Using quantitative research, this volume investigates the characteristics, problems and trends of the automobile society in China's mega cities and large cities. It also addresses topics related to cars and cities, traffic safety and cars' consumption. China has experienced more than 30 years of rapid economic development, and people's living conditions have greatly improved. One of the symbols of this is family-car ownership, which has increased year by year. China is rapidly becoming an automobile society like North America. But China has huge population and limited urban space, and most of the cities are deteriorating environmentally. Added to this are the low degree energy self-sufficiency and people's lack of awareness of traffic rules, all of which have brought various social problems, such as traffic congestion, lack of parking spaces, air pollution, energy shortage and frequent accidents. The volume presents a series of studies examining the characteristics and problems of China's automobile society development from the perspective of sustainable development. The reports in the volume are both academic and highly readable, making it an interesting resource for researchers and general readers alike. It offers insights into the trends and problems of private cars in China, as well as observations on China's social change through the unique medium of cars.

Mounting scientific evidence generated over the past decade highlights the significant role of our cities' built environments in shaping our health and well-being. In this book, the authors conceptualize the 'urban health niche' as a novel approach to public health and healthy-city planning that integrates the diverse and multi-level health determinants present in a city system.The authors trace the origins of public health and city planning, drawing upon the shifting paradigms of epidemiology. Advanced network analysis techniques are employed to examine multi-scale associations between individual-level health outcomes and built environment features such as density, land-use mix and road network configuration. Healthy Cities will prove a fascinating read for an interdisciplinary body of scholars, practitioners and policy makers within the domains of public policy, regional and urban studies, urban planning, spatial epidemiology, health geography, sociology, public health and psychology.

This compact yet comprehensive account of Chicago's history links key events in the city's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600s to today's robust metropolis. Synthesizing a vast body of literature, Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city-not only the tycoons and the politicians but also the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world who have kept the city working. City of Big Shoulders sweeps across the colorful and dramatic panorama of Chicago's explosive past. How did the pungent swamplands that the Native Americans called the wild-garlic place mushroom 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? Did the 1920s in Chicago roar as loudly as Hollywood would have us believe? A city of immigrants and entrepreneurs, Chicago is quintessentially American. Spinney traces formative events in the city's history, bringing to life the people, events, and institutions that are most important for understanding Chicago's story. From Fort Dearborn to Cabrini-Green, P\u00e8re Marquette to Mayor Daley, the Union Stockyards to the Chicago Bulls, City of Big Shoulders draws together diverse threads of the city's development, shedding light on underlying social and economic causes of major events and, especially, on the roles of ordinary people. Engaging and highly informative, this account will interest students and teachers of urban history, as well as anyone looking for a brisk overview of Chicago's history. Historic photographs and informative tables illuminate the narrative.

Coming Home to New Orleans documents grassroots rebuilding efforts in New Orleans neighborhoods after hurricane Katrina, and draws lessons on their contribution to the post-disaster recovery of cities. The book begins with two chapters that address Katrina's impact and the planning and public sector recovery policies that set the context for neighborhood recovery. Rebuilding narratives for six New Orleans neighborhoods are then presented and analyzed. In the heavily flooded Broadmoor and Village de L'Est neighborhoods, residents coalesced around communitywide initiatives, one through a neighborhood association and the second under church leadership, to help homeowners return and restore housing, get key public facilities and businesses rebuilt and create new community-based organizations and civic capacity. A comparison of four adjacent neighborhoods in the center of the city show how differing socioeconomic conditions, geography, government policies and neighborhood capacity created varied recovery trajectories. The concluding chapter argues that grassroots and neighborhood scale initiatives can make important contributions to city recovery in four areas: repopulation, restoring "complete neighborhoods " with key services and amenities, rebuilding parts of the small business economy and enhancing recovery capacity. It also calls for more balanced investments and policies to rebuild rental and owner-occupied housing and more deliberate collaboration with community-based organizations to undertake and implement recovery plans, and proposes changes to federal disaster recovery policies and programs to leverage the contribution of grassroots rebuilding and more support for city recovery.

