Author : Leigh Gallagher
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 11,11 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1591846978
Originally published in hardcover in 2013.
Author : Dave L. Goetz
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 23,74 MB
Release : 2009-10-13
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0061743097
A “funny and self-revealing” meditation on keeping your faith alive and vibrant in a world of strip malls, SUVs, and soccer games (Denver Post). Many seekers find themselves adrift in the seemingly unreal world of the suburbs. They read spirituality books, but struggle to stay connected to God while doing carpool duty or coaching soccer. In this book, Dave Goetz, a former pastor, shows that the suburbs are indeed a real world—but a spiritually corrosive one that can truly be toxic to the soul. Suburbanites need to understand how this comfortable, predictable environment affects them and what spiritual disciplines are needed for their faith to survive and thrive. Goetz identifies eight toxins in the suburban life, such as hyper-competition and the “transactional” friendship, and suggests eight corresponding disciplines to keep the spiritual life authentic. Goetz weaves sociology studies, his own experiences, current events, wisdom of the spiritual masters, and a little humor to equip spiritual suburbanites for relating to God amid Starbucks, strip malls, and perfect lawns. “Goetz’s witty new book deals with desperate housewives, clueless husbands, and stressed children—and the spirit-deadening alienation sometimes found in their housing tracts and cul-de-sacs.” —Orlando Sentinel
Author : Amanda Kolson Hurley
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 134 pages
File Size : 36,24 MB
Release : 2019-04-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1948742373
America’s suburbs are not the homogenous places we sometimes take them for. Today’s suburbs are racially, ethnically, and economically diverse, with as many Democratic as Republican voters, a growing population of renters, and rising poverty. The cliche of white picket fences is well past its expiration date. The history of suburbia is equally surprising: American suburbs were once fertile ground for utopian planning, communal living, socially-conscious design, and integrated housing. We have forgotten that we built suburbs like these, such as the co-housing commune of Old Economy, Pennsylvania; a tiny-house anarchist community in Piscataway, New Jersey; a government-planned garden city in Greenbelt, Maryland; a racially integrated subdivision (before the Fair Housing Act) in Trevose, Pennsylvania; experimental Modernist enclaves in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the mixed-use, architecturally daring Reston, Virginia. Inside Radical Suburbs you will find blueprints for affordable, walkable, and integrated communities, filled with a range of environmentally sound residential options. Radical Suburbs is a history that will help us remake the future and rethink our assumptions of suburbia.
Author : Jason Diamond
Publisher : Coffee House Press
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 48,89 MB
Release : 2020-08-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1566895901
For decades the suburbs have been where art happens despite: despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. Time and again, the story is one of gems formed under pressure and that resentment of the suburbs is the key ingredient for creative transcendence. But what if, contrary to that, the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as in any other cultural hothouse? Mixing personal experience, cultural reportage, and history while rejecting clichés and pieties and these essays stretch across the country in an effort to show that this uniquely American milieu deserves another look.
Author : Alex Marshall
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 19,86 MB
Release : 2000-12-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0292792433
“Marshall writes with wit, reason, and style . . . An excellent resource on the history and future of American cities.” —Library Journal Do cities work anymore? How did they get to be such sprawling conglomerations of lookalike subdivisions, mega freeways, 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 hard-hitting, highly readable look at what makes cities work. Marshall argues that urban life has broken down because of our basic ignorance of the real forces that shape cities—transportation systems, industry and business, and political decision-making. He explores how these forces have built four very different urban environments: the decentralized sprawl of California’s Silicon Valley; the crowded streets of New York City’s Jackson Heights neighborhood; the controlled growth of Portland, Oregon; and the stage-set facades of Disney’s planned community, Celebration, Florida. To build better cities, Marshall asserts, we must understand and intelligently direct the forces that shape them. Without prescribing any one solution, he defines the key issues facing all concerned citizens who are trying to control urban sprawl and build real communities. His timely book is important reading for a wide public and professional audience.
