City Green

“An optimistic tale that manages to be both encouraging yet realistic about how to do some good in your very own backyard.” —Kirkus Celebrate the 25th anniversary of City Green—the environmentally and community-conscious classic that shows the wonderful things kids can do when they put their minds to it—with this new paperback edition. Right in the middle of Marcy’s city block is a vacant lot, littered and forlorn. Sometimes just looking at it makes Marcy feel sad. Then one spring, Marcy has a wonderful idea: Instead of a useless lot, why not a green and growing space for everyone to enjoy? With her warm, hopeful text and inviting illustrations, DyAnne Disalvo-Ryan shows how a whole neighborhood blossoms when people join together and get involved.

Winner, 2021 CCL J. B. Jackson Book Prize Motor City Green is a history of green spaces in metropolitan Detroit from the late nineteenth- to early twenty-first century. The book focuses primarily on the history of gardens and parks in the city of Detroit and its suburbs in southeast Michigan. Cialdella argues Detroit residents used green space to address problems created by the city’s industrial rise and decline, and racial segregation and economic inequality. As the city’s social landscape became increasingly uncontrollable, Detroiters turned to parks, gardens, yards, and other outdoor spaces to relieve the negative social and environmental consequences of industrial capitalism. Motor City Green looks to the past to demonstrate how today’s urban gardens in Detroit evolved from, but are also distinct from, other urban gardens and green spaces in the city’s past.

A magnificent saga of two proud and powerful families—one British, one African—and their battle over Kenya’s destiny in the twentieth century. In 1917, Dr. Grace Treverton arrives in Kenya, determined to bring modern medicine to the African natives. Her brother, Sir Valentine Treverton, has his own dream for the British protectorate: to establish an agricultural empire to rival any in England. The aspirations of the wealthy Trevertons collide with those of the Mathenge tribe, an African family that has lived on the land for years. Grace soon finds a deadly rival in Mama Wachera, an African medicine woman who fights to maintain native traditions against the encroaching whites. After Wachera curses the Trevertons, a series of tragedies threatens to destroy what the once-great family fought to create. But the fates of future generations of these two remarkable families are inextricably bound. A bold and brilliant achievement, Green City in the Sun brims with all the drama, violence, and fierce beauty of the Kenyan landscape.

St. Petersburg, Florida, has become virtually synonymous with retirement and old age. The city of green benches once courted its elderly population; now, however, it seeks to rejuvenate its image, to attract the young through urban revitalization. In this humane and sensitive book, Maria Vesperi, an anthropologist and journalist, looks at the realities of being old and poor in the rapidly changing downtown of St. Petersburg. Vesperi provides a complete and carefully observed picture of the elderly: the conditions of their_ lives, representative social programs created to provide for them, and their interaction with the city around them. The life of the old in St. Petersburg, she notes, is characterized by a profound contradiction between how the elderly see themselves and how they are viewed by the community-a contradiction that speaks of the way cultural stereotypes about aging are transmitted to all older Americans. As a culture, Vesperi maintains, we view the old as an isolated segment of humanity without a living future or even an ongoing present. She seeks to understand the ways in which the old respond to the distorted image that they meet with every day, not only in their relations with individuals but in their dealings with the institutions set up specifically to care for them. Her study of St. Petersburg explores questions that are significant throughout the United States: How did our rigid cultural assumptions about old age develop, and how can we change them? Why do so many gerontologists, public officials, and social workers tacitly subscribe to that misconception? How does it inform the development and operation of public programs for the elderly? Enlivened by the voices of the old people of St. Petersburg and enriched with photographs by Ricardo Ferro, this moving book is important reading for anyone concerned with the life of the elderly in America.

In 2007, a tornado destroyed Greensburg, Kansas, and the residents were at a loss as to what to do next--they didn't want to rebuild if their small town would just be destroyed in another storm. So they decided they wouldn't just rebuild the same old thing; this time, they would build a town that could not only survive another storm, but one that was built in an environmentally sustainable way. Told from the point of view of a child whose family rebuilt after the storm, this companion to Energy Island is the inspiring story of the difference one community can make--and it includes plenty of rebuilding scenes and details for construction lovers, too!

In this World Fantasy Award-winning novel of magic and kungfu, four siblings battle rival clans for honor and power in an Asia-inspired fantasy metropolis. *Named one of TIME's Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time ​* World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, winner Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed for -- and for centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion. Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon's bustling capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market, and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this rapidly changing nation. When a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone -- even foreigners -- wield jade, the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones -- and of Kekon itself. Praise for Jade City: "An epic drama reminiscent of the best classic Hong Kong gangster films but set in a fantasy metropolis so gritty and well-imagined that you'll forget you're reading a book." --Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author "A beautifully realized setting, a great cast of characters, and dramatic action scenes. What a fun, gripping read!" --Ann Leckie, Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author "An instantly absorbing tale of blood, honor, family and magic, spiced with unexpectedly tender character beats." --NPR The Green Bone Saga Jade City Jade War Jade Legacy

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

This open access book highlights Singapore’s development into a city in which water and greenery, along with associated environmental, technical, social and political aspects have been harnessed and cultivated into a liveable sustainable way of life. It is also a story about a unique and thoroughgoing approach to large-scale and potentially transferable water sustainability, within largely urbanized circumstances, which can be achieved, along with complementary roles of environmental conservation, ecology, public open-space management and the greening of buildings, together with infrastructural improvements.