The book compares different approaches to urban development in Singapore and Seoul over the past decades, by focusing on community participation in the transformation of neighbourhoods and its impact on the built environment and communal life. Singapore and Seoul are known for their rapid economic growth and urbanisation under a strong control of developmental state in the past. However, these cities are at a critical crossroads of societal transformation, where participatory and community-based urban development is gaining importance. This new approach can be seen as a result of a changing relationship between the state and civil society, where an emerging partnership between both aims to overcome the limitations of earlier urban development. The book draws attention to the possibilities and challenges that these cities face while moving towards a more inclusive and socially sustainable post-developmental urbanisation. By applying a comparative perspective to understand the evolving urban paradigms in Singapore and Seoul, this unique and timely book offers insights for scholars, professionals and students interested in contemporary Asian urbanisation and its future trajectories.

This study examines the rise of the technopolis--high technology-based regional development. It explores how and why these regions emerged and the policies that have been devised to promote them. The rapid, propulsive growth of the technopolis in the 1960s and 1970s caught many people by surprise. Silicon Valley arose in an agricultural area; Route 128 in a stagnant manufacturing region. Throughout the rest of the world, a new generation of regional development policies have appeared, the most common ones being science parks, small business incubators, and venture capital funds. This book surveys these policies from a comparative, critical perspective. It also develops a theoretical framework for understanding why regional high-technology development occurs and the role policy can play in the process.

This work will be of interest to development planners and scholars in the fields of economic geography, development economics, and regional development.

From their experience in nonprofit operations and their understanding of the realities of urban politics, the editors of this wide-ranging volume and their contributors dig into issues seldom explored in the literature. They study the role of nonprofits in local governing coalitions, the potential of nonprofits to replace social welfare programs, their efforts to restructure key elements of the local political process, and the unanticipated internal impacts of the changing roles of nonprofit organizations in the urban community. The result is a compelling argument that to understand life in contemporary American cities, we must take into account the expanding role of nonprofit organizations, their response to increased service demands, and their participation in common efforts to direct policy choices.

Hula, Jackson-Elmoore, and their panel of scholars, researchers, and close observers of urban policymaking focus on the delivery of social services to illustrate the complex and important set of roles that nonprofits have assumed. As social programs are cut at all levels of government, it is often believed that nonprofits can and should take up the slack and restore at least some portion of the cutbacks in such services. They examine how some nonprofit organizations have taken a proactive stance in this regard by implementing efforts that do not simply react to political and social change, but attempt to initiate and guide it instead. They attempt to change the political environment in which they operate, and the result has been to change the face of local politics in many jurisdictions. Each chapter of their book explores these expanding and emerging roles. Themes and focuses vary, which in turn reflects the variation and complexity within the nonprofit sector itself. At the same time, each chapter presents an emerging political or policy role now being played by today's nonprofits and voluntary associations, and a theoretical context in which such activities and behavior can best be understood. Scholars and advanced students in public administration, economics, and nonprofit management, as well as executive-level nonprofit managers, will find here an important update on what is happening in their special worlds, and the knowledge they need to make sense of it.

This book presents possible alternatives and interpretations to the well established notion in the mostly western discourse on public space. The discourse on public space as understood in the democratic-rationalist tradition, when applied to the Singaporean public space, would offer much criticism but would not be adequate in identifying alternative processes that allow for transformative potentials in public space. Thus said, the objectives of this book are: 1. To develop a conceptual frame of reference to construct the discourse on Singapore public space 2. To form a preliminary model of Singapore public space through analyzing case studies 3. To understand the modes, methods of production and representation of these public spaces within the rapidly changing urban context 4. To situate these constructions of public space and its possible trajectories within the larger discourse on public space, and to examine the viability of such a construction and interpretive model of public space

