There are books that change the way you feel and see; this is one of them. If we receive the fiery spirit from which it was written, it ought to change much more than that. -- Adrian LeBlanc, author of Random FamilyWithout question the best book thus written on contemporary India. -- Ramachandra Guha, author of India After GandhiA fantastic book. -- David Remnick * New Yorker *A superb book. -- Tracy Kidder, author of Mountains Beyond MountainsRemember the title Behind the Beautiful Forevers because you will see it on upcoming nominee lists for the next round of Very Important Literary Prizes... An unforgettable true story, meticulously researched with unblinking honesty ... it is pure, astonishing reportage. * Christian Science Monitor *There are cult filmmakers and cult novelists, but Katherine Boo may be the world's only cult journalist. * Salon *Extraordinary... Behind the Beautiful Forevers does not descend into a catalog of atrocity... The product of prolonged and risky self-exposure to Annawadi, the book's narrative stitches, with much skillfully unspoken analysis, some carefully researched individual lives. Its considerable literary power is also derived from Boo's soberly elegant prose... Perhaps wisely, Boo has absented herself from the narrative... Instead of the faux-na?f explainer or the intrepid adventurer in Asian badlands, you get a reflective sensibility, subtly informing every page with previous experiences of deprivation and striving, and a gentle skepticism about ideological claims. -- Charles McGrath * New York Times *Character development. An acute ear for dialogue and idiom. A sense of place. These are the essential ingredients of a good novel. So what's a fiction writer like me supposed to do when Boo employs all these and writes a book of nonfiction so stellar it puts most novels to shame? How can I not envy a work that takes us on harrowing journey into an unfamiliar world of an urban slum and makes us citizens of that world? To add salt to my literary wounds: That slum is located in Mumbai, the city of my birth, one I've written about frequently, and until now, claimed to know and understand. It turns out I knew little. And understood even less. -- Thrity Umrigar * Boston Globe *Katherine Boo's extraordinary first book is... above all, a moral enquiry. Her eye is as shrewdly trained on the essential facts of politics and commerce as on the intimate, the familial and, indeed, the monstrously absurd: the college-going girl who struggles to figure out "Mrs. Dalloway" while her closest friend, about to be forced into an arranged marriage, consumes rat poison, and dies (though not before the doctors attending her extort 5,000 rupees, or $100, from her parents). -- Pankaj Mishra * New York Times *A riveting, fearlessly reported portrait of a poverty so obliterating that it amounts to a slow-motion genocide. Behind the Beautiful Forevers will be one of the year's big books - a conversation starter, an award winner... The book plays out like a swift, richly plotted novel. That's partly because Boo writes so damn well. * Entertainment Weekly *An astoundingly well-reported and beautifully crafted book on 21st century India...distilled into prose that blows you away with its beauty, wit and restraint. * Outlook India *[Has the suspense, sensation and tragedy of a novel, except that every word is real. * The Hindu *Remarkable. -- Ian Jack * New York Review of Books *A bravura work of non-fiction that goes beyond clichéd, patronising depictions of poverty to raise uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for India's urban poor in the age of global market capitalism ... Thanks to the transcendent quality of Boo's prose, this "sumpy plug of slum" springs to life with all the drama and vividness of great fiction ... Boo's great achievement is to have overcome barriers of language, culture and ethnicity to get inside the minds of her subjects to decode their innermost thoughts. And because she has written about the everyday experiences of real people, using real names, we get to rub our noses in the dirt of Annawadi, see the world through their eyes. -- Vikas Swarup * FT *Must read: a Mumbai slum imagined and understood as never before in language of intense beauty. -- Salman RushdieBoo's descriptions of life within are almost Dickensian, as are her characters ... The language of the book is beautiful, and she reconstructs scenes through endless interviews with her subjects. * Telegraph *Deploying spare, unadorned prose, Boo throws the slumdwellers into such sharp relief that, reading the book, one has the sense of seeing them at first hand ... By absenting herself, Boo endows her writing with an uncommon immediacy. -- Nikhil Kumar * Independent on Sunday *A powerful and sobering book. * Conde Nast Traveller *A small masterpiece of documentary storytelling. In its subject matter of poverty, its meticulous research and Boo's great gift for sympathy, the book seems an obvious next step in a successful career. -- Susannah Rustin * Guardian *An extraordinary, intimate and gripping book, which it is no exaggeration to describe as a milestone in writing about poverty, and already one of this year's most memorable reads ... Boo's seamlessly structured narrative allows these stories to unfold alongside the personal dramas of the characters. Her tone is admirably restrained, and never patronising or mawkish ... The close focus of Behind the Beautiful Forevers is what gives it its clarity, and makes it so affecting. -- Alex Von Tunzelmann * Evening Standard *In the end one puts down this impressive work relieved that one can rest from the remorselessness of its tragedies yet grateful one has learned about them from a writer who combines such innate human sympathy with such high literary skill. We can be grateful too to that unabridged dictionary for serving an unintended purpose. -- David Gilmour * Spectator *A small masterpiece ... thanks to several years of rigorous research on the ground, following her characters around as they live their lives, months of research retrieving court documents through India's Right to Information Act, and, most of all, through close observation and a deep human empathy, Boo has created as detailed, convincing and moving a portrait of urban deprivation as The Road to Wigan Pier. Throughout, Boo writes beautifully and, given her subject, surprisingly wittily. She is also wonderfully observant of human quirks ... There have been many attempts by writers in recent years to pin to the page the hopes and fears of the new India. Most have attempted to do so by giving a sense of the extraordinary scale of the changes transforming the world's largest democracy. Yet by homing in on one small group of characters, the bit-part players in the story of India's development, Boo has succeeded better than any of them in showing both the possibilities, and the human cost, of India's great leap forward. -- William Dalrymple * Observer *A remarkable book ... In the end one puts down this impressive work relieved that one can rest from the remorselessness of its tragedies yet grateful one has learned about them from a writer who combines such innate human sympathy with such high literary skill. We can be grateful too to that unabridged dictionary for serving an unintended purpose. -- David Gilmour * Spectator *Reads so much like a well-crafted novel ... A compelling book which combines the skills of journalistic reportage and emotive storytelling, and excels at both. -- Alastair Mabbott * Herald *Most recent books about the country, unselfconsciously suffused with the clichés of the age, speak of how free-market capitalism has ignited a general explosion of opportunity, fostering hope among the most destitute of Indians. Boo describes what really happens when opportunity accrues to the already privileged in the age of globalisation, when governments remain dysfunctional and corrupt. -- Pankaj Mishra * Scotsman *This is an astonishing book. It is astonishing on several levels: as a worm's-eye view of the "undercity" of one of the world's largest metropolises; as an intensely reported, deeply felt account of the lives, hopes and fears of people traditionally excluded from literate narratives; as a story that truly hasn't been told before, at least not about India and not by a foreigner ... The result is a searing account, in effective and racy prose, that reads like a thrilling novel