Author : Scott Jacques
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 20,34 MB
Release : 2015-05-08
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 022616425X
This ethnography of teenage suburban drug dealers “provides a fascinating and powerful counterpoint to the devastation of the drug war” (Alice Goffman, author of On the Run). When we think about young people dealing drugs, we tend to picture it happening in disadvantaged, crime-ridden, urban neighborhoods. But drugs are used everywhere. And teenage users in the suburbs tend to buy drugs from their peers, dealers who have their own culture and code, distinct from their urban counterparts. In Code of the Suburb, Scott Jacques and Richard Wright offer a fascinating ethnography of the culture of suburban drug dealers. Drawing on fieldwork among teens in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta, they carefully parse the complicated code that governs relationships among buyers, sellers, police, and other suburbanites. That code differs from the one followed by urban drug dealers in one crucial respect: whereas urban drug dealers see violent vengeance as crucial to status and security, the opposite is true for their suburban counterparts. As Jacques and Wright show, suburban drug dealers accord status to deliberate avoidance of conflict, which helps keep their drug markets more peaceful—and, consequently, less likely to be noticed by law enforcement.
Author : Andres Duany
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 44,9 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780865476066
Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of the New Urbanism movement, and in "Suburban Nation" they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. 115 illustrations.
Author : Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 31,6 MB
Release : 2019-10-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1119564816
A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you’ll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles—and why it just doesn’t work. New development and high-risk investing don’t generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens’ quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the “traditional” search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.
Author : Andrew Wiese
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 40,89 MB
Release : 2009-04-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0226896269
On Melbenan Drive just west of Atlanta, sunlight falls onto a long row of well-kept lawns. Two dozen homes line the street; behind them wooden decks and living-room windows open onto vast woodland properties. Residents returning from their jobs steer SUVs into long driveways and emerge from their automobiles. They walk to the front doors of their houses past sculptured bushes and flowers in bloom. For most people, this cozy image of suburbia does not immediately evoke images of African Americans. But as this pioneering work demonstrates, the suburbs have provided a home to black residents in increasing numbers for the past hundred years—in the last two decades alone, the numbers have nearly doubled to just under twelve million. Places of Their Own begins a hundred years ago, painting an austere portrait of the conditions that early black residents found in isolated, poor suburbs. Andrew Wiese insists, however, that they moved there by choice, withstanding racism and poverty through efforts to shape the landscape to their own needs. Turning then to the 1950s, Wiese illuminates key differences between black suburbanization in the North and South. He considers how African Americans in the South bargained for separate areas where they could develop their own neighborhoods, while many of their northern counterparts transgressed racial boundaries, settling in historically white communities. Ultimately, Wiese explores how the civil rights movement emboldened black families to purchase homes in the suburbs with increased vigor, and how the passage of civil rights legislation helped pave the way for today's black middle class. Tracing the precise contours of black migration to the suburbs over the course of the whole last century and across the entire United States, Places of Their Own will be a foundational book for anyone interested in the African American experience or the role of race and class in the making of America's suburbs. Winner of the 2005 John G. Cawelti Book Award from the American Culture Association. Winner of the 2005 Award for Best Book in North American Urban History from the Urban History Association.
Author : Elizabeth Kneebone
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 191 pages
File Size : 24,57 MB
Release : 2013-05-20
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0815723911
It has been nearly a half century since President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. Back in the 1960s tackling poverty "in place" meant focusing resources in the inner city and in rural areas. The suburbs were seen as home to middle- and upper-class families—affluent commuters and homeowners looking for good schools and safe communities in which to raise their kids. But today's America is a very different place. Poverty is no longer just an urban or rural problem, but increasingly a suburban one as well. In Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube take on the new reality of metropolitan poverty and opportunity in America. After decades in which suburbs added poor residents at a faster pace than cities, the 2000s marked a tipping point. Suburbia is now home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country and more than half of the metropolitan poor. However, the antipoverty infrastructure built over the past several decades does not fit this rapidly changing geography. As Kneebone and Berube cogently demonstrate, the solution no longer fits the problem. The spread of suburban poverty has many causes, including shifts in affordable housing and jobs, population dynamics, immigration, and a struggling economy. The phenomenon raises several daunting challenges, such as the need for more (and better) transportation options, services, and financial resources. But necessity also produces opportunity—in this case, the opportunity to rethink and modernize services, structures, and procedures so that they work in more scaled, cross-cutting, and resource-efficient ways to address widespread need. This book embraces that opportunity. Kneebone and Berube paint a new picture of poverty in America as well as the best ways to combat it. Confronting Suburban Poverty in America offers a series of workable recommendations for public, private, and nonprofit leaders seeking to modernize po
