Reviews (8)

How a Frightening Economic Powerhouse Became Just Plain Frightening
In 2005, Detroit looks more like a city awaiting reconstruction after a series of aerial bomber raids than the dynamo of manufacturing it was at the close of the Second World War.The combinations of white flight, race riots, massive deindustrialization by the automotive industry and the industries attached to it coupled with chronic unemployment and discrimination and racism in nearly every facet of life did a great a deal to make Detroit the wasteland it is today.
a grad student
Sugrue's thesis in this book is that endemic racism (along with economic decline) is responsible for Detroit being largely Black, poor and greatly in decline.He's a revisionist historian who wants to refute older narratives that Detroit is corrupt (because all the city governments after 1967 have been run by Democrats and Blacks).Instead he attempts to refute that by showing the deeply ingrained racism in the community.
Well researched, well written
The Detroit metropolitan area today is arguably the most racially segregated region in the United States, with a primarily African-American, largely abandoned and dilapidated urban center surrounded by layers of primarily white, affluent suburbs. This book is essential reading for anyone who lives in southeast Michigan as well as other cities that have similar histories of industrialization, urban decline and concentrated poverty such as Cleveland, Gary, Philadelphia, and South Chicago.Read more

Subjects:  1. Discrimination & Racism    2. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    3. Social Science    4. Sociology    5. Sociology - Urban    6. United States - 20th Century (1945 to 2000)    7. American History    8. History / United States / 20th Century    9. Political Science and International Relations    10. Postwar period, 1945 to c 2000    11. Racism & racial discrimination    12. Social history    13. Social issues    14. USA    15. Urban communities   

Reviews (3)

Make that 3 1/2 stars
Actually, I would have given "Making Your Move" 4 stars had I found the descriptions of the individual towns more interesting.But, what I did find was a witty style of writing, some laugh-out-loud moments, and some very down-to-earth advice on the pearls and perils of small-town life.One might apply Norm's smart and insightful guidelines to just about any sparsely populated area in the quest for new habitation.So even though his selections failed to fire me up, they did make me realize that I may not be cut out for small-town living after all.And that, in itself, is worth far more than the price of a book.Thanks, Norm, and make that four stars.
Part of the story
This book is a good place to start if you're thinking of moving to a town of 15,000 or less. It will point you to many interesting communities. However, having used his previous book to guide my last move, and as a resident of one of the towns highlighted in this book (Grinnell), I can honestly say that data only carries you so far. Crampton could provide readers with a great benefit by lengthening the amount of description and flavor for each town. In particular, one key element missing is the 'dynamic' of a town: is it progressive? conservative? excited about education? quick to vote down taxes and bonds? These elements form the 'culture' of a small town, and believe me, the culture of a small town will be *very* important to you!

A good guide to start
As a resident of one of the 120 "best small towns" recommended by Norman Crampton, I was delighted to see Silver City on the list. Read more

Subjects:  1. Business / Economics / Finance    2. Census And General Statistics    3. Cities and towns    4. Environmental Planning And Management    5. Public Policy - Regional Planning    6. Rating    7. Ratings    8. Real Estate - Buying/Selling Homes    9. Statistics    10. Travel    11. United States    12. United States - General    13. Urban-rural migration    14. House maintenance    15. Housing & property for the individual    16. USA   

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Business / Economics / Finance    3. Commercial Buildings Architecture    4. Industries - Retailing    5. Planning    6. Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings    7. Retail Management    8. Retail trade    9. Shopping centers    10. Shopping malls    11. Stores, Retail    12. Architecture / Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings    13. City & town planning - architectural aspects    14. Public buildings: civic, commercial, industrial, etc   

Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Art & Politics    4. Fine Arts (Specific Aspects)    5. Graphic Arts - General    6. Urban Design    7. Graffiti   