but packs a punch Sinclair Lewis might have envied. -- Shashi Tharoor * Washington Post *Behind the Beautiful Forevers neither sensationalises the squalor nor judges those responsible for it. Boo's studied understatement, her obsession with authenticity and her almost painful empathy are eloquent enough ... Honest and often deeply affecting, Katherine Boo's book deserves a place alongside the award-winning studies of North Korea and Sarajevo by Barbara Demick. -- John Keay * Literary Review *An exceptional work of reportage ... Boo makes no attempt to disguise the miseries involved in living close to a vast pool of sewage on land where feral pigs gorge on rotting leftovers from the airport hotels. She does not pretend that the Annawadians possess virtues that they do not. However, she does grant them individuality and respect, as real people, whose many pains and occasional pleasures she evokes with great skill and empathy. -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *A small classic of contemporary writing. -- Amit Chaudhuri * Guardian *A page-turner with a gripping human story, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the real India. -- Jonathan Foreman * Mail on Sunday *Her prose is so beautiful, witty and economical, her narrative so powerful, that it's easy to forget this is an unprecedented piece of investigative journalism as well. -- Amy Walden * Financial Times *Boo produces a gripping narrative of urban deprivation, underworld scams, sexual abuse, social injustice and human tragedy... Boo shows the human cost of Mumbai's burgeoning economic prosperity with disturbing brilliance. * Metro *Read this book for its insights into the wealth divide that exists in India's "richest" city. But also enjoy its ability to entertain as a novel does. * Evening Chronicle *The product of prolonged and risky self-exposure to Annawadi, the narrative stitches, with much skilfully unspoken analysis, some carefully researched individual lives... [It has] considerable literary power. -- Pankaj Mishra * Scotsman *An exceptional piece of reportage. * Sunday Times Must Reads *An inspiring portrait of the human struggle to make a home in the most hellish situation. * Woman & Home *Honest and often deeply affecting, Boo's book deserves a place alongside the award-winning studies of North Korea and war-torn Sarajevo by Barbara Demick. * Literary Review *If you have no idea what life in the slums is like then I suspect this book will shock you. I can see why many people are naming it as their book of the year. * Farm Lane Books *The hope - and the hopelessness - recorded here is utterly heartbreaking, but never mawkish or indulgent... Starkly documents the ever-growing disparity between India's rich and poor... Truly important' -- Bryony Gordon * Daily Telegraph *[A] finely hewn, gently humoured and tough-minded work of lasting import. Behind the Beautiful Forevers combines ethical clarity and writerly exactitude to stimulate outrage and unsettling pleasure -- Guy Mannes-Abbott * Independent *Vivid and full of insight -- Anjali Joseph * Prospect *In this tough-minded debut, [Boo] asks why the poor don't rise up, and why unequal societies don't implode. Her answers are embedded in a narrative as pacy as a thriller -- Maggie Fergusson * Intelligent Life *Boo takes us to the slums of Mumbai and paints a vivid pictue of both poverty and resistance * Belfast Telegraph *A book of extraordinary intelligence, humanity and (formalistic) cunning... [Boo] humanizes with all the force of literature the impossible lives of the people at bottom of our pharaonic global order, and details with a journalist's unsparing exactitude the absolute suffering that undergirds India's economic boom. The portraits [are] indelible... groundbreaking -- Junot DíazThis is reality - and a shocking one at that -- Vanessa Baird * New Internationalist *[A] heartbreaking account of life in a Mumbai slum -- Anita Singh * Telegraph *Behind the Beautiful Forevers reads like a novel by Dickens, but is a real-life depiction of the challenges hundreds of millions of people face every day in urban slums. It's also a reminder of the humanity that connects us all -- Bill GatesAstonishingly vivid, beautifully written -- Steve Barfield * The Lady *The level of attention she gives the people in her book is so profound and respectful * Guernica Magazine *Skilful and compassionate writing without sentimentality or mythic abstraction -- Martha Nussbaum * Times Literary Supplement *A remarkable debut... The book's strength lies in its relentless focus on the grim human realities of poverty -- Andrew Graham Dixon, BBC 2 * Culture Show *Boo seems to have expanded the possibilities of the form with her scrupulous, novelistic imaginings of the thoughts of Mumbai slum-dwellers -- Paul Laity * Guardian *An exemplary piece of deep reporting... Meticulous and gripping -- Stephen Bleach, Books of the Year * Sunday Times *The narrative is so immediate and absorbing that I had stop and turn to the notes at the back to check that it really was a documentary account... A passionate work of reportage -- Kate Summerscale, Books of the Year * Daily Telegraph *She doesn't preach, she's not voyeuristic and rather than intrude on the action she saves the story of her own involvement for the afterword... A triumph -- Blake Morrison, Books of the Year * Guardian *Looks hard into places of extreme despair, and comes back brimming with irrepressible life... A masterpiece -- Tim Adams, Books of the Year * Observer *Boo's masterclass in reportage is remarkable -- Craig Taylor, Books of the Year * Observer *You put it down enraged, entertained and richly informed about people who live in makeshift quarters at the end of an airport runway -- David Hare, Books of the Year * Guardian *She has the insight of a novelist [but] retains the integrity of a uncompromising investigative reporter -- Roy Foster, Books of the Year * Times Literary Supplement *The harsh life of a Mumbai slum vividly recreated on the page in beautiful prose. Her characters are irresistibly alive. No slumdogs or millionaires here. Just the truth -- Salman Rushdie, Books of the Year * The Times *Boo's praised account of the residents of Annawadi, a slum in the shadow of luxury hotels near Mumbai airport -- Emily Stokes, Books of the Year * Financial Times *A classic... Combines a cool intelligence with a cinematic eye for detail -- Maggie Fergusson, Non-fiction Book of the Year * Intelligent Life *A devastating portrayal of street-dwellers struggling to survive against insurmountable odds * Sunday Herald *A fascinating, insightful and heartfelt piece of extended reportage -- Must Read 2012 * Metro *Boo has given us an insightful portrait of slum life -- Jan Breman * New Left Review *A small masterpiece -- Travel Awards 2012 * Oldie *A worm's eye view of the corruption and gross inequality of the new India, which was ecstatically reviewed from New York to New Delhi -- Books of the Year * The Week *Fascinating... Boo makes no political comment about the need for change but rather, like good writers before her who describe appalling inequalities, she allows her characters to speak for themselves -- Peter Gruner * Camden New Journal *She grants the residents respect as real people, evoking their many pains and occasional pleasures with great skill and empathy -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *A small classic of contemporary writing -- Amit Chaudhuri * Guardian *Vivid -- Michael Neale * Asian Affairs *Remarkable * Prospect *Painstaking reportage... page-turning in its novelistic sweep... meticulously researched. Vivid, clear-eyed, often bruising detail * Independent on Sunday *My favourite non-fiction book about the subcontinent, but one that reads like a soap opera. The tragedies, loves, disappointments and joys of the slum-dwellers of Mumbai are brought thrillingly to life by the author, who lived among them for two years. A testimony to brute survival and the human spirit. -- Author Deborah Moggach * Week *With her precise descriptions of relationships and the tragic lives of her characters, Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers reads like expertly crafted fiction -- President Barack Obama * Wired *A book [which] is no longer on the frontlist, but provide[s] vital ways for us to deepen the conversation... [it] stays with the reader and audience alike -- Ted Hodgkinson * Bookseller *

