front cover of The Death and Life of the Single-Family House
The Death and Life of the Single-Family House
Lessons from Vancouver on Building a Livable City
Nathanael Lauster
Temple University Press, 2016

Vancouver today is recognized as one of the most livable cities in the world as well as an international model for sustainability and urbanism. Single-family homes in this city are “a dying breed.” Most people live in the various low-rise and high-rise urban alternatives throughout the metropolitan area.

The Death and Life of the Single-Family House explains how residents in Vancouver attempt to make themselves at home without a house. Local sociologist Nathanael Lauster has painstakingly studied the city’s dramatic transformation to curb sprawl. He tracks the history of housing and interviews residents about the cultural importance of the house as well as the urban problems it once appeared to solve.

Although Vancouver’s built environment is unique, Lauster argues that it was never predestined by geography or demography. Instead, regulatory transformations enabled the city to renovate, build over, and build around the house. Moreover, he insists, there are lessons here for the rest of North America. We can start building our cities differently, and without sacrificing their livability.

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Deleuze and Film Music
Building a Methodological Bridge between Film Theory and Music
Gregg Redner
Intellect Books, 2011

The analysis of film music is emerging as one of the fastest-growing areas of interest in film studies. Yet scholarship in this up-and-coming field has been beset by the lack of a common language and methodology between film and music theory. Drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, film studies scholar Gregg Redner provides a much-needed analysis of the problem which then forms the basis of his exploration of the function of the film score and its relation to film's other elements. Not just a groundbreaking examination of persistent difficulties in this new area of study, Deleuze and Film Music also offers a solutiona methodological bridgethat will take film music analysis to a new level.

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Driving Europe
Building Europe on Roads in the Twentieth Century (Technology and Europe History) (Volume 3)
Frank Schipper
Amsterdam University Press, 2009
Today we can hardly imagine life in Europe without roads and the automobiles that move people and goods around. In fact, the vast majority of movement in Europe takes place on the road. Travelers use the car to explore parts of the continent on their holidays, and goods travel large distances to reach consumers. Indeed, the twentieth century has deservedly been characteried as the century of the car. The situation looked very different around 1900. People crossing national borders by car encountered multiple hurdles on their way. Technically, they imported their vehicle into a neighboring country and had to pay astronomic import duties. Often they needed to pass a driving test in each country they visited. Early on, automobile and touring clubs sought to make life easier for traveling motorists. International negotiations tackled the problems arising from differing regulations. The resulting volume describes everything from the standardied traffic signs that saved human lives on the road to the Europabus taking tourists from Stockholm to Rome in the 1950s. Driving Europe offers a highly original portrait of a Europe built on roads in the course of the twentieth century.
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