Editorial Review

One of the foremost practitioners of New Urbanism, Peter Calthorpe, an urban designer and architect based in Berkeley, California, offers one of the most coherent and persuasive arguments for moving the United States away from sprawl and toward more compact, mixed-use, economically diverse, and ecologically sound communities. This book presents 24 of Calthorpe's regional urban plans, in which towns are organized so that residents can be less dependent upon their cars and can walk, bike, or take public transportation between work, school, home, and shopping.This book is not just for architects and urban planners, but for all concerned citizens interested in developing a cohesive, feasible vision of the sustainable city of the future. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Small Step
The one point in favor of this book is that it promotes a much-needed land use concept: Plan and build near transit.The critical downfall of the book is that it perpetuates the auto-centric lifestyle.While Europe and Asia are beginning to perfect pedestrian districts around their transit stops, the best that we Americans can do is to simply build residential units with 2 parking spaces each near metro stops.Too much land (typically 40%) is wasted in providing for streets, alleys, driveways, and the large number of parking spaces for each vehicle. A must read!
This work is terrific if one is interested at all in the way in which cities could be developed. The ideas which Calthorpe presents are revolutionary and instrumental if one wishes to gain any sort of idea ofthe concepts and ideas proposed by "New Urbanism". Hisexplanation of his Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is vital inunderstanding the difference between these developments and traditionalversions. His use of specific examples makes the work that much better asit becomes more tangible and less simply theory. I would highly recomendthis book to anyone involved in any sort of urban or city planning orsimply interested in cities themselves. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. City planning    3. Metropolitan areas    4. Planning    5. Sociology    6. Sociology - Urban    7. United States    8. Urban Design    9. Urban ecology    10. Applied ecology    11. Architecture / General    12. City & town planning - architectural aspects    13. City planning - United States    14. Metropolitain areas    15. Social Science / Sociology / Urban    16. USA    17. Urban communities   

Reviews (1)

Tremendous resource
This book is an immense collection of research on the application of complex systems to urban spatial analysis. While this book is not extensive and is probably not meant as a textbook on complex systems in its entirety, I highly recommend it for those interested in urban spatial analysis. The applications of the techniques go beyond geography and are useful in sociology, economics, or urban planning. A caveat that I should add is that the book is quite dense with methods and formulas and is probably not best to approach this book without some knowledge of advanced statistics. However, the theoretical overviews provided more than allow for those without this background to get something out of it. In short, if you are a graduate student, professor, or researcher I'd recommend this book for an insightful and important take on the nature of cities and urban analysis. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. City planning    2. Computer simulation    3. Mathematical models    4. Political Science    5. Politics / Current Events    6. Politics/International Relations    7. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    8. Simulation models    9. Political Science / City Planning & Urban Development    10. Urban & municipal planning    11. Urban communities   

Reviews (2)

City politics
This is a pretty informative and interesting book. I would reccomend it to someone interested in persuing an education in urban politics.

Policies and corruption in the city
This is a good read for anyone who is interrested in the development of the city and the politics within.It opens with the birth of the city and how advances in technology led to the outward expansion of the city.Oneof the most interresting features is how the book describes the growth ofthe politcal machine in Chicago.In a later chapter, the authors thencompare the fiscal policies of Chicago and New York City and how machinepolitics may have been the key to Chicago's success.The book also goesinto detail about "white flight": the moving of themiddle/upper-class sectors away from the city to settle into differenttypes of suburbs.These suburbs then become a self-sustaining entitycapable of enacting their own governmental policies which includeexclusionary tactics designed to weed out those of lower incomes, certainage brackets, or those of an "unacceptable" racial background. It then goes into detail about the Court's opinion on these exclusionarypolicies.If you're interrested in how cities and urban politics arecreated then this book is a great start. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Economic policy    2. Government - State & Provincial    3. Municipal government    4. Political Science    5. Politics / Current Events    6. Politics/International Relations    7. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    8. Sociology, Urban    9. United States    10. Urban policy    11. Political Science / General    12. Political science & theory    13. Urban communities   

Reviews (18)

Maybe I'm confused, but...
I give this book five stars.
How Cities Work
For a beginner Public Administration Masters student, this text provided an excellent intro into some far reaching subjects. I used it to focus on the relationship between transportation and urban/suburban growth.The examples were easy to follow and correlated with other professional writings that I have found relating to this discussion thread.I highly recommend this book for getting your feet wet in the transportation side of public administration, or simply for examination of your local communities' current and possible growth concerns.

Wishing for more....
The author and I had the good fortune to grow up in cities shaped by the street car. Even though the cars were going or gone by the 1950's, many cities retained the urban patterns established sixty and seventy years before. Hoping that light-rail might bring about a return of street car city neighborhoods, I was looking for useful information that might fuel the cause of light-rail. From that aspect the book was disappointing.
Read more

Subjects:  1. Cities and towns    2. City planning    3. Growth    4. Political Science    5. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    6. Public Policy - Regional Planning    7. Social psychology    8. Sociology    9. Sociology - Urban    10. Suburbs    11. City & town planning - architectural aspects    12. Political Science / City Planning & Urban Development    13. USA    14. Urban communities   