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Book SynopsisChickens are many things: sources of meat and eggs, lovable pets, amusing images on merchandise, and a source of comfort at the end of a hard day. Whether we're considering joining the growing flock of backyard chicken-keepers or simply cheered by leafing through images of gorgeous poultry, our love for chickens is strong.The trend for backyard chickens has surged during the pandemic. Amazon searches for chick supplies are up 758%, with local hatcheries recording a 500% demand increase, as people look to reduce environmental impact, improve food traceability, connect with nature, or simply to relish the pure joy of chicken company.The Collins Backyard Chicken-keeper's Bible is the fourth title in this stunning and engaging series, and the perfect smallholder companion to The Beekeeper's Bible. It is packed with everything you need to fully embrace your new chicken-keeping lifestyle. A sumptuous aesthetic is paired with practical tips on identifying backyard breeds and supporting good cTrade ReviewOn Collins Backyard Birdwatcher’s Bible:‘An exquisitely illustrated book that everyone should be twitching to get their hands on … The information is accessible to beginners and novices, offering insightful tips for even experienced birdwatchers. With this book, educating oneself further about birds needn’t be a flight of fancy’ The Field

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Book SynopsisMost incidents of urban unrest in recent decades - including the riots in France, Britain and other Western countries - have followed lethal interactions between the youth and the police. Usually these take place in disadvantaged neighborhoods composed of working-class families of immigrant origin or belonging to ethnic minorities. These tragic events have received a great deal of media coverage, but we know very little about the everyday activities of urban policing that lie behind them. Over the course of 15 months, at the time of the 2005 riots, Didier Fassin carried out an ethnographic study in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region, sharing the life of a police station and cruising with the patrols, in particular the dreaded anti-crime squads. Far from the imaginary worlds created by television series and action movies, he uncovers the ordinary aspects of law enforcement, characterized by inactivity and boredom, by eventless days and nights where minor infractions givTrade Review“Enforcing Order is an intriguing read, not least for what it reveals about the politics of law and order, and of policing, in France in recent times” Tim Newburn, LSE, LSE Review of Books "Powerful, distressing and thought-provoking. The book is based on 15 months of fieldwork, an undertaking unprecedented in France and one that, as the difficulties of access Fassin encountered suggest, will not be conducted again for some time." Times Higher Education "Fassin’s book – the most significant contribution to the public anthropology of policing – has opened up space to discuss the unresolved tension underlying the contemporary state, that between providing security and protecting human rights." Social Anthropology "Fassin has written a brilliant example of public anthropology. This ethnography of the anti-crime squads of the French police powerfully captures the institutionalization of racism and violence against poor youth and immigrants. His book must reach the widest possible audience because these paramilitaries operating out of sight of the general public with the complicity of politicians, career bureaucrats and the courts must be dismantled." Philippe Bourgois, University of Pennsylvania "This vivid description of the daily routines of police squads operating in under-privileged Parisian suburbs reinstates ethnography as a powerful tool for revealing how social exclusion works. By bringing to life, from the point of view of its officers, how the police consolidates social hierarchies, Fassin reminds us eloquently that the behavior of its police forces is the best index of the state of a democracy." Philippe Descola, Collège de France "A fascinating read – a brilliant, deep plunge into the lives, routines, racial tensions, sometimes violence, and intricate moral reasoning of the police officers in an anti-crime brigade in the French banlieues during a heated time of rioting in Paris. It blends a subtle analysis of the moral economy of the police with rigorous ethnographic detail and a genuine honesty or transparency on Didier Fassin’s part. It is a very important contribution to our understanding of police practices in this new age of security." Bernard Harcourt, University of ChicagoTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Preliminary Remarks Preface to the Engish Edition Prologue - Interpellation In which the author comes to understand that it is sometimes dangerous to wait for a bus in the outer city on New Year’s Eve. How policing practice provides the language for a philosophical theory, and how a philosophical theory supplies the meaning of policing practice. That this is not a testimony, and that indignation is not rage. Introduction - Inquiry How the present research was authorized and then forbidden, and that this censorship is revelatory of petty exceptions in a democratic regime. That an ethnography of the police requires resisting the dual temptation of exoticism and culturalism. That a study is often the result of the converging effects of chance and necessity. Chapter 1 - Situation How an imaginary of war came to be established in the relations between the police and the projects. That a brief history of the social question and security issues is essential in order to understand the context in which law enforcement faces classes reputed to be dangerous. That the creation of more aggressive special units was judged necessary to deal with the alleged disorder in the outer cities. Chapter 2 - Ordinary How the daily work of police officers is far removed from the image they had of it when they joined the force, and the illusion they continue to maintain of it. That evaluation of the work of urban patrols yields such unexpected results that it is not taken into account by government. That inaction generates action, and what this phenomenon of spontaneous generation means for the residents of the projects. Chapter 3 - Interactions How stops and frisks serve purposes other than those they are supposed to serve, and prove more effective in perpetuating a social order than in maintaining public order. That the way police officers speak about the individuals with whom they deal throws light on their way of operating in the outer cities. That the theater of police intervention sometimes plays comedies in which not all spectators laugh at the same moment. Chapter 4 - Violence How a criminal court can offer valuable lessons on excessive use of force by the police in the outer cities. That by not reducing violence to its physical aspect and not limiting the definition of it to the legal sense, one can gain a different understanding of it. That there are many ways of preventing police brutality from being prosecuted Chapter 5 - Discrimination How police officers and sociologists challenge the existence of discriminatory practices that the rest of the French population is convinced prevail. That racist ideas do not automatically lead to discriminatory practices, but that the two are far from incompatible. That institutions show more tolerance toward institutional racism than toward its victims. Chapter 6 - Politics How some signs are not deceiving, but may nevertheless be surprising in a democratic regime. That local practices enjoy great autonomy with respect to national guidelines, but that government policy has some influence on the everyday work of law enforcement. That the corollary of the increasing criminalization of behaviors is an unprecedented casting of the police as victims. Chapter 7 - Morality How police officers disappointed by the justice of the courts began to practice street justice. That jokes in the precinct can prove more serious than is customarily maintained. That a code of ethics is not enough to interpret the ethical forces at work in the behavior of police officers and the moral impasse in which the police find themselves. Conclusion - Democracy How the French police preferred the model of the cop in the United States to the style of the British bobby, and what was the result. That the imposition of the rationale of security has a high social cost for contemporary societies. That the interests of ethnography are intimately bound with those of democracy. Epilogue - Time In which the author looks back to a not-so-distant past, observes that the more things change the more they do not stay the same, wonders about the present as it is experienced by certain segments of French society and ignored by the others, and expresses concerns about the future. Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisNo metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together." To detractors, LA is a sunlit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it." To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias.In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs LA's shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He tells us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes, Pynchonesque conspiracies, and a desperation straight out of Nathaniel West - a city in which we may glimpse our own future mirrored with terrifying clarity.Trade ReviewAbsolutely fascinating. -- William GibsonFew books shed as much light on their subjects as this opinionated and original excavation of Los Angeles from the mythical debris of its past and future. * San Francisco Examiner *A history as fascinating as it is instructive. -- Peter Ackroyd * The Times *As central to the L.A. canon as anything that Carey McWilliams wrote in the forties or Joan Didion wrote in the seventies. -- Dana Goodyear * New Yorker *Angelenos, now is the time to lean into Mike Davis's apocalyptic, passionate, radical rants on the sprawling, gorgeous mess that is Los Angeles. -- Stephanie Danler, author of Stray and SweetbitterCity of Quartz deserves to be emancipated from its parochial legacy...[It is] a working theory of global cities writ large, with as much to teach us about multiculturalism as it does racial apartheid in Los Angeles. -- David Helps * Los Angeles Review of Books *A wildly original analysis of the city on the threshold of the new millennium, the book synthesized knowledge about Los Angeles's history, politics, culture, architecture, policing, immigration, and more, painting a dark picture that embodied a kind of American urban dystopia on steroids after the nightmare of Reaganism and the "developers' millennium." -- Micah Uetricht * The Nation *Dazzling * Counterfire *

