The City Reader


Book Description

The sixth 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. This edition has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary areas included and in topical areas such as compact cities, urban history, place making, sustainable urban development, globalization, cities and climate change, the world city network, the impact of technology on cities, resilient cities, cities in Africa and the Middle East, 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 revised and updated. Sixty generous selections are included: forty-four from the fifth edition, and sixteen new selections, including three newly written exclusively for The City Reader. The sixth edition keeps classic writings by authors such as Ebenezer Howard, Ernest W. Burgess, LeCorbusier, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and Louis Wirth, as well as the best contemporary writings of, among others, Peter Hall, Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, and Kenneth Jackson. In addition to newly commissioned selections by Yasser Elshestawy, Peter Taylor, and Lawrence Vale, new selections in the sixth edition include writings by Aristotle, Peter Calthorpe, Alberto Camarillo, Filip DeBoech, Edward Glaeser, David Owen, Henri Pirenne, The Project for Public Spaces, Jonas Rabinovich and Joseph Lietman, Doug Saunders, and Bish Sanyal. The anthology features general and section introductions as well as individual introductions to the selected articles introducing the authors, providing context, relating the selection to other selection, and providing a bibliography for further study. The sixth edition includes fifty plates in four plate sections, substantially revised from the fifth edition.




The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry


Book Description

"...engaging, intelligent, and surprisingly suspenseful." —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love The unforgettable New York Times best-selling journey of self-discovery and finding one's true calling in life Kathleen Flinn was a thirty-six-year-old middle manager trapped on the corporate ladder - until her boss eliminated her job. Instead of sulking, she took the opportunity to check out of the rat race for good - cashing in her savings, moving to Paris, and landing a spot at the venerable Le Cordon Blue cooking school. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the funny and inspiring account of her struggle in a stew of hot-tempered, chefs, competitive classmates, her own "wretchedly inadequate" French - and how she mastered the basics of French cuisine. Filled with rich, sensual details of her time in the kitchen - the ingredients, cooking techniques, wine, and more than two dozen recipes - and the vibrant sights and sounds of the markets, shops, and avenues of Paris, it is also a journey of self-discovery, transformation, and, ultimately, love.




Theorizing the City


Book Description

Anthropological perspective are not often represented in urban studies, even though many anthropologist have been contributing actively to theory and research on urban poverty, racism, globalization, and architecture. Theorizing the City corrects this omission. Following a brief history of urban anthropology, emphasizing developments in the field during the 1990s, this volume presents twelve ethnographies of major cities in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Five images of the city-the divided city, the contested city, the global city, the modernist city, and the postmodern city-serve as frameworks for the essays. Each section highlights current research trends such as poststructural studies of race, class and gender in the urban context; political economic studies of transnational culture; and studies of the symbolic meanings and social production of urban spaces.




The Blackwell City Reader


Book Description

At a time when cities are firmly back on the agenda, this Reader brings together work by prestigious academics, literary figures, political economists, geographers, film theorists, urban planners and gender theorists in order to challenge established ways of thinking about urban life. Develops a new framework for interpreting cities. Includes a variety of voices from literary figures to academics. Takes a global approach, looking at western and non-western cities. Combines canonical texts with contemporary theories on urban life. Can be used alongside 'A Companion to the City' (Blackwell Publishers, 2000).




Cities


Book Description

A “vastly entertaining” history of urban centers—from the ancient world to today (Time). From the earliest example in the Ancient Near East to today’s teeming centers of compressed existence, such as Mumbai and Tokyo, cities are home to half the planet’s population and consume nearly three-quarters of its natural resources. They can be seen as natural cultural artifacts—evidence of our civic spirit and collective ingenuity. This book gives us the ecological and functional context of how cities evolved throughout human history—the connection between pottery making and childbirth in ancient Anatolia, plumbing and politics in ancient Rome, and revolution and street planning in nineteenth-century Paris. This illuminating study helps us to understand how urban centers thrive, decline, and rise again—and prepares us for the role cities will play in the future. “A superb historical account of the places in which most of us either live or will live.” —Conde Nast Traveller




The City Cultures Reader


Book Description

Cities are products of culture and sites where culture is made. By presenting the best of classic and contemporary writing on the culture of cities, this reader provides an overview of the diverse material on the interface between cities and culture.




The City Reader


Book Description

This third edition juxtaposes the very best publications on the city. It reflects the latest thinking on globalization, information technology and urban theory. It is a comprehensive mapping of the terrain of urban studies: old and new.




The Mexico City Reader


Book Description

Mexico City is one of Latin America’s cultural capitals, and one of the most vibrant urban spaces in the world. The Mexico City Reader is an anthology of "Cronicas"—short, hybrid texts that are part literary essay, part urban reportage—about life in the capital. This is not the "City of Palaces" of yesteryear, but the vibrant, chaotic, anarchic urban space of the1980s and 1990s—the city of garbage mafias, necrophiliac artists, and kitschy millionaires. Like the visitor wandering through the city streets, the reader will be constantly surprised by the visions encountered in this mosaic of writings—a textual space brimming with life and crowded with flâneurs, flirtatious students, Indian dancers, food vendors, fortune tellers, political activists, and peasant protesters. The essays included in this anthology were written by a panoply of writers, from well-known authors like Carlos Monsiváis and Jorge Ibagüengoitia to younger figures like Fabrizio Mejía Madrid and Juieta García González, all of whom are experienced practitioners of the city. The texts collected in this anthology are among the most striking examples of this concomitant "theory and practice" of Mexico City, that most delirious of megalopolises. “[An] exciting literary journey . . .”—Carolyn Malloy, Multicultural Review




The Blackwell City Reader


Book Description

Updated to reflect the most current thinking on urban studies, The Blackwell City Reader, Second Edition features a comprehensive selection of multidisciplinary readings relating to the analysis and experience of global cities. Includes new sections of materialities and mobilities to capture the most recent debates The most international reader of its kind, including extensive coverage of urban issues in Asia, China, and India Combines theoretical approaches with a wide range of geographical case studies Organized to be used as a stand-alone text or alongside Blackwell's A Companion to the City




The Global Cities Reader


Book Description

This book contains fifty selections from classic writings by authors such as John Friedmann, Michael Peter Smith, Saskia Sassen, Peter Taylor, Manuel Castells and Anthony King, as well as major contributions by other international scholars of global city formation.