Showing titles in Urban

Brought to you by Penguin. Violence is often regarded as an unavoidable fact of life. The truth is far more hopeful: violence is a disease that can be cured. Drawing on decades spent fighting infectious disease before founding Cure Violence Global, Dr Gary Slutkin shows that violence behaves...

Brought to you by Penguin. ‘The roads don’t forget, and old reputations cling on, drawing trouble even when someone’s trying to start fresh.’ Take a step into the heart of the British inner city with Trapped Life, a searingly candid narrative that shatters sensationalist headlines to...

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?

“An exacting look at gentrification” (New York Times Book Review)—and the lives devastated in the process The term gentrification has become a buzzword to describe the changes in urban neighborhoods across the country, but we don’t realize just how threatening it is. It means more than...

Hasidic Williamsburg is famous as one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy communities. Less known is how the community survived in one of New York City's toughest neighborhoods during an era of steep decline, only to later oppose and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a community of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely resisted the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood.

Chris Bathum was a respected therapist, addiction specialist, and founder of one of the fastest-growing rehabilitation chains in America. But Bathum was a total fraud: he was a homicidal meth-head with a history of sexually abusing his patients, scamming insurance companies, and eliminating whistle-blowers. Like Rose Stahl. But this intended victim would be his last. Stahl would risk her life to bring down the monster she and so many other people in need had once trusted for their salvation.

The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly...

Desde el Bagdad y la Casita Blanca hasta el Fetish Café y la Órbita de IO, Adaia bucea en las sexualidades menos convencionales de su ciudad y los lugares que las albergan. Barcelona ha sido mi lugar desde hace más de dos décadas. La ciudad donde me he desmadrado de joven, me he hecho adulta, me he desarrollado como periodista y he creado mi propia familia. Quiero saber cómo es la vida sexual de mi ciudad, la que no cabe en titulares clicbait. Aquí viven casi dos millones de personas, es imposible captar su esencia en una frívola estadística.

Quando noi italiani pensiamo alla nazione che vorremmo diventare, cosa ci viene in mente? Probabilmente vorremmo avere un'economia in grande crescita e la piena occupazione: un paese in cui chiunque voglia lavorare possa farlo. Vorremmo avere le migliori università del pianeta e bellezze naturali adeguatamente valorizzate, prodotti culturali dall'influenza globale e la possibilità di definire «made in Italy» non solo un paio di scarpe ma anche un'app capace di costruire il futuro e un'idea che sappia cambiare il mondo.

“One of the 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years”—Slate On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day—chosen completely at random—turned out to be Sunday...

A people's history of Piccadilly: London's bustling meeting place for over a century. There's nowhere quite like Piccadilly Circus. From the moment they emerge, blinking from the underground station, visitors to Piccadilly Circus face a sensory onslaught. Its streets and alleyways merge into an...

Silicon Valley technology is transforming the way we work, and Uber is leading the charge. Upending our understanding of work in the digital age, Uberland paints a future where any of us might be managed by a faceless boss. Based on award-winning technology ethnographer Alex Rosenblat's experience of riding over 5,000 miles with Uber drivers, daily visits to online forums, and face-to-face discussions with senior Uber employees, Uberland goes beyond the headlines to reveal the complicated politics of popular technologies that are manipulating both workers and consumers.

As a kid growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father they called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line and ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood there. Decades later, Helmreich teaches university courses about New York, and his love for exploring the city is as strong as ever. Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs - an astonishing 6,000 miles.

The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams is the “revelatory” (New York Times), “deeply empathetic” (New Yorker) true story of four teenagers attempting to escape the cycles of poverty, crime, and despair in 1990s Brooklyn by getting recruited to play college basketball. With poignant intimacy, Darcy Frey chronicles the aspirations of these young men, including the future superstar Stephon Marbury, who are among the most promising players in Coney Island.

The night is a time of darkness and nightmares, fear and vulnerability, especially for women. And, yet, it is another world, full of beauty and possibility, too. After the sun goes down, insomnia and sleep paralysis do threaten. But some have always walked the nocturnal landscapes, with more or less confidence. Others have worked, night shifts and hidden night work: nurses, security guards, sex workers. And some have found solace in the darkness, from queer rave culture to religious pre-dawn traditions.

Why has land reform been such a failure in South Africa? Will expropriation without compensation solve the problem? What can be done to get the land programme back on track? Tembeka Ngcukaitobi tackles these questions and more. Going back in history, he shows how Africans’ communal land ownership was used by colonial rulers to deny that Africans owned the land at all. He explores the effect of the Land Acts, Bantustans and forced removals. And he considers the ANC’s policies on land throughout the 20th century, during the negotiations of the 1990s, and in government.

Taking into account their history, this book explores the Black gangs of London. It addresses the important but often overlooked questions, on how, why and when they emerged - all while touching on cultural and societal influences on Black Gangs. From the Windrush generation to the ongoing...

Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In No Right to an Honest Living, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small—a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston—and the United States—from securing true equality for all.

From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neoliberal theory. Are the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, volcanoes waiting to erupt?

On any given night, there are over 643,000 homeless people residing in shelters and on the streets across America. What can we do to help? Listen for more.