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Book SynopsisHow public history can be a catalyst for stronger relationships between universities and their communitiesTrade Review“Through a collection of compelling scholarship, Bachin and Howard have shown the importance of universities for correcting discrimination and its legacies. Consider this book more than a compendium of inventive campus-community partnerships; it’s an indispensable guide for the future of urban justice.”—N.D.B. Connolly, Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and author of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida“Robin Bachin and Amy Howard have compiled a powerful case for publicly engaged scholarship not only as a vitally important modus operandi for urban historians but also for universities writ large. The composite picture they have pieced together from public history case studies drawn from cities across the nation compellingly illustrates how the ‘lens of the past’ provides a foundation for reciprocal engagement between universities and their communities. Engaging Place, Engaging Practices vividly demonstrates the value of urban universities collaborating with local partners to heal historical wounds, co-create knowledge of who we are today, and put our universities and communities jointly on a path to racial equity and justice.”—Nancy Cantor, Chancellor and Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University–Newark, and coeditor of Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society"A real strength of this collection is the range of university–community partnerships highlighted.... Engaging Place, Engaging Practices is an excellent addition to the literature on public history, public humanities, and university–community partnerships. The range of projects included in the book make it an appealing read for anyone already doing university–community partnership work and for those who want to join in it.... [T]he volume is convincing in its call for historians and the broader university to truly partner with surrounding communities in order to collectively analyze and engage in pressing social, economic, and environmental problems." —Teachers College Record"In nearly all the chapters, the authors demonstrate that sustained collaboration and committed university leadership are essential to ensure that the potential and power of urban universities can be leveraged to promote positive change.... [C]hapters demonstrate how instructors and individual courses can make a difference in the lives of students and residents. As such, the collection provides examples at a variety of scales—from the block, neighborhood, city, and regional school-of '...colleges and universities [striving] to matter'. In doing so, the editors make the case that the engaged university can and should do more to shape 'inclusive, equitable, and sustainable' communities—and that universities need to assume a heightened leadership role in a post-COVID-19 world."—Economic Development Quarterly

