Urban category: 4425 books
Gang Leader for a Day
A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
Language: English
Release Date: January 10, 2008
**A New York Times Bestseller
Foreword by Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of** Freakonomics
When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago’s most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people willing to take a multiple-choice...
The Good Food Revolution
Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities
Language: English
Release Date: May 10, 2012
A pioneering urban farmer and MacArthur “Genius Award” winner points the way to building a new food system that can feed—and heal—broken communities.
The son of a sharecropper, Will Allen had no intention of ever becoming a farmer himself. But after years in professional basketball...
Water 4.0
The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource
Language: English
Release Date: January 28, 2014
Turn on the faucet, and water pours out. Pull out the drain plug, and the dirty water disappears. Most of us give little thought to the hidden systems that bring us water and take it away when we’re done with it. But these underappreciated marvels of engineering face an array of challenges that cannot...
by Henri L.F. L.F. de Groot, Gerard Marlet, Coen Teulings
Language: English
Release Date: May 29, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: May 29, 2015
After a long period of suburbanisation, cities have been in vogue again since the 1980s. But why are people prepared to spend far more money on a small house in the city than on a large house in the countryside and why doesn't this apply to all cities? This book shows that the appeal of the city in...
Walkable City
How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
Language: English
Release Date: November 13, 2012
Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability.
The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American...
Networks of New York
An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure
Language: English
Release Date: August 30, 2016
A guided tour of the physical Internet, as seen on, above, and below the city’s streets
What does the Internet look like?
It’s the single most essentail aspect of modern life, and yet, for many of us, the Internet looks like an open browser, or the black mirrors of our phones and...
Triumph of the City
How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Language: English
Release Date: February 10, 2011
A pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities
America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or are they? In this revelatory book, Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist,...
Downtown
Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950
Language: English
Release Date: October 1, 2008
Written by one of this country’s foremost urban historians, Downtown is the first history of what was once viewed as the heart of the American city. It tells the fascinating story of how downtown-and the way Americans thought about downtown-changed over time. By showing how businessmen and property...
The War on Neighborhoods
Policing, Prison, and Punishment in a Divided City
Language: English
Release Date: April 17, 2018
A narrative-driven exploration of policing and the punishment of disadvantage in Chicago, and a new vision for repairing urban neighborhoods
For people of color who live in segregated urban neighborhoods, surviving crime and violence is a generational reality. As violence in cities like New...
Everyday Law on the Street
City Governance in an Age of Diversity
Language: English
Release Date: October 22, 2012
Toronto prides itself on being “the world’s most diverse city,” and its officials seek to support this diversity through programs and policies designed to promote social inclusion. Yet this progressive vision of law often falls short in practice, limited by problems inherent in the...
Buzz
Urban Beekeeping and the Power of the Bee
Language: English
Release Date: September 27, 2013
Winner, 2014 Distinguished Scholarship Award presented by the Animals & Society section of the American Sociological Association
Bees are essential for human survival—one-third of all food on American dining tables depends on the labor of bees. Beyond pollination, the very idea of the...
Sidewalking
Coming to Terms with Los Angeles
Language: English
Release Date: October 6, 2015
In Sidewalking, David L. Ulin offers a compelling inquiry into the evolving landscape of Los Angeles. Part personal narrative, part investigation of the city as both idea and environment, Sidewalking is many things: a discussion of Los Angeles as urban space, a history of the city’s built environment,...
How Cities Work
Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken
Language: English
Release Date: May 24, 2010
Do cities work anymore? How did they get to be such sprawling conglomerations of lookalike subdivisions, megafreeways, and "big box" superstores surrounded by acres of parking lots? And why, most of all, don't they feel like real communities? These are the questions that Alex Marshall tackles in this...
by Asian Development Bank
Language: English
Release Date: September 1, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: September 1, 2014
The urban metabolism framework maps the activities of cities from their consumption of materials, the different activities associated with those processes, and the wastes produced. Information generated provides a diagnostic tool for identifying high waste generating or inefficient activities and...