Customer Reviews (1)

Good socioeconomics, but dated
City on the Edge is one of the finest books written on the socioeconomic dynamics of Miami and Dade County.The overall history of the city is only lightly treated (and unfortunately, there are few works on the history of South Florida) as the book instead focuses mostly on developments in Miami's recent history, namely from the 1960's forward, as it began its Anglo to Latino "transformation."Be warned, however, that the book is somewhat dated (published in '93 originally, hence 4 stars instead of 5); Miami is a booming, complicated, rapidly evolving city and has changed fairly significantly since then, but the underlying city culture (and it's quirky, problematic socioeconomics) are still there, as analysed by this book.The analysis and overview of the various black groups in Miami in the book was also very revealing. ... Read more

Book Description
As old as a roadway that was once a Native trail, as new as the suburban subdivisions spreading across the American countryside, the cultural landscape is endlessly changing. The study of cultural landscapes--a far more recent development--has also undergone great changes, ever broadening, deepening, and refining our understanding of the intricate webs of social and ecological spaces that help to define human groups and their activities. Everyday America surveys the widening conceptions and applications of cultural landscape writing in the United States and, in doing so, offers a clear and compelling view of the state of cultural landscape studies today.
These essays--by distinguished journalists, historians, cultural geographers, architects, landscape architects, and planners--constitute a critical evaluation of the field's theoretical assumptions, and of the work of John Brinckerhoff Jackson, the pivotal figure in the emergence of cultural landscape studies. At the same time, they present exemplary studies of twentieth-century landscapes, from the turn-of-the-century American downtown to the corporate campus and the mini-mall. Assessing the field's accomplishments and shortcomings, offering insights into teaching the subject, and charting new directions for its future development, Everyday America is an eloquent statement of the meaning, value, and potential of the close study of human environments as they embody, reflect, and reveal American culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Look out the window on road trips!!
J. B. Jackson's legacy lives on in geographers, historic preservationists and others, and is alive and well. This book is a great introduction to Jackson's lifelong study of the American landscape, including the modern, vernacular everyday things that many scholars ignore or criticize.

A variety of authors tell Jackson's story, and about how his influence has impacted their lives and careers. A must-read for cultural landscape students, historic preservationists, architectural historians, or anyone who appreciates a good road trip on the roads of the U.S... the ones travelled before the construction of the interstate highway system...

Everyday America / eds. Wilson and Groth
A collection of reflections on how to see, interpret, and appreciate the American cultural landscape. After reading this book the term "the middle of nowhere" will never leave your mouth or enter your thoughts. The front porch of the local house will be as interesting as Time's Square. Read this book and understand your ordinary environment. Not just for cultural geographers, but everyone with eyes or a heart for how we live and organize our spaces and places. ... Read more

Book Description
The culture wars continue to rage across the United States. Clashes over hate speech regulations, affirmative action, abortion, immigration, art, history, and lifestyle questions suggest that America is more polarized than ever before. This study looks at the rapid changes occurring in cities and suburbs in order to understand these cultural conflicts which, according to Rodriguez, have arisen in part because Americans continue to view themselves as city people or suburbanites in a time when the two areas are converging. As suburbs draw more businesses and residents, they produce new forms of art and cultural events which longtime residents resist as undermining the essentially residential quality of suburbs. Similarly, in cities, new parking structures, highways, and downtown malls produce suburban landscapes that urbanites reject, seeing those changes as evidence of the intrusion of suburban culture. Four community conflicts in the Bay Area from the 1960s to the 1990s illustrate these changes. In the San Francisco Bay Area, freeways and rapid transit have brought city and suburb closer together. Local residents have resisted these changes that threaten their communities' original identities. In San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Concord, residents have clashed over the construction of freeways and rapid transit, urban and suburban redevelopment, affirmative action, and modern art. In each locality, rapid changes produced conflict over local identities, as white, black, and Chicano residents have attempted to maintain a clear distinction between urban and suburban culture in the face of forces that are driving city and suburb closer together. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Edge Cities No More
Rodriguez tells us that edge cities are no longer the center of the urban debate, but rather, as suburbs become more urban, the urban core is becoming more suburban. The paradox is that out of this rearticulation of the city an entirely new form of urbanism is emerging that is on the one hand highly homogeneous, but on the other hand is shaped by local history and the ethnic configuration of cities.