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Book Synopsis"We came to Britain in search of better opportunities or to get some of the wealth which had been misappropriated from the Caribbean, but what in reality did we find?"Speak Out brings together the writings of Brixton Black Women's Group for the first time, in a landmark collection. Established in response to the lack of interest in women's issues experienced in male-dominated Black organisations, the Brixton Black Women's Group's aim was to create a distinct space where women of African and Asian descent could meet to focus on political, social and cultural issues as they affected black women. BBWG published its own newsletter, Speak Out, which kept alive the debate about the relevance of feminism to black politics and provided a black women's perspective on immigration, housing, health and culture.Trade ReviewAn important testament to the pioneering Black British feminists of the 1970s and '80s who set up groups and centres, and bravely and brilliantly campaigned against discrimination and for social change in the face of extreme opposition. Long ignored and undervalued, their grassroots activism adds unique and essential layers to the recorded histories of the era -- Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, OtherFor a new generation of feminist thinkers the relevance of this collection cannot be overstated. Intended for local distribution, the articles are a testament to the continuous theoretical study, fierce discipline, comradeliness and revolutionary love central to resistance against the most violent arms of the state...A balm, an instruction manual a historical object that defies temporality and a response to the forces that seek to depoliticise the history of racialised women's struggle for freedom in Britain. -- Lola Olufemi, author of Feminism Interrupted and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise Militant and original, the Brixton Black Women's Group forged a Marxist analysis entirely their own, driven by the urgency of the triple jeopardy they faced as workers, as women, and as Black people in Britain. The ideas here are alive with the energy, rage, and deep, courageous love that propel political struggle. This is not just a book, it's a whole world -- Sita Balani, author of Deadly and SlickT'his collection beautifully narrates how Black British feminists played an integral role in resistance to state violence, community health, popular education, internationalism and many other struggles which made Black Power in Britain a movement to be reckoned with -- Adam Elliott-Cooper, author of Black Resistance to British Policing[This] new collection brings together their rich archive of newsletters and essays on labor, legislation, housing, and reproductive justice...undisputedly worthwhile -- Rianna Jade Parker * BOMB *

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2001 Carey McWilliams AwardA CONTEMPORARY CLASSIC, Magical Urbanism focuses on how Latinos are attempting to translate their urban demographic ascendancy into effective social power. Mike Davis chronicles the Dickensian underworld of day labor in New York, tracks the development of new ecologies and levels of development along the border, and examines the shifting realities of life and work for Latinos in US cities. The cosmopolitan result of the Latinization of America’s cities is a rich, constantly evolving culture that has the potential, argues Davis, to become a radical new American counterculture.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisHow often does a visitor to Rome drift towards some landmark and wonder who created it? Why? What was their story? This fascinating book provides the answers. At once a history and a guide, it divides Rome into the districts dominated by the fabulously rich families of the Popes: the Colonna, della Rovere, Farnese, Borghese, Barberini and others. In each case we learn their story - powerful, bloody and vivid - with all the scandals and intrigues as well as their relationships with artists like Bernini and Michelangelo. As we stroll through Rome's history - either literally or in the imagination - we discover it afresh. Famous sites like the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and St Peter's take on new significance as we watch the city rise from cramped medieval streets to become a glorious panorama of piazzas and palaces, fountains, towers and domes.Trade Review[An] intriguing and original book...even the armchair tourist can benefit -- Tim Blanning * Sunday Telegraph *Elegant and informative...an entertaining mix of travelogue and history...we flit agreeably through the chequered history of the papacy -- Charles Nicholl * Sunday Times *Anthony Majanlahti wears his scholarship lightly and tempers his enthusiasm with humour; he has a thousand tales to tell... Enormously entertaining * Times Literary Supplement *Marvellous... For anyone interested in delving further into one of the world's most beautiful and extraordinary cities, this is essential reading * Tablet *Fascinating... A fine account of a decadent age and place * RA Magazine *

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Book SynopsisThis highly accessible guide equips community work and related professionals and students to make the best use of theory in their work. Linking contemporary theory and practice, the book guides the reader through such diverse areas as young people, adult learning, health, social media and leadership in community work.Table of ContentsIntroduction – Karen McArdle, Sue Briggs, Ed Garrett and Kirsty Forrester 1. Professional Learning – Sue Briggs and Karen McArdle 2. Social Justice – Karen McArdle 3. Equality and Inclusion – Kirsty Forrester and Karen McArdle 4. Impact, Change and Making a Difference – Karen McArdle 5. Participation – Karen McArdle 6. Working With Communities – Karen McArdle 7. Community Engagement – Ed Garrett and Karen McArdle 8. Networking and Partnership – Kirsty Forrester 9. Health and Well-being – Ed Garrett and Karen McArdle 10. Youth Work – Kirsty Forrester and Karen McArdle 11. Adult Learning – Kirsty Forrester 12. Employability – Kirsty Forrester 13. The Environment – Ed Garrett and Karen McArdle 14. Community Arts – Sue Briggs and Karen McArdle 15. Digital Community Work – Kirsty Forester 16. Community Research – Karen McArdle 17. Leadership in Community Work – Kirsty Forrester and Sue Briggs Conclusion and Celebration – Karen McArdle, Sue Briggs, Ed Garrett and Kirsty Forrester

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Book SynopsisGet the most out of every bit of balcony space to easily grow your own sustainable, organic, and tasty food.Do you love having a balcony but aren''t sure how you can use it as a space to grow? Do you feel that being a few stories up in a building stops you from growing delicious crops? If the answer is yes, then it''s time you read this book.Instagram sensation Patrick Vernuccio AKA @TheFrenchieGardener is a small-space grower with a big message. Building on his inspirational content, Tomatoes and Basil on the 5th Floor showcases easy and informative ways to grow fresh produce in containers and on a balcony, proving that anyone can enjoy tasty, organic food all year round.From dividing store-bought basil plants, to harvesting vegetables at the best time of year, to letting plants set seed for the benefit of wildlife, Patrick takes his readers through myriad ways to get crops and produce out of very limited space. Working with the seasons and with good-quality seed and compost, he explains all you need to know to ensure every inch of your balcony can give you tasty and beautiful crops to harvest.