This book is the outcome of a study conducted in the eastern city of Kolkata in India in the mid-2000s. It is an ethnographic study that looks closely at women from the upper and middle classes who work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that help empower women from all classes of society. Unlike many studies that focus on grassroots women who are the beneficiaries of NGO and developmental projects, this book looks at those women who, as volunteers and activists, help carry out these projects to the best of their abilities. These women are often overlooked from mainstream studies on women in developing nations. But their role is invaluable and crucial in defining the agendas and strategies used to enhance feminist consciousness and developing organizational structures. This book is significant because it offers awareness and alternative views to the challenges (and motivations) faced by middle and upper-class women volunteers and activists in building a career in the non-profit sector of NGOs in Kolkata. Through the testimonies of these women, it examines alternative processes of agency and change in order to define these challenges and motivations. Also revealed by the analysis, is useful information about the oppression and subordination of these women in contemporary gender-stratified civil society in India. But more importantly, this book examines the various ways urban, educated Indian women construct a feminist praxis in terms of their everyday lived experiences as volunteers and activists. In terms of their lived experiences, the women in this study reflect on the social challenges they encounter and motivations they experience as volunteers and activists, while also discussing their understanding of feminism and views on the image of a "feminist" in the postcolonial context. The results demonstrate the power of feminist standpoint theorizing and how it raises consciousness, empowers women and stimulates resistance to patriarchal oppression and injustices. Finally, this book produces new knowledge and research on the conception of feminism among women volunteers and activists in a non-western setting and how they construct the image of a feminist. It offers directions for research in transnational feminism, International Women's Movement, Womanism, and Social Inequality Studies.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This prescient book presents the intellectual terrain of shrinking cities while exploring the key research questions in each of the field?s sub-domains and reviewing the range of methodologies within these topics. The book begins with an introduction outlining what shrinking cities are and how they are researched, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges that arise in this field, including the big ideas any researcher must grapple with. The next six chapters are each devoted to a different sub-domain within shrinking cities, offering a quick overview of the topics, relevant problems, paradoxes and key research questions. The book concludes with a review of the major themes and, most importantly, looks toward the future, predicting and anticipating the most significant future research trends related to shrinking cities. This accessible and compelling Research Agenda will be of interest to researchers looking to move into this area, urban studies and planning instructors who are teaching research methods courses, and students studying or independently researching shrinking cities.

What makes a good neighborhood? Can one neighborhood be good for all people? Brower's study examines the variable image of the ideal residential area in contemporary and earlier writings, from utopian visions and popular media to historical records and the findings of social science research. Brower identifies four common ideal neighborhood types, each providing a distinct and specific residential experience that suits a particular way of life. He details the characteristics of each of these good neighborhoods, and argues that their coexistence in a single urban environment is not only possible, but desirable; it creates a healthy variety of residential areas that, together, suit the needs and desires of different urban dwellers. This absorbing and timely study will be of interest to scholars and professionals in urban studies, urban design and planning, environmental studies, environment psychology, and sociology.

This is the first book to comprehensively examine Latin America's literary response to the deadly HIV virus. Proposing a bio-political reading of AIDs in the neoliberal era, Lina Meruane examines how literary representations of AIDS enter into larger discussions of community, sexuality, nation, displacement and globalization.

Focusing on the city's role as the nexus for new forms of relationships between politics, economics and society, this fascinating book views the city as a political phenomena. Its chapters unravel the city's plural histories, contested political, legal and administrative boundaries, and its policy-making capacity in the context of multi-level and market pressures. Accommodating numerous approaches drawn from a variety of European countries and metropolitan settings, contributors make extensive use of case studies in order to both interpret the variety of processes of metropolitanisation at work over the past few decades and provide insight into the various conceptual and theoretical approaches that the social sciences - and the political sciences in particular - have adopted to explain this phenomenon. This book both studies cities that have developed their own forms of governance, with tailored institutions, a large policy making capability and sometimes a new democratic legitimacy, yet also offers an alternative understanding of cities as objects of public policy; the intended targets of the development of European-level or national urban policies. Students of comparative politics, urban studies and European studies will welcome the mix of conceptual, comparative and case study based approaches that this book encompasses. Practitioners will also benefit from the chance to avail themselves of cutting edge research. Contributors include: F. Artioli, S. Cadiou, J. Caillosse, J. Carpenter, A. Cole, S. Couperus, A. Dowling, D. Galimberti, I. Gordon, H. Heinelt, M. Hure, C. Parnet, R. Payre, C. Pin, P. Prat, K. Zimmermann

Focusing on Greater Khartoum following South Sudanese independence in 2011, In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum explores the impact on society of major political events in areas that are neither urban nor rural, public nor private. This volume uses these in-between spaces as a lens to analyze how these events, in combination with other processes, such as globalization and economic neo-liberalization, impact communities across the region. Drawing on original fieldwork and empirical data, the authors uncover the reshaping of new categories of people that reinforce old dichotomies and in doing so underscore a common Sudanese identity.