Excellent Book, Must Read
This book turns the study of suburbanization and "new urbanism" on its head. It is a totally new way of thinking about cities and urban change. It redefines the study of cities. It is groundbreaking and paradigmshifting. ... Read more

Book Description
Sacramento, California, was one of the largest cities in the West during the later half of the nineteenth century. Situated between the bay and the Sierra foothills, Sacramento seemed to fit a pattern of natural urban growth that capitalized upon natural resources and transportation routes. The city was also the capital of one of the most powerful states in the nation, but oddly, it has received little attention from urban historians.

As a supply center for gold rush miners in the mid-nineteenth century, Sacramento was visited daily by thousands of wide-eyed adventurers who wrote detailed letters and journals about their travels in the West. Hundreds of amateur reporters compiled a rich record of the early years of city development, providing a rare opportunity for researchers to trace the economic and social development of a western city.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the city was also battered by a series of natural and man-made disasters and one of the most violent land riots in California’s history. Through this turmoil, Sacramento’s many resident and visiting observers commented on what they perceived as the strengths and weaknesses of its urban leaders in great detail, thus providing a window onto the seemingly daily struggle for leadership and authority in a boom city.

Eifler takes the reader on a journey into early western urbanization with his study of Sacramento. He examines the earliest founding of the city by speculators looking to cash in on gold rush trade, uncovering the rampant competition between a handful of men intent on creating a city that would dominate the mining trade. The arrival of thousands of miners into the region, who had their own ideas about what role a city should play in an isolated mining frontier, provides another complication in Sacramento’s growth as miners and city founders clashed on nearly every civic issue. Rising tensions between these groups erupted into open warfare just twenty months after the city’s founding.

Eifler analyzes the aftermath of the riot, which discredited both founders and miner/settlers and gave rise to a new urban commercial class removed from the labors of mining. Thus, Sacramento’s residents sought to create stable urban institutions that could, hopefully, safely negotiate the travails of unrestricted commercialism. Gold Rush Capitalists is an engaging, valuable glimpse of western urban development through the eyes of classes and individuals often at odds with each other but never completely divorced.

Examines the interaction of capitalism and community in the founding of the gold rush city of Sacramento, and of the clashes between miners and city founders. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Planning, published by American Planning Association on March 1, 1992. The length of the article is 442 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Sylvia White, planning professor at California State Polytechnic University (Pomona), has won the American Planning Assn's (APA) 1992 Diana Donald Award. The award recognizes White's ability to combine good planning practice with feminist values. She has developed a planning and gender course, in which she attempts to show that planning problems are not gender neutral. She is also chairperson of APA's Planning and Women Div.

Citation Details
Title: Sylvia White. (1992 Planning Awards: Diana Donald Award)
Author: Carolyn M.R. Kennedy
Publication: Planning (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 1992
Publisher: American Planning Association
Volume: v58Issue: n3Page: p16(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
Brazil's innovative all-female police stations, installed as part of the return to civilian rule in the 1980s, mark the country's first effort to police domestic violence against women. Sarah J. Hautzinger's vividly detailed, accessibly written study explores this phenomenon as a window onto the shifting relationship between violence and gendered power struggles in the city of Salvador da Bahia. Hautzinger brings together distinct voices--unexpectedly macho policewomen, the battered women they are charged with defending, indomitable Bahian women who disdain female victims, and men who grapple with changing pressures related to masculinity and honor. What emerges is a view of Brazil's policing experiment as a pioneering, and potentially radical, response to demands of the women's movement to build feminism into the state in a society fundamentally shaped by gender. ... Read more