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Book Synopsis''A latter-day Canterbury Tales ... Serious Money has a serious mission'' The Times''Eye-opening ... part guide, part indictment of a yawning wealth gap'' Misha Glenny, Financial TimesLondon is a plutocrat''s paradise, with more resident billionaires than New York, Hong Kong or Moscow. Far from trickling down, their wealth is burning up the environment and swallowing up the city. But what do we really know about London''s super rich, and the lives they lead?To find out more about this secretive elite, sociologist Caroline Knowles walks the streets of London from the City to suburban Surrey. Her walks reveal how the wealthy shape the capital in their image, creating a new world of gated communities and luxury developments. Along the way we meet a wide and wickedly entertaining cast of millionaires, billionaires and those who serve them: bankers, tech tycoons, Conservative party donors, butlers, bodyguards, divorce lawyers and many more.By turns jaw-dropping, enraging and enlightening, Serious Money explodes the fiction that wealth is a condition to aspire to, revealing the isolation and paranoia which accompany it when the plutocrat''s recompense - a life of unlimited luxury - ultimately proves hollow. It is a powerful reminder that it is not just the super-rich who get to make the city: we make it too, and could demand something different. Because serious money is good for no one - not even the rich.''An eye-opening, deeply disturbing, fast-moving journey through the lives, homes and affairs of the filthy rich of London'' Danny Dorling, author of All That Is Solid''A wonderful and vital account of a city ruled by, and for, extreme wealth'' Anna Minton, author of Big CapitalTrade ReviewPart guide, part indictment of a yawning wealth gap, Caroline Knowles's eye-opening book reveals how the capital has changed over the decades ... the author's gentle, yet shrewd observations quickly accumulate when seeking out a wide variety of individuals to reveal the quotidian culture of plutocracy. -- Misha Glenny * Financial Times *Knowles' book helps readers to see [London's super-rich] as less secretive, more troubling and a great deal sadder ... Serious Money has a serious mission. These vast fortunes, Knowles argues, do not just make people miserable. They are rotting the ties that hold our society together. -- Edward Lucas * The Times *Knowles's book acted on me like a goad, a stone in the shoe ... The questing sociologist has an agenda. She is our nominated surrogate in occupied territory. And she is persistent ... Among the freakishly perverse bankers and investors, she behaves like Orwell in Wigan. -- Iain Sinclair * London Review of Books *Again and again, Knowles's stories attest to a money machine devoted to nothing but its own perpetuation ... In the tradition of the great literary walkers, from Walter Benjamin to Will Self, her insistence on crossing the city on foot is, in an important sense, an act of resistance, an embrace of urban realities in defiance of the sad confinement of extreme wealth, its smoked-glass segregation. -- Nat Segnit * Times Literary Supplement *A fascinating investigation of plutocratic London ... as gripping as a pulp detective novel in which we glimpse the slimy, far from slummy lives of the morally corrupt. She patrols London's elite enclaves with a sharp eye for telling social and architectural details ... Knowles combines cunning and charm. -- Matthew Beaumont * New Statesman *An eye-opening, deeply disturbing, fast-moving journey through the lives, homes and affairs of the filthy rich of London. -- Danny DorlingFascinating, punchy, thought-provoking. Serious Money exposes the corrosive impact of London's super rich on our economy, society and politics, and comprehensively busts the myth that their wealth trickles down to the rest of us. -- Frances O’GradyA wonderful and vital account of a city ruled by, and for, extreme wealth. -- Anna Minton, author of Big CapitalStartling, spirited ... Knowles is alert to arresting details ... a wry primer to the extravagances of the super rich. -- Alex Diggins * The Critic *Years of footwork through the streets of central London have gone into producing this magnificent but disturbing book on the lives and influence of the super-rich. Knowles writes with enviable lightness and pace about how money, property, birth, breeding, contacts, secrecy, parasites and servants have created a class that owns and milks London, a world away from the city's ordinary citizens. A powerful ethnography of plutocratic power. -- Professor Ash Amin, author of Seeing Like a CityAn innovative and disturbingly entertaining travelogue covering one of the most important issues of our time ... could not have been published at a more critical time. -- Matt Reynolds * LSE Review of Books *Sociologist Caroline Knowles takes you through the neighborhoods of the capital city telling stories of how the ultra-wealthy live and work; how they spend their money, marry and divorce; and why London is one of the best places for those with nefarious intentions to hide money from authorities. * Investopedia - Best Economics Books of 2022 *A guided tour of the spaces and lifestyles of London's super-rich. Written in an engaging and accessible manner that draws the reader into spaces and conversations otherwise out of bounds, Knowles subtly exposes the paradoxes inherent within the life and politics of the super-rich in London. -- Sobia Ahmad Kaker * Soundings *

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Book Synopsis''Divide is well written and thought-provoking'' - Sunday Telegraph''A lively guide through the thorny challenges of rural life in an urban world. Essential reading for both incomer and local. Anna Jones is insightful but above all sensitive: we walk in everybody''s shoes'' - Tom Heap''This book, by farmer''s daughter and now-journalist and media presenter Anna Jones, is one of the most enjoyable and interesting books I have read this year'' - Mark AveryThis book is a call to action. It warns that unless we learn to accept and respect our social, cultural and political differences as town and country people, we are never going to solve the chronic problems in our food system and environment. As we stare down the barrel of climate change, only farmers - who manage two thirds of the UK''s landscape - working together with conservation groups can create a healthier food system and bring back nature in di

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Book SynopsisAgeing in Place in Urban Environments considers together two major trends influencing economic and social life: population ageing on the one side and urbanisation on the other.Both have been identified as dominant demographic trends of the twenty-first century. Cities are where the majority of people of all ages now live and where they will spend their old age. Nevertheless, cities are typically imagined and structured with a younger, working-age population in mind while older people are rarely incorporated into the mainstream of thinking and planning around urban environments. Cities can contribute to vulnerability arising from high levels of population turnover, environmental problems, gentrification, and reduced availability of affordable housing. However, they can also provide innovative forms of support and services essential to promoting the quality of life of older people. Policies in Europe have emphasised the role of the local environment in promoting ageingTrade Review"This major study addresses the global experience of urbanisation combined with population ageing. The book, from two leading scholars in the field, provides a challenging account of ageing in place, neighbourhood change, and the future of age-friendly cities. It highlights spatial justice for older people as of fundamental importance in confronting inequalities in contrasting urban environments."Sheila Peace, Emeritus Professor of Social Gerontology, The Open University, UK"This book presents a tour de force integration of scholarship across disciplines to propel the age-friendly cities movement into the 21st century. While not minimizing the gravity of compounding societal challenges, the authors describe clear directions for policy and practice that are within reach of advocates and decision-makers across sectors."Emily A. Greenfield, Professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work, The State University of New Jersey, USA"This important book presents a much-needed critical assessment of the challenges related to growing older in urban communities. It offers a cohesive, analytical frame that not only advances scholarship on urban aging, but on how we understand, support and give voice to the dynamic relationship between older people and their places."Kieran Walsh, Professor of Ageing and Public Policy, University of Galway, IrelandTable of ContentsPart 1: Critical perspectives on ageing in place in urban environments: Background, theory and development 1. Introduction: Ageing in place in urban environments 2. Population ageing and urbanisation: Developing age-friendly cities 3. Urbanisation, inequality and community: Experiences of ageing in place 4. Ageing in neighbourhoods undergoing urban change: Experiences of gentrification in later life 5. Experience of ageing in place among ageing migrants living in urban neighbourhoods 6. Growing older in ‘extreme cities’: The impact of climate change Part 2: Re-building urban communities for ageing populations 7. The role of social infrastructure as centres of community life in supporting ageing in place in cities 8. Enacting ‘agency’ through place-making and activism: Older people as local agents of urban change 9. Towards a collaborative urbanism: Building collective organisations for later life 10. Ageing populations and urban communities: An agenda for change