Subjects:  1. Case studies    2. Community development, Urban    3. Government - U.S. Government    4. Political Science    5. Politics - Current Events    6. Politics / Current Events    7. Politics/International Relations    8. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    9. Sociology - Urban    10. United States    11. Urban policy    12. 21st century    13. Postwar period, 1945 to c 2000    14. USA    15. Urban & municipal planning   

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Case studies    3. Environmental Conservation & Protection - General    4. Land use, Urban    5. Local transit    6. Planning    7. Political Science    8. Politics/International Relations    9. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    10. Public Policy - Regional Planning    11. Public Transportation    12. Transportation and state    13. United States    14. Architecture / Planning    15. Transport planning & policy    16. Transportation / Public Transportation   

Subjects:  1. Architecture (Specific Aspects)    2. Building sites    3. General    4. Technology & Industrial Arts    5. Urban Planning   

Reviews (1)

Super history of the nation's most beautiful highway!
If you were ever interested in finding out more about how highways were built before the Interstate system, this is the book for you!The Merritt Parkway and its extension the Wilber Cross Parkway remain marvelous designs to this day and are still enjoyable to travel on during every season.If you are from Connecticut or nearby New York, this book offers a wonderful historically perspective.The photographs are large and clear and the pages of the book are a good weight.In addition to being a good read, this book promoted a lot of family converstion about the history of the road.My great-Grandfather, for example,was the first person to ever drive over the Sikorsky Bridge built to connect the Merritt Parkway to the Boston Post Road in Milford, CT.This made the book seem all the more personal to me knowing that my family had played a part in Connecticut's history.Read more

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Automotive Transportation    3. General    4. Highway Engineering    5. History - General    6. Transportation    7. Transportation / General   

Reviews (4)

What Other People, Other Towns Have Done
I'm sure that you are busy. I've got a lot of things to do myself, more than I can get done today. And then the time comes when you have to stop being busy, some times you just have to sit and let the batteries recharge. As the old saying goes, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.
Smart Commununities
This book is an antidote for the cynicismandsense of helplessness that pervades too many of our communities.We are given actual examples ofcommunities builing on their strengths, talents, histories and valuesto create new energyand optimism. As an amatuer historian, my favorite chapter was the one on preserving the past as a way to begin building the new.Now I have the language to encourage renewal by honoring the past.

Strategic Thinking and Acting
I was attracted to this book while looking for insights into strategic thinking for work in another arena.I was not disappointed.Read more

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Community    3. Community leadership    4. Community organization    5. Planning    6. Public Affairs & Administration    7. Sociology - General    8. Urban Architecture    9. Architecture / Planning    10. Regional & Area Planning    11. Social groups & communities   

Subjects:  1. 20th century    2. Architecture    3. Architecture And The Environment    4. Architecture, Modern    5. Congresses    6. Environmental aspects    7. General    8. Methods & Materials    9. Organic architecture    10. Sociology Of Architecture    11. Architecture / General    12. Environmentalist thought & ideology    13. Regional & Area Planning    14. Theory of architecture   

Reviews (1)

Not a Great Textbook
If you are looking for the philospohy of how urban planning has been viewed through time then maybe this is the book for you.However as a text book it lacks a clear presentation of the information and is incredibly dull.When you read the chapters you have to continually look back at the overview to remember what they are rambling on about.I only gave it 2 stars instead of one because it does have a nice discussion on the philosophy of urban planning. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Cities and towns    2. City and town life    3. History    4. Public Policy - Regional Planning    5. Social Science    6. Sociology    7. Sociology - Urban    8. Sociology, Urban    9. Urban Planning    10. Urban Sociology    11. Social Science / Sociology / General   

Reviews (4)

Walking in Thought
This wonderful book consideres the civic street from many perspecitives and describes it with poetic attention.The author has spent days on these great streets and brings careful measurement and observation to his carefully crafted text.If everyone planning streets and highways in America read this book and visited one of two of these great streets, it would enable a huge improvement. Attention urban planners, designers and urbanists!
This is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the study of urbanism.

essential to any urban planner or architect
This book showcases some of the greatest streets in the world. Not only does it provide examples of great streets but it speaks about the criteria of being "great". The drawings are very nice as well, and this book would make a great addition to any architect, planner or travel enthusiasts' library. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Planning    3. Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings    4. Architecture / Planning    5. City & town planning - architectural aspects   