The relentless growth of cities is inevitable--and irreversible. Developing countries' share of the world's urban population will rise to 71% by the year 2000 and 80% by 2025. By the end of the 1990s, it is estimated that 18 cities in developing countries will have a population of 10 million or more. Although those cities are centers of production, employment, and innovation, rapid urbanization has had many negative consequences: an alarming increase in the incidence of urban poverty, the concentration of modern productive activities in major metropolitan areas, inadequate access to housing and basic urban services, and the degradation of the urban environment.

Urban Management reviews the state of the art in innovative urban management, discusses the latest findings on key issues of urban management, and identifies policy-relevant research needs and priorities. Chapters are contributed by urban specialists from Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Oceania, and North America, who identify urbanization processes and strategies, provide comparative analyses of urban management issues throughout the world, and present original country case studies. Recommended for urban development planners and administrators in developing countries, persons from donor countries working on projects in developing countries, students of urban management, and others interested in developmental issues at the global, regional, national, and municipal levels.

Like many other cities in the United States, Grand Rapids, Michigan has struggled with redeveloping its economic identity after the devastation of the Great Recession of 2008. "Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an" "American Community "demonstrates how Grand Rapids has been redefined as a hub for the greatest scientific minds in the world by developing what has come to be called the "Medical Mile."

The Medical Mile is cluster of prosperity that is anchored by a world-renowned research institute, a major healthcare organization, a Big Ten medical school, an allied health professions program at a nearby university, and an entrepreneurial incubator where new medical device and life sciences businesses are being born. None of this existed until a $1 billion donation from Jay Andel changed not only the way the world views Grand Rapids, but how the community views itself.

It has been a long journey of self-discovery for Grand Rapids that could serve as inspiration for other American communities.

Scholars in various disciplines are recommending comprehensive measures to solve multiple societal as well as individual problems. The philosophy of community education has been overlooked but is a workable, comprehensive approach to addressing crime. As used in this book, community education is a philosophy, process, and program comprised of three overriding and interrelated elements: community empowerment, community problem-solving, and the effort to involve all community members in the pursuit of lifelong learning.

The Hyde Park neighborhood in St. Louis has one of the highest rates of reported drug sales and high rates of homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, arson, and burglary. The community lays claim to several crime-inducing variables including population loss, a high percentage of population shift resulting in a higher percentage of black population and boarded-up housing units, a high rate of unemployment, a very low per capita income and a high percentage of citizens living below the poverty line, and a high percentage of female-headed households. Nevertheless, the people of Hyde Park are participating in a crime prevention approach that is applicable to all communities. Insights to urban life and problem solving are provided by community members, covering such topics as policing and how it can be improved. These insights and others offered by the author are supported by theories and philosophies found in the literature. In the process of solving their own problems, community members involve themselves in lifelong learning activities and leadership development. Written in a style that is appealing to the general public as well as academics, it is of special interest to educators, community leaders, criminologists, academics in urban affairs and sociology, social workers, law enforcement agents, and politicians.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Foreword.

aThabit emphasizes the central role of local institutions in contributing to urban disinvestment and decline.a
-- "Journal of Urban History"

"Walter Thabit has written a highly personal and compelling piece of retrospective analysis."--"Journal of the American Planning Association"

"Thabit's writing is lucid and heartfelt."
--"Urban Studies"

"An excellent source of data and intelligence on the formation of ghettos and the life and struggle within them."
--"Science & Society"

""How East New York Became a Ghetto" describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican one, and shows how a series of racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once-flourishing area."
--"Arab-American Affairs

"An interesting and worthwhile read, especially for its descriptions."--"Supplement"

"Walter Thabit's book works as a slice of urban sociology, history, and political science. It should whet the appetites of students and scholars to inquire into the "longue duree" of the subject more extensively."
--"New York History"

aThe book powerfully coveys the forces behind the ghettoization of one urban community and illustrates the difficulties of community development.a
-- Urban History Review.

