Results by title
923 books match the query 'Urban' and 3 start with a non-letter
"Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind"
Contemporary Planning in New York CityScott Larson
Temple University Press, 2013
The antagonism between urbanist and writer Jane Jacobs and master builder Robert Moses may frame debates over urban form, but in "Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind," Scott Larson aims to use the Moses-Jacobs rivalry as a means for examining and understanding the New York City administration's redevelopment strategies and actions. By showing how the Bloomberg administration's plans borrow selectively from Moses' and Jacobs' writing, Larson lays bare the contradictions buried in such rhetoric and argues that there can be no equitable solution to the social and economic goals for redevelopment in New York City with such a strategy.
"Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind" offers a lively critique that shows how the legacies of these two planners have been interpreted—and reinterpreted—over time and with the evolution of urban space. Ultimately, he makes the case that neither figure offers a meaningful model for addressing stubborn problems—poverty, lack of affordable housing, and segregation along class and racial lines—that continue to vex today's cities.
"We Live in the Shadow"
Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through PhotographsElaine Bell Kaplan
Temple University Press, 2013
Looking at their photo of railroad tracks, a group of preteen students in South Central Los Angeles see either "a way out of the ghetto," or a "dirty, bad environment." Such are the impressions expressed in the poignant "We Live in the Shadow": Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through Photographs.
In Elaine Bell Kaplan's perceptive book, at-risk youth were given five-dollar cameras to tell stories about their world. Their photos and stories show us their response to negative inner-city teen images. We follow them into their schools, and we hear about their creative coping strategies. While these kids see South Central as dangerous, they also see themselves as confident enough to not let the inner city take them down. They refuse to be labeled as "ghetto thugs," as outsiders sometimes do. These outsiders include police, teachers, and other groups representing the institutional voices governing their daily lives.
The kids in "We Live in the Shadow": Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through Photographs have developed a multilayered view of society. This impressive book gives voice to their resilience.
‘Am I Less British?’
Racism, Belonging, and the Children of Refugees and Immigrants in North LondonDogus Simsek
University College London, 2024
‘Am I Less British?’ focuses on the children of refugees and immigrants from Turkey in North London. Providing a rich ethnography of the lives of the children, the book studies their sense of identity and belonging, and their transnational experiences. It aims to understand how the children position themselves within a range of locations (London, North London, and Turkey), where they face class hierarchy, racism, and discrimination. Dogus Simsek explores how these children think about their sense of belonging within the contemporary political context in Britain and Turkey. De-identifying themselves from national identities and holding onto their oppressed identities appear as new forms of resistance in response to racism and exclusion.
The experiences of the young people reflect the complexity of their lives in changing political and social circumstances across the borders of nation-states, as well as the importance of other categories of identity, including local identities. Overall, the book argues that the intersections of local, national, and transnational approaches, the political context through which the lives of young people are framed, and their sophisticated engagement with ideas of race, class, ethnicity, and gender, are crucial to understanding their identity formation.