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Architecture and society    3. Citizen participation    4. City planning    5. Community Development    6. Community organization    7. Planning    8. Political Science    9. Politics/International Relations    10. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    11. Public Policy - Regional Planning    12. Sociology - General    13. Urban Planning    14. Architecture / Planning    15. City & town planning - architectural aspects    16. Industrial / Commercial Art & Design    17. Social theory   

Editorial Review

Nobody disputes the fact that inner-city schools are going to the dogs. Poor facilities, shell-shocked teachers, and hostile, apathetic students are frequent topics on the evening news, as are the supposed solutions for these problems: school vouchers, school uniforms, teacher testing, and the like. In Read more

Reviews (12)

The direct effect of the city on schooling
Ghetto schooling touches on the failure of inner city schools but especially the failure of the school system in Newark, NJ.She takes a look at the expansive school system from the years 1860- 1997.Her book looks at the failure of school reform but better yet the failure of the city and how it has failed to educate it's minority students through mismangement of money to political partronage that promotes unskilled teachers and adminstrators.She traces the school system as a product of the development of the city.To Jean Anyon, the city has a direct effect on the progress of the school.As she states, "The contours and fortunes of schools in the twentieth centruy have also been intimately linked to the economic transformations of the city--and to federal and state policy as well as to local and national corporate decision making" (156). In stating what she feels is an obvious, Anyon describes the rise and fall of Newark and how fiscal prosperiety directly affected the quality of schooling.She states that through several discriminatory practices by federal and state governments such as redlining, housing segregation, financial disparity between districts and even efforts by corporations to restrict municipal spending and borrowing, education in Newark took a turn for the worst.She also says that the decline in quality of education is aligned with the increase of minorities into the city and the exodus of middle class residents to the suburbs. Anyon does a good job of presenting the historical factors that have influenced education in the city.She also shows how this has occured in other major cities.Another selling pointo f the argurment is that she presents a reform agenda that although expensive does to the root of the "underclass" urban education problem.While in no way belittling the residents of the inner cities she calls for action from these individuals and how their participation in the process strenthens the ties of the community to education.Anyon's book is only the beginning in a long line of cities that are afflicted by the same ailments as Newark, NJ.

Ghetto Schooling Review
Since as far back as formal education existed, Newark NJ school district has suffered from numerous problems.In the book Ghetto Schooling - A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform, Jean Anyon deals with the topic of the Newark school district and what has been done and what should be done in the future.The book begins with her experience of being in the Newark School system (Marcy School)as a member of a group trying to restructure eight schools in this school district. Then she follows up with a chronological break down by era of what went on in the Newark district and around the country.The book begins in the present, goes to the past, and finishes up with how we are supposed to learn from our past. A look into inner city schools and reform
Anyon gives us a glimpse into the world of inner city schooling and everything that goes with it.This is an eye opening journey for educators that do not teach in the inner city schools.I do feel that she is way off and don't believe that some of her suggestions would actually work to improve the schools.She has not herself worked as an educator in the inner city schools.So how does she know that what she is reccommending will work? Read more

Subjects:  1. Case studies    2. Economic aspects    3. Education    4. Education / Teaching    5. Education, Urban    6. Educational Policy & Reform    7. New Jersey    8. Newark    9. Political aspects    10. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    11. Social aspects    12. Sociology - Urban    13. Central government policies    14. Organization & management of education    15. USA    16. Urban communities   

Reviews (2)

A great read and also good as a course text!
This type of book is well overdue. It covers both the theoretical and practical side of sustainable design and is very well set out. It is an excellent reference book and covers the full spectrum of sustainable design issues, which affect us all!

thought provouking
design for sustainability is defnitly a sourcebook for sustainable designers.it spanes through every aspect of our existance and ofers a new way of living it sustainably. from hemp clothes to earth building and even touches thinking patterns of design, giving the profetional designer not only eco-logical solutions but new perspectives to the process of design.Read more

Subjects:  1. Business & Economics    2. Business/Economics    3. Development - Sustainable Development    4. Ecological engineering    5. Ecology    6. Environmental Engineering & Technology    7. Environmental Science    8. Environmental Studies    9. Sustainable development    10. Business & Economics / Sustainable Development    11. Regional & Area Planning    12. Sustainability   

Subjects:  1. Business & Economics    2. Business / Economics / Finance    3. Business/Economics    4. Community development    5. Development - Economic Development    6. Economic development    7. Economics - General    8. Industrial promotion    9. Public Affairs & Administration    10. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    11. United States    12. Development economics    13. POLITICS & GOVERNMENT    14. Science / Environmental Science    15. Sociology, Social Studies    16. USA