Urban Politics

We may be living longer, but people are more socially isolated than ever before. As a result, we are hindered both mentally and physically, and many of us are looking for something concrete we can do to address problems like poverty, racism, and climate change. What if solutions could be found on your very doorstep or just two door knocks away? Cormac Russell and John McKnight offer a wealth of illustrative examples from around the world that will inspire you to explore your own community and discover its hidden treasures.

In the 18th century, Bridgetown, Barbados, was heavily populated by both enslaved and free women. Marisa J. Fuentes creates a portrait of urban Caribbean slavery in this colonial town from the perspective of these women whose stories appear only briefly in historical records. Combining fragmentary sources with interdisciplinary methodologies that include black feminist theory and critical studies of history and slavery, Dispossessed Lives demonstrates how the construction of the archive marked enslaved women's bodies, in life and in death.

There is currently an epidemic of 'affluenza' throughout the world - an obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses - that has resulted in huge increases in depression and anxiety among millions. Over a nine-month period, bestselling author Oliver James travelled around the world to try and find out why. He discovered how, despite very different cultures and levels of wealth, affluenza is spreading.

When we think of Detroit, we think first of the auto industry and its slow, painful decline, then maybe the sounds of Motown, or the long line of professional sports successes. But economies are made up of people, and the effect of the economic downfall of Detroit is one of the most compelling stories in America. Detroit: A Biography by journalist and author Scott Martelle is about a city that rose because of the most American of traits - innovation, entrepreneurship, and an inspiring perseverance.

In Making the Second Ghetto, Arnold Hirsch argues that in the post-depression years Chicago was a "pioneer in developing concepts and devices" for housing segregation. Hirsch shows that the legal framework for the national urban renewal effort was forged in the heat generated by the racial struggles waged on Chicago's South Side.

Attorney Justin Glass's practice, housed in a shabby office on the north side of Saint Louis, isn't doing so well that he can afford to work for free. But when eight-year-old Tanisha Walker offers him a jar full of change to find her missing brother, he doesn't have the heart to turn her away. Justin had hoped to find the boy alive and well. But all that was found of Devon Walker was his brutally murdered body - and the bodies of twelve other African American teenagers, all discarded like trash in a mass grave.

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.

An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This way depends upon a neighborly covenant—an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The authors invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable.

The preeminent sociologist Richard Sennett traces the anguished relation between how cities are built and how people live in them, from ancient Athens to twenty-first-century Shanghai. He shows how Paris, Barcelona, and New York City assumed their modern forms; rethinks the reputations of Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, and others; and takes us on a tour of emblematic contemporary locations, from the backstreets of Medellin, Colombia, to Google headquarters in Manhattan.

London. A city apart. Inimitable. Or so it once seemed. Spiralling from the outer limits of the Overground to the pinnacle of the Shard, Iain Sinclair encounters a metropolis stretched beyond recognition. The vestiges of secret tunnels, the ghosts of saints and lost poets lie buried by developments, the cycling revolution and Brexit. An electrifying final odyssey, The Last London is an unforgettable vision of the Big Smoke before it disappears into the air of memory.

Jon Reznick doesn’t trust the CIA—but when operative Daniel Black shows up near his home in Maine, he listens. A high-value target has been taken out by a sniper in Mallorca. The kill was clean. Professional. And just the beginning. Reznick is sent in under deep cover to hunt for the assassin and retrieve a cache of Cold War–era surveillance tapes—evidence so explosive it could bring down presidents. As bodies begin to fall and the sniper’s true mission comes into focus, Reznick realizes the stakes are far higher than anyone imagined.

From the author of the best-selling Feminist City, this urbanite’s guide to gentrification knocks down the myths and exposes the forces behind the most urgent housing crisis of our time.

The world’s skyscrapers have brought us awe and wonder, and yet they remain controversial—for their high costs, shadows, and overt grandiosity. But, decade by decade, they keep getting higher and higher. What is driving this global building spree of epic proportions? In Cities in the Sky, author Jason Barr “provides an enjoyable, expansive study of a subject he loves” (Kirkus Reviews), explaining why they appeal to cities and nations, how they get financed, why they succeed economically, and how they change a city’s skyline and enable the world’s greatest metropolises to thrive.

Oklahoma City. Indianapolis. Charleston. Des Moines. What do these cities have in common? They are cities of modest size but outsized accomplishment, powered by a can-do spirit, valuing compromise over confrontation and progress over political victory. These are the cities leading America...and they're not waiting for Washington's help. As mayor of one of America's most improved cities, Cornett used a bold, creative, and personal approach to orchestrate his city's renaissance. Once regarded as a forgettable city in "flyover country", Oklahoma City has become one of our nation's most dynamic places - and it is not alone.

This classic text addresses one of the most important issues in modern social theory and policy: how social inequality is reproduced from one generation to the next. With the original 1987 publication of Ain’t No Makin’ It Jay MacLeod brought us to the Clarendon Heights housing project where we met the "Brothers" and the "Hallway Hangers". Their story of poverty, race, and defeatism moved listeners and challenged ethnic stereotypes.

Since the 1950s, the American war on drugs has positioned white middle-class youth as sympathetic victims of illegal drug markets who need rehabilitation instead of incarceration. The Suburban Crisis traces how politicians, the media, and grassroots political activists crusaded to protect white families from perceived threats while criminalizing and incarcerating urban minorities, and how a troubling legacy of racial injustice continues to inform the war on drugs today.

Long accused of racism and “white flight”, the ethnic Americans driven from their homes and neighborhoods—the author included—finally get the chance to tell their side of the story.

Once America’s capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country’s greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city’s worst crisis yet (and that’s saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists―all have been drawn to Detroit’s baroquely decaying frontier. With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new Detroit-area native Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence.

In Those Who Wander, Vivian Ho delves deep into a rising subculture that’s changing the very fabric of her city and all of urban America. Moving beyond the disheartening statistics, she gives voices to these young people - victims of abuse, failed foster care, mental illness, and drug addiction. She also doesn’t ignore the threat they pose to themselves and to others as a dangerous dark side emerges. With alarming urgency, she asks what can be done to save the next generation of America’s vagabond youth.

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers?