City Life PDF Download

Author: Witold Rybczynski
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476737347
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In City Life, Witold Rybczynski, bestselling author of Now I Sit Me Down, looks at what we want from cities, how they have evolved, and what accounts for their unique identities. In this vivid description of everything from the early colonial settlements to the advent of the skyscraper to the changes wrought by the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and telecommuting, Rybczynski reveals how our urban spaces have been shaped by the landscapes and lifestyles of the New World.

Author: Martin King Whyte
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226895491
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Through interviews with city residents, Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish provide a unique survey of urban life in the last decade of Mao Zedong's rule. They conclude that changes in society produced under communism were truly revolutionary and that, in the decade under scrutiny, the Chinese avoided ostensibly universal evils of urbanism with considerable success. At the same time, however, they find that this successful effort spawned new and equally serious urban problems—bureaucratic rigidity, low production, and more.

Author: Leo Sullivan
Publisher: Sullivan Group Publishing
ISBN: 1946789429
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF Money tried to hold my hand as he led me down the stairs. He was loaded down with bags of drugs, cocaine, Molly, weed, lean, and money. And so was I. “This some fuck shit!” he muttered under his breath as he suddenly stopped, alarmed. I bumped in to him coming down the stairs. “Yo, my nigga, wha’cha doing comin’ out of there? Where Lil D?” a voiced called out. I looked down just as the chick inside the house began to scream in agony. I looked behind me and the entire doorway where we had just barely made it out of was engulfed in flames, roaring like an inferno of hell. She was being burned alive. “Oh-mi-god!” Down below was a group of dudes. They were about four or five deep, All Lil D’s homies, older guys in their twenties and thirties. They were blocking the stairs, attempting to stop us. In the distance, I could hear sirens blaring. I looked up the street as a cop car pulled up. Across the street there were throngs of people gawking at the fire. Some had ventured out of their homes to watch the crack house blaze. BLOCKA! BLOCKA! BLOCKA! BLOCKA! Money just started firing, letting lose with the 9mm. the gun jerked in his hands. I heard grown men hollering like women as two of them scattered and two fell to the ground. By the time we hit the bottom of the stairs, the smoke was thick and I couldn’t see a thing. “Police, hold it right there!” a thick baritone voice halted as a flashlight strobed.

Author: John A. Adam
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400841690
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
What mathematical modeling uncovers about life in the city X and the City, a book of diverse and accessible math-based topics, uses basic modeling to explore a wide range of entertaining questions about urban life. How do you estimate the number of dental or doctor's offices, gas stations, restaurants, or movie theaters in a city of a given size? How can mathematics be used to maximize traffic flow through tunnels? Can you predict whether a traffic light will stay green long enough for you to cross the intersection? And what is the likelihood that your city will be hit by an asteroid? Every math problem and equation in this book tells a story and examples are explained throughout in an informal and witty style. The level of mathematics ranges from precalculus through calculus to some differential equations, and any reader with knowledge of elementary calculus will be able to follow the materials with ease. There are also some more challenging problems sprinkled in for the more advanced reader. Filled with interesting and unusual observations about how cities work, X and the City shows how mathematics undergirds and plays an important part in the metropolitan landscape.

Author: Howard Davis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136619100
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The shop/house – the building combining commercial/retail uses and dwellings – appears over many periods of history in most cities in the world. This book combines architectural history, cross-cultural understandings and accounts of contemporary policy and building practice to provide a comprehensive account of this common but overlooked building. The merchant's house in northern European cities, the Asian shophouse, the apartment building on New York avenues, typical apartment buildings in Rome and in Paris – this variety of shop/houses along with the commonality of attributes that form them, mean that the hybrid phenomenon is as much a social and economic one as it is an architectural one. Professionals, city officials and developers are taking a new look at buildings that allow for higher densities and mixed-use. Describing exemplary contemporary projects and issues pertaining to their implementation as well as the background, cultural variety and urban attributes, this book will benefit designers dealing with mixed-use buildings as well as academics and students.

Author: Carlo Ratti
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300221134
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Since cities emerged ten thousand years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear—cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their very essence. In this book, a renowned architect and urban planner who studies the intersection of cities and technology argues that we are in such a moment. The authors explain some of the forces behind urban change and offer new visions of the many possibilities for tomorrow’s city. Pervasive digital systems that layer our cities are transforming urban life. The authors provide a front-row seat to this change. Their work at the MIT Senseable City Laboratory allows experimentation and implementation of a variety of urban initiatives and concepts, from assistive condition-monitoring bicycles to trash with embedded tracking sensors, from mobility to energy, from participation to production. They call for a new approach to envisioning cities: futurecraft, a symbiotic development of urban ideas by designers and the public. With such participation, we can collectively imagine, examine, choose, and shape the most desirable future of our cities.

Author: Emily Callaci
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822372320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
In Street Archives and City Life Emily Callaci maps a new terrain of political and cultural production in mid- to late twentieth-century Tanzanian urban landscapes. While the postcolonial Tanzanian ruling party (TANU) adopted a policy of rural socialism known as Ujamaa between 1967 and 1985, an influx of youth migrants to the city of Dar es Salaam generated innovative forms of urbanism through the production and circulation of what Callaci calls street archives. These urban intellectuals neither supported nor contested the ruling party's anti-city philosophy; rather, they navigated the complexities of inhabiting unplanned African cities during economic crisis and social transformation through various forms of popular texts that included women's Christian advice literature, newspaper columns, self-published pulp fiction novellas, and song lyrics. Through these textual networks, Callaci shows how youth migrants and urban intellectuals in Dar es Salaam fashioned a collective ethos of postcolonial African citizenship. This spirit ushered in a revolution rooted in the city and its networks—an urban revolution that arose in spite of the nation-state's pro-rural ideology.

Author: Richard K. Rein
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831700
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
"William H. Whyte's curiosity compelled him to question the status quo--whether helping to make Fortune Magazine essential reading for business leaders, warning of "groupthink" in his bestseller The Organization Man, or standing up for Jane Jacobs as she advocated for the vitality of city life and public space. This compelling biography sheds light on Whyte's bold way of thinking, ripe for rediscovery at a time when we are reshaping our communities into places of opportunity and empowerment for all citizens" -- Backcover.

Author: Joel Garreau
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307801942
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
First there was downtown. Then there were suburbs. Then there were malls. Then Americans launched the most sweeping change in 100 years in how they live, work, and play. The Edge City.

Author: Carl Abbott
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081220414X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title It has been called one of the nation's most livable regions, ranked among the best managed cities in America, hailed as a top spot to work, and favored as a great place to do business, enjoy the arts, pursue outdoor recreation, and make one's home. Indeed, years of cooperative urban planning between developers and those interested in ecology and habitability have transformed Portland from a provincial western city into an exemplary American metropolis. Its thriving downtown, its strong neighborhoods, and its pioneering efforts at local management have brought a steady procession of journalists, scholars, and civic leaders to investigate the "Portland style" that values dialogue and consensus, treats politics as a civic duty, and assumes that it is possible to work toward public good. Probing behind the press clippings, acclaimed urban historian Carl Abbott examines the character of contemporary Portland—its people, politics, and public life—and the region's history and geography in order to discover how Portland has achieved its reputation as one of the most progressive and livable cities in the United States and to determine whether typical pressures of urban growth are pushing Portland back toward the national norm. In Greater Portland, Abbott argues that the city cannot be understood without reference to its place. Its rivers, hills, and broader regional setting have shaped the economy and the cityscape. Portlanders are Oregonians, Northwesteners, Cascadians; they value their city as much for where it is as for what it is, and this powerful sense of place nurtures a distinctive civic culture. Tracing the ways in which Portlanders have talked and thought about their city, Abbott reveals the tensions between their diverse visions of the future and plans for development. Most citizens of Portland desire a balance between continuity and change, one that supports urban progress but actively monitors its effects on the region's expansive green space and on the community's culture. This strong civic participation in city planning and politics is what gives greater Portland its unique character, a positive setting for class integration, neighborhood revitalization, and civic values. The result, Abbott confirms, is a region whose unique initiatives remain a model of American urban planning.