Urban Politics

How can the people of God develop churches in ways that help and don't hurt poor neighborhoods? Pastors and church planters interested in Christian community development will find here practical insights into the power of the local church, which is often underrated. Churches can serve their communities and improve the quality of life of every facet of the neighborhood.

Granted unprecedented access to the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, including the judges, the probation officers, and the children themselves, Edward Humes creates an unforgettable portrait of a chaotic system that is neither saving our children in danger nor protecting us from adolescent violence. Yet he shows us there is also hope in the handful of courageous individuals working tirelessly to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, American cities experienced an astonishing drop in violent crime. By 2014, the United States was safer than it had been in 60 years. Sociologist Patrick Sharkey gathered data from across the country to understand why this happened. Sharkey puts forth an entirely new approach to confronting violence and urban poverty. At a time when inequality, complacency, and conflict all threaten a new rise in violent crime, and the old methods of policing are unacceptable, the ideas in this book are indispensable.

A well respected urban writer who has focused on New York's transportation system for more than a decade, author Nicole Gelinas resumes the story where Robert Caro's landmark The Power Broker ended. Movement: New York's Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car explores how, in the half-century leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, New York's re-embracement of its mass-transit system and a livable streetscape helped save the city.

One word binds us all: geography. We are all geographers, human beings who care about the places we think of as 'home' - our habitat. And yet we have lost touch with the connection between our actions and the state of the planet that we all share. We need a new myth, a new narrative that restores the connections between humanity and the Earth. We are being confronted by a daily barrage of geographical stories on climate change, geopolitics, population growth, migration, dwindling resources, polluted oceans and natural hazards. These are planetary concerns affecting all people and all places.

Gaby and her husband Sean and their four children live in a flat across from Grenfell Tower, and Sean (a Church of England minister) was the first clergy person on the scene. This book stems from personal experience of the impact of the fire. It features the testimony of and commentary on the community that experienced it, and the amazing stories of hope that followed in its wake.

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.

When a Senator's daughter is kidnapped by a mysterious group with ties to the supernatural, it's clearly a job for SEAL Team 666. As Triple Six gets involved, they discover links to the Zeta cartel, a newly discovered temple beneath Mexico City, and a group known as Los Desollados, the Flayed Ones. International politics, cross-border narco-terrorism, and an insidious force operating inside the team soon threaten to derail the mission.

El autor retoma el relato de una vida de desamparo y violencia la noche en que a los dieciséis años, herido de varios balazos, entra a un instituto de menores. Con una prosa madura -cruda y directa-, González nos lleva a un mundo que conoce como pocos. Y como pocos, se aleja de todo cliché. La caída es insoportable. Arden las heridas de bala, desespera la soledad, se subleva la sangre que reclama cocaína, poxirrán y pastillas. ¿Y ahora? Tras las rejas, las voces de otros pibes quieren captarlo para uno de los dos bandos enemigos que manejan el instituto de menores.

This Must Be the Place introduces and examines music's relationship to cities. Not the influence cities have on music, but the powerful impact music can have on how cities are developed, built, managed, and governed.

The buildings designed in our lifetimes encapsulate the dreams and aspirations of our culture, while also revealing the sobering realities. Whether modest or monumental, they offer a living history of Britain, symbols of the forces that have shaped our modern landscape and icons in their own right. Iconicon is an enthralling journey around the Britain we have created since 1980: the horrors and delights, the triumphs and failures.

Chicago: Metropolis of the Mid-Continent provides a comprehensive portrayal of the growth and development of Chicago from the mudhole of the prairie to today's world-class city. This completely revised fourth edition skillfully weaves together the geography, history, economy, and culture of the city and its suburbs with a special emphasis on the role of the many ethnic and racial groups that comprise the "real Chicago" of its neighborhoods.

Billy Sothern's Down in New Orleans illustrates, in very human and heartbreaking ways, how the horrors that emerged during and following Hurricane Katrina existed long before the storm. These beautifully composed stories not only reveal the dignity—and amazing grit and grace—of the hurricane's survivors; they also illuminate larger truths about the urgent issues of our day.

From one of Mexico's most exciting young writers, a cosmopolitan and candid essay collection exploring life in cities across the world and reflecting on the transformative importance of literature in understanding ourselves.

America's most storied urban underdog, Brooklyn has become an internationally recognized brand in recent decades - celebrated and scorned as one of the hippest destinations in the world. In Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas J. Campanella unearths long-lost threads of the urban past, telling the rich history of the rise, fall, and reinvention of one of the world’s most resurgent cities.

Natur- und Artenschutz sind in aller Munde, aber ein Aspekt, der unsere Natur massiv bedroht, wird dabei meist außer Acht gelassen: Die Lichtverschmutzung – das künstliche Licht, das unsere Städte und Dörfer erhellt. Alle Rhythmen der Natur sind letztlich abhängig vom Wechsel zwischen Tag und Nacht. Fällt dieser Wechsel weg, weil die Nacht verschwindet, dann hat das gravierende Folgen. Vögel singen in allzu heller Umgebung mitten in der Nacht.

In Saving America's Cities, Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal.

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.

Life in Cockney London was tough in the post-war years. The government's broken promises had led to a chronic housing shortage, rampant crime and families living in squalor. But one thing prevailed: the unbeatable spirit of the East End, a tight-knit community who pulled through the dark times with humour and heart. Drawing on both family history and her own memories of growing up in the 1950s and '60s, as well as her working life as a district nurse and local police officer, Jean Fullerton vividly depicts this fascinating part of London.

Leslie Kern expone lo que está oculto a simple vista: las desigualdades sociales construidas en nuestras ciudades, hogares y vecindarios. Kern ofrece una visión alternativa de la ciudad feminista. Asumiendo el miedo, la maternidad, la amistad, el activismo y las alegrías y peligros de estar sola, Kern traza un mapa de la ciudad desde nuevos puntos de vista, presenta un enfoque feminista interseccional de las historias urbanas y propone que la ciudad es quizás también nuestra mejor esperanza para dar forma a un nuevo futuro urbano.