"A comprehensive account of the decline of East New York in Brooklyn into a typical urban slum and of the efforts since the 1960s to redevelop the neighborhood. Anyone interested in urban social problems and improving the quality of life for urban poor should read this astounding analysis of urban decay and rebirth."
--"Multicultural Review"

"Thabit does a Herculean task of documenting the various factors that led to the ghettoization of East New York."
--"Progressive Planning"

"Thabit is in a unique position to document the destruction of the once working class Brooklyn neighborhood. . . Toward the book's conclusion, Thabit sounds a faint note of hope to the emerging community groups."
-- "New York"

"This thoughtful, important analysis is recommended for academics, professionals, and a concerned public library audience."
--"Library Journal"

"Walter Thabit eloquently tells the story of East New York, a neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn, complementing his close observation of events in the neighborhood with astute analyses of the bearing of larger forces on this big city slum. Events in East New York reveal in microcosm the turbulent national forces that have determined the fate of inner city ghettos across the country over the past 40 years."
--from the Foreword by Frances Fox Piven

"The grim descriptions of civil neglect, community disorganization and institutional racism make this a difficult read, particularly when one realizes that this is the story that can be told about thousands of other neighborhoods in scores of citiies by hundreds of people. Perhaps if more planners like Thabit had told their stories, we might not have found oruselves in this predicament."
--"ADPSR NY"

In response to the riots of the mid-'60s, Walter Thabit was hired to work with the community of East New York to develop a plan for low- and moderate-income public housing. In the years that followed, he experienced first-hand the forces that had engineered East New York's dramatic decline and that continued towork against its successful revitalization. How East New York Became a Ghetto describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood and shows how the resulting racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once flourishing area.

A clear-sighted, unflinching look at one ghetto community, How East New York Became a Ghetto provides insights and observations on the histories and fates of ghettos throughout the United States.

Classic representations of the city have focused on simplistic urban dichotomies such as renewal or decline, poverty or prosperity, and vice or vigor. We are left with the question of what actually constitutes a city and what makes it and its people succeed or fail. Recent writing on the city, however, has begun to question the images, metaphors, and discourses through which the contemporary city is represented. Discussing recent visual, architectural and spatial transformations in New York and other major world cities in relation to the themes of ethnicity, capital, and culture, Re-Presenting the City moves between interpretive representations of the newly emerging metropolis and the theoretical and methodological questions raised by the task of such representations. Contributors with backgrounds in urban planning, sociology, cultural studies, architecture, art history, geography, and philosophy reflect on the construction of both the real and the unreal city, the images, metaphors and discourses through which the contemporary city is represented, and the texts which both mediate our experience of, as well as contribute to producing, the city of the future.

As nineteenth-century Britain became increasingly urbanized and industrialized, the number of children living in towns grew rapidly. At the same time, Horn considers the increasing divisions within urban society, not only between market towns and major manufacturing and trading centers, but within individual towns, as rich and poor became more segregated.

During the Victorian period, public attitudes toward children and childhood shifted dramatically, often to the detriment of those at the lower end of the social scale--including paupers and juvenile delinquents. Drawing on original research, including anecdotes, first-hand accounts, and a wealth of photographs, The Victorian Town Child describes in detail the changing lives of all classes of Victorian town children, from those of prosperous business and professional families to working-class families, where unemployment and overcrowding were particular problems. Horn also examines the issues of juvenile labor and exploitation, how factory work and education were combined, how crime and punishment were dealt with among children, and the changes in health and infant death rates over the period.

Covering a period from the late eighteenth century to today, this volume explores the phenomenon of urban violence in order to unveil general developments and historical specificities in a variety of Middle Eastern contexts. By situating incidents in particular processes and conflicts, the case studies seek to counter notions of a violent Middle East in order to foster a new understanding of violence beyond that of a meaningless and destructive social and political act. Contributions explore processes sparked by the transition from empires - Ottoman and Qajar, but also European - to the formation of nation states, and the resulting changes in cityscapes throughout the region.

"The Little Platoons" examines sub-local government--the small-scale structures of civil society that lie between the individual and large governmental actors--in England, France, Germany, the United States, Russia, China, and Japan. The work examines community councils, educational districts, neighborhood organizations, and the like, as seen in various societies in the modern age. And, in identifying common attributes of these civil and societal organizations, the work has particular relevance--and indeed makes ameliorative recommendations--for the problems of our modern cities. In a period of dissatisfaction with a self-regarding and centralized political class and with both market and bureaucratic institutions, Liebmann's thoughtful analysis of community and civil organization in a variety of societies and traditions broadens our understanding of comparative politics and sociology, urban planning, and state and local government.

Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed cities. The contributors to this collection explore literary urban peripheries through readings of literature from four continents and numerous cities.