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Book SynopsisThe eighth edition of the highly successful The City Reader juxtaposes the very best classic and contemporary writings on the city to provide the comprehensive mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies and Planning old and new. The City Reader is the anchor volume in the Routledge Urban Reader Series and is now integrated with all ten other titles in the series. It has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary areas included and in topical areas such as urban history, place making, sustainable urban development, globalization, resilience, artificial intelligence in planning cities, climate change, the world city network, the impact of technology on cities, cities in Africa, and urban theory. The new edition places greater emphasis on cities in the developing world, globalization, and the global city system of the future. The plate sections have been more than doubled to include 93 plates.The eighth edition includes fifty-eight generous selections: forty-seven from the seventh edition, one from the sixth edition, and ten new selections, including four newly written exclusively for the eighth edition. This new edition retains classic writings by authors such as Ebenezer Howard, Ernest W. Burgess, H.D.F. Kitto, Le Corbusier, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Louis Wirth, and Peter Hall as well as the best contemporary writings of, among others, David Harvey, Manuel Castells, Michael Batty, Sara Meerow, Fulong Wu, Saskia Sassen, Richard LeGates, Michael Smith, John McWhorter, and a co-authored selection by Xuefei Ren and Roger Keil. The City Reader 8th Edition features general and section introductions as well as individual introductions to the selected articles introducing the authors, providing context, and relating the selection to other selections. The eighth edition includes a greatly expanded bibliography with up-to-date information on books, articles, professional reports, and videos for all the topics covered.

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Book SynopsisThis is the most comprehensive guide ever written on renewables technology and engineering, intended to cater for the rapidly growing numbers of present and future engineers who are keen to lead the revolution. All the main sectors are covered - photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind, bioenergy, hydro, wave/tidal, geothermal - progressing from the fundamental physical principles, through resource assessment and site evaluation to in-depth examination of the characteristics and employment of the various technologies. The authors are all experienced practitioners, and as such recognise the cross-cutting importance of system sizing and integration. Clear diagrams, photos, tables and equations make this in invaluable reference tool, while worked examples mean the explanations are well-grounded and easy to follow - essential for students and professionals alike.Table of ContentsPreface * Energy and development * Renewable energy utilization * Review of basic scientific and engineering principles * The solar energy resource * Solar photovoltaic technology * Solar thermal engineering * Elements of passive solar architecture * Wind energy resources * Introduction to wind turbine technology * Small hydro: resource and technology * Geothermal energy, tidal energy, wave energy, and ocean thermal energy * Bio-energy resources * Thermochemical conversion of biomass * Biochemical methods of conversion * Liquid fuels from biomass: fundamentals, process chemistry, and technologies * Index

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Book SynopsisOver the past decade, Ethiopia has had one of the world's fastest growing economies, largely due to its investments in infrastructure, and it is through building dams, roads, and other infrastructure that the Ethiopian state seeks to become a middle-income country by 2025. Yet most urban Ethiopians struggle to meet their daily needs and actively oppose a ruling party that they associate with corruption and mismanagement. In Under Construction Daniel Mains explores the intersection of development and governance by examining the conflicts surrounding the construction of specific infrastructural technologies: asphalt and cobblestone roads, motorcycle taxis, and hydroelectric dams. These projects serve as sites for nation building and the means for the state to assert its legitimacy. The construction process-as well as Ethiopians' experience of living with the disruption of construction zones-reveals the tension and conflict between the promise of progress and the possibility of failure. Mains demonstrates how infrastructures as both ethnographic sites and as a means of theorizing such concepts as progress, development, and the state offer a valuable contrast to accounts of African abjection and decline.Trade Review“Based on years of ethnographic research, Under Construction is a magnificent and thorough exposition that describes the ambivalence and hope invested in construction projects in Ethiopia. Construction, Daniel Mains demonstrates, is a vital location at which relationships between states and citizens are grounded. While they are powerful gatherings of technology and finance, construction projects are also precarious and full of danger. In exploring the tensions that are intrinsic to construction projects, Mains effortlessly brings together theorizations of historical materialism, vital materialism, and affect theory to produce a dazzling and clear account of how construction is incrementally and yet fundamentally transforming the political landscape of cities of the global South.” -- Nikhil Anand, author of * Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai *“Under Construction stages urgent interventions into development and governance, citizen and state, Afro-optimism and neoliberal pessimism in order to depict the complexities of infrastructure in Africa. Daniel Mains's work makes clear that the relationships between infrastructure, state, labor, and modernity are variable and contingent—sometimes smooth, often sticky and fraught—while making a compelling case for Ethiopia as a rich site for theoretical and ethnographic attention.” -- Charles Piot, author of * The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles *"This study by Mains should be accepted with gratitude, and welcomed as a huge contribution to Ethiopian studies of urban development." -- Fasika Gedif * African Studies Quarterly *"Under Construction makes an important contribution not only to the field of the anthropology of development but also to urban development, at a time when many studies in Ethiopia have been placing more emphasis on rural communities. Daniel Mains, while basing his empirical evidence on the selected urban projects which appear to be perpetually under construction, shows that the process of construction has changed the relationship between citizens and the state, and not always for the better." -- Gemechu Admassu Abeshu * African Studies Review *"The book represents an important contribution to the field of infrastructure within anthropology and beyond. . . . Under Construction represents a seminal contribution to this field of study." -- Felipe Fernandez * Anthropologica *“Offering a much-needed ethnographic investigation into the lives, livelihoods and labour relations that inhabit construction work in contemporary urban Africa, Under Construction contributes significantly to current debates and scholarship in urban studies, infrastructure, international development, and African Studies.” -- Pauline Destrée * Anthropological Notebooks *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Foundations for Development: Infrastructure, the State, and Construction 1 1. Constructing a Renaissance: Hydropower and the Temporal Politics of Development 29 2. Asphalt Roads, Regulating Infrastructures, and Improvised Lives 58 3. Feeling Change through Dirt and Water: The Affective Politics of Urban Development of Jimma, 2009–2015 92 4. Governing the Bajaj: States, Markets, and Multiple Materialisms 121 5. What Can a Stone Do? Cobblestone Roads, Governance, and Labor 151 Conclusion. The Time of Construction 181 Notes 193 References 203 Index 217

