Showing titles in Urban

Tras décadas de expansión descontrolada, más personas que nunca están volviendo a la ciudad. La vida urbana densa se ha prescrito como la panacea para la crisis medioambiental y de recursos de nuestro tiempo. ¿Pero es mejor o peor para nuestra felicidad? ¿Son el metro, las aceras y las torres de apartamentos una mejora respecto a la dependencia del coche en los suburbios?

Clean water, paved roads, public transit, electricity and gas, sewers, waste processing, telecommunication, even the Internet—all this infrastructure is what makes cities work and powers our lives, often seamlessly and silently. Virtually everything we do and consume depends on infrastructure. Yet, most people have no idea how these systems work. How is water treated? How do cities manage rainwater? Why do traffic jams exist? How is electricity generated and distributed? What happens to trash after it is picked up? How does the Internet work?

No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, “another world.” During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous for its freewheeling lifestyle characterized by courtesans, casinos, and Carnival.

As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. Underlying this trend is a single idea: The belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In reality, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Author James Bridle surveys the history of art, technology, and information systems and reveals the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime. 

The new dating craze among the divorced, recently broken up with, and frustrated singles of Los Angeles starts with the creation of “the List.” The converted swear by it—just write down everything you want in a partner, and the cosmos will provide. But could such a simple, old-fashioned technique actually work? Enter Jade, who investigates this increasingly popular path to a soul mate, with charming and hilarious effects, tracing the history of list making—and learning about dating and love along the way.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE PAST...

Transportation planners, engineers, and policymakers in the United States face the monumental task of righting the wrongs of their predecessors while charting the course for the next generation. This task requires empathy while pushing against forces in the industry that are resistant to change. How do you change a system that was never designed to be equitable? How do you change a system that continues to divide communities? In Inclusive Transportation, expert Veronica O. Davis shines a light on the inequitable and often destructive practice of transportation planning and engineering.

Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-have resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Listeners will find discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment; explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism; and a comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis.

Narrated by Melanie McHugh. To read most histories of art, you might be forgiven for supposing that great artists are superhuman, and the knowledge of different movements, periods and styles is essential to truly appreciate art. It's time to look at art in a new way. THE POWER OF ART delves into...

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.

Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. This audiobook is about them, the so-called mole people, living alone and in communities, in subway tunnels, and below subway platforms. It is about how and why people move underground, who they are, and what they have to say about their lives and the "topside" world they've left behind.

Viennese ideas saturate the modern world. From California architecture to Hollywood Westerns, modern advertising to shopping malls, orgasms to gender confirmation surgery, nuclear fission to fitted kitchens—every aspect of our history, science, and culture is in some way shaped by Vienna. Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of an extraordinary story of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese.

A comprehensive history of Philadelphia from the region’s original Lenape inhabitants to the myriad of residents in the twenty-first century. In Philadelphia: A Narrative History, Paul Kahan presents a comprehensive portrait of the city, from the region’s original Lenape inhabitants to the myriad of residents in the twenty-first century. As any history of Philadelphia should, this book chronicles the people and places that make the city unique: from Independence Hall to Eastern State Penitentiary, Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross to Cecil B. Moore and Cherelle Parker.

In the 12 lessons of Notorious London: A City Tour, you will experience a rich sampling of some of the city’s most shocking stories and infamous personalities. Taught by Professor Paul Deslandes of the University of Vermont, Notorious London dips into various regions and eras of London’s past to give you a multifaceted look into this remarkable metropolis.

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii in Italy, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. 

Uma cidade em convulsão na imprensa, na literatura, na música popular, na ópera, no teatro, nas artes plásticas, no cinema, na caricatura, na praia, na ciência, na arquitetura, no futebol, na luta das mulheres, nos costumes, no sexo e nas drogas. Se o Brasil dos anos 20 ainda engatinhava rumo à modernização, o Rio de Janeiro tinha vida própria e já era sinônimo de arrojo e vanguarda. É essa capital fervilhante o cenário e a protagonista do novo livro de Ruy Castro.

When Michael Matthews first visited Detroit, he was grimly fascinated by the place. Over dozens of visits, he got to know the people - cops, reporters, and gang members as well as ordinary Detroiters trying to live their lives in peace, and formed deep bonds with them, which led him into places and situations, no writer has ever seen before. American Ruin is the story of Michael’s journey into the soul of this broken city - a shocking, violent, and heartbreaking portrayal of a modern tragedy.

How Real Estate Developers Think considers developers from three different perspectives. Brown profiles the careers of individual developers to illustrate the character of the entrepreneur; considers the roles played by innovation, design, marketing, and sales in the production of real estate; and examines the risks and rewards that motivate developers as people.

In their new audiobook, The New Localism, urban experts Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak reveal where the real power to create change lies and how it can be used to address our most serious social, economic, and environmental challenges.   

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” This phrase was supposedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, and it became a defining expression of a turbulent time in American history. Throughout the 1970s, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods home to poor communities of color.