Crisis In Our Cities

"Crisis in our cities sets forth in one volume vivid evidence that the most debilitating diseases of our time are a result of our persistant and arrogant abuse of a shared environment. This indictment may give Americans cause to question whether they can afford anything sort of full pollution control in the airand waters of their communities."--p. [ix].

"Crisis in our cities sets forth in one volume vivid evidence that the most debilitating diseases of our time are a result of our persistant and arrogant abuse of a shared environment. This indictment may give Americans cause to question whether they can afford anything sort of full pollution control in the airand waters of their communities."--p. [ix].

If our planet is going to survive the climate crisis, we need to act rapidly. Taking cues from progressive cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Oslo, Shenzhen, and Sydney, this book is a summons to every city to make small but significant changes that can drastically reduce our carbon footprint. We cannot wait for national governments to agree on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage the average temperature rise to within 1.5 degrees. In Solved, David Miller argues that cities are taking action on climate change because they can – and because they must. The updated paperback edition of Solved: How the World’s Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis demonstrates that the initiatives cities have taken to control the climate crisis can make a real difference in reducing global emissions if implemented worldwide. By chronicling the stories of how cities have taken action to meet and exceed emissions targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, Miller empowers readers to fix the climate crisis. As much a “how to” guide for policymakers as a work for concerned citizens, Solved aims to inspire hope through its clear and factual analysis of what can be done – now, today – to mitigate our harmful emissions and pave the way to a 1.5-degree world.

Richard Florida, one of the world's leading urbanists and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, confronts the dark side of the back-to-the-city movement In recent years, the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. and yet all is not well. In The New Urban Crisis, Richard Florida, one of the first scholars to anticipate this back-to-the-city movement, demonstrates how the forces that drive urban growth also generate cities' vexing challenges, such as gentrification, segregation, and inequality. Meanwhile, many more cities still stagnate, and middle-class neighborhoods everywhere are disappearing. We must rebuild cities and suburbs by empowering them to address their challenges. The New Urban Crisis is a bracingly original work of research and analysis that offers a compelling diagnosis of our economic ills and a bold prescription for more inclusive cities capable of ensuring prosperity for all.

Shaped by immigration, and demographics, our hub cities demonstrate what’s best about Canada: our commitment to education, tolerance, culture, and innovation. Since the early 1990s, however, troubling trends have threatened to undermine our much-envied quality of life. In The New City, award-winning urban affairs writer John Lorinc offers a compelling vision of how to make Canada’s metropolitan centres sustainable, livable, and competitive. Incisive and broad-ranging, this is a timely reminder that all Canadians must confront urban issues if the country is to succeed in the tumultuous economy of the 21st century.

Cities After Crisis shows how urbanism and urban design is redefining cities after the global health, economic, and environmental crises of the past decades. The book details how these crises have led to a new urban vision—from avantgarde modern design to an artisan aesthetic that calls for simplicity and the everyday, from the sustainable development paradigm to a resilient vision that defends de-growth and the re-wilding of cities, from a homogenizing globalism to a new localism that values what is distinctive and nearby, from the privatization of the public realm to the commoning and self-governance of urban resources, and from top-down to bottom-up processes based on the engagement and empowerment of communities. Through examples from cities around the world and a detailed look at the London neighbourhood of Dalston, the book shows designers and planners how to incorporate residents into the decision-making process, design inclusive public spaces that can be permanently reconfigured, reimagine obsolete spaces to accommodate radically contemporary uses, and build gardens designed and maintained by the community, among other projects.

Never before have our cities been as important as they are now. The drivers of innovation and growth, they are essential to the prosperity of nations. But they are also destructive, plunging us into housing crises and deepening inequality. How can we keep the good and break free of the bad? In this bracingly original work of research and analysis, leading urbanist Richard Florida explores the roots of this new crisis and puts forward a plan to make this the century of the fairer, thriving metropolis.

This book offers a new geographical political economy approach to our understanding of regional and local economic development in Western Europe over the last twenty years. It suggests that governance failure is occurring at a variety of spatial scales and an ‘impedimenta state’ is emerging. This is derived from the state responding to state intervention and economic development that has become irrational, ambivalent and disoriented. The book blends theoretical approaches to crisis and contradiction theory with empirical examples from cities and regions.