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Book SynopsisA New Statesman Book of the Year London. A city apart. Inimitable. Or so it once seemed. Spiralling from the outer limits of the Overground to the pinnacle of the Shard, Iain Sinclair encounters a metropolis stretched beyond recognition. The vestiges of secret tunnels, the ghosts of saints and lost poets lie buried by developments, the cycling revolution and Brexit. An electrifying final odyssey, The Last London is an unforgettable vision of the Big Smoke before it disappears into the air of memory.Trade Review'Where JG Ballard lauds the sexual aesthetics of the M25, Sinclair gives voice to those living and working beneath it, creating fresh narratives to replace those that the developers steal from us.’ * New Statesman, Books of the Year *‘A coming together of everything that has made this great chronicler of the English capital such a compelling and perceptive guide… When late 20th- and early 21st-century London pass into distant history, it is Sinclair who will make sense of a time when “everything is pop-up, nothing is true”.’ * Observer *‘Very few authors have fashioned a London more real than the one we see… Here in this brilliant, crackling series of final walks through the London landscape, he finds the dissolving identity of the city increasingly disconcerting.’ * Spectator *‘One can only marvel at Sinclair’s eye for telling detail and his sense of the subtle ironies of modern London life…With its elegantly civilised melancholy for what is lost, neglected or hidden, Sinclair’s position is highly seductive.’ * Daily Telegraph *‘The Last London is an elegy for a London that is now over. The artists, the homeless, the eccentrics – the people Sinclair has always been on the side of – are moving out, or being moved out. The city seems to want him out too. He receives cards from estate agents urging him to “sell up, cash in, get out”… He writes a kind of Imagist prose, in which what Ezra Pound called the “luminous details” of poetic observation are compressed and transmuted into something altogether fresh… Like all true styles it’s infectious stuff. Read a bit of him and you start to think like him. Read too much and you might try to write like him… Sinclair has always been a collaborator, standing against the co-option of space and narrative by capital and grand political visionaries. Underpinning all his work is a vision of the commons, describing both the places we inhabit and the stories we are allowed to tell, which are out there in the world, waiting to be shared. It’s sad to think that London will, of course, go on without him.’ * Guardian *'If this really is the last of Sinclair's London, he'll leave you wanting more.' * Prospect *‘London needs Sinclair. Without him, posterity would not believe us. And no one writes like [him]. He started out a poet, and paragraphs burst with brilliance.’ * Literary Review *‘Without [Sinclair] there to bear witness to 21st century London, many of the city’s historic delights, surreal ironies and brutal hypocrisies would pass by unnamed.’ * Financial Times *‘Sinclair’s language is special and specialized, muscular, unsentimental, immodest in its ornateness, “inimitable” in the sense (true of so many great stylists) that it’s quite easy to imitate badly, but impossibly hard to imitate well.’ * Los Angeles Review of Books *‘You don’t read Iain Sinclair just because he’s an expert on London’s multilayered urban life; what matters, as with Joyce, is his prose, page after page of verbal riffs and astonishments… His books, then, are hybrids, like so much of Joyce – and Kafka, WG Sebald, Robert Walser and Georges Perec… This isn’t a book you can race through. Instead you’ll want to take your time, look around and occasionally listen in on conversations, as you saunter along with Sinclair on these rambles into a strange and vanishing London.’ * Michael Dirda, Washington Post *‘A wonderful observer, a spot-on imagist of the urban scene…Sinclair has many attractions as a writer: a powerful gift for imagery and phrase-making; a keen curiosity; sympathy; anger at the destruction of the past and the public realm; vituperation; humour.’ * New York Review of Books *‘In this majestic culmination, Britain’s finest writer wraps up what turns out to have been one enormous opus, puts a truly lustrous finish on our finish, and, as gently as is possible, tells us where we and everything we knew have gone. In a career of masterpieces, this is Sinclair’s masterpiece.’ -- Alan Moore‘It takes a poet to write prose as good as this. There is no doubt that future historians will have to look to Sinclair for an insight into the London of our era.’ -- Barry Miles‘Iain Sinclair’s Last London is an angry, poignant and frequently hilarious elegy to a London that has lost its soul. He chronicles “twilight days of tramping in search of mislaid selves, stories uncompleted and forgotten friends”. The post-Brexit gloom never quite overwhelms Sinclair’s phantasmagorical city. The infernal Olympicopolis may inspire dread pelotons of self-righteous cyclists, joggers and Mamils into a war on Sinclair’s trails. But the return of Andrew Kötting and other renegade nonconformists familiar from earlier odysseys suggest that Sinclair is weaving a new myth for a wiser London.’ -- Toby Jones‘This is vintage Sinclair: mature, acerbic, sharply observant and original, as always. I have admired him since I read his first novel, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, a vivid investigation of the Ripper myth. His Lights Out for the Territory remains one of the greatest pieces of non-fiction published in English since the War. In The Last London his imagination is at full force. He has never been better, never been funnier. This is the finest contemporary writing we have. I relished every page.’ -- Michael Moorcock

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Book SynopsisA new edition of Britain's Changing Towns (1967), introduced, edited and updated by Owen Hatherley: "These essays show him writing about cities and towns as wholes rather than as collections of individual buildings. In each of them, there are several things happening at once - assessments of historic townscape, capsule reviews of new buildings, attempts to find the specific character of each place - "Table of ContentsCONTENTS Well worth a boggle - an introduction to Ian Nairn 1 Birmingham 2 Superlative Newcastle-upon-Tyne 3 Canterbury: the happy city 4 Patrician Manchester 5 Glasgow and Cumbernauld New Town 6 Llanidloes, the Pocket Metropolis 7 Exciting Possibilities of Modern Sheffield 8 Friendly Plymouth 9 The Borough of St Marylebone 10 The wise city of Chester 11 Proud Derry 12 Brighton: model for affluence 13 Cardiff, the Welsh Enigma 14 Liverpool: world city 15 Norwich: regional capital 16 The burghs of Fife Europe's Reconstructed Cities: Introduction 17 Cologne and its Churches 18 Regimented Rotterdam 19 Comfortable Munich 20 Good-natured Milan 21 Three French Towns - Caen, St Malo, Le Havre 22 Zurich

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