Edge City

First there was downtown. Then there were suburbs. Then there were malls. Then Americans launched the most sweeping change in 100 years in how they live, work, and play. The Edge City.

More Info About Edge City: A Comic Strip Collection by Terry and Patty LaBan Edge City is the first cartoon to feature the Ardins, a Jewish family maneuvering to balance relationships and tradition with dual careers, overbooked kids, long commutes, and pervasive high-tech gadgetry. The Ardins are a hip Jewish-American family leading mile-a-minute lives with two kids, two careers, two cats, and several computers. This family epitomizes our decentralized, high-tech world where everything is literally a click away-everything but the time to enjoy a peaceful moment. The first book collection of Edge City introduces readers to husband, father, weekend rocker, and busy courier service owner Len and his constantly self-improving wife Abby, whose titles include professional therapist, mom to children Colin and Carly, and daughter to active older adults Morris and Edna. Edge City is nationally syndicated to papers ranging from the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Houston Chronicle.

A collection of photographs documenting the moments Vancouver stood up, took to the streets, rallied for change, or exploded in anger.

Why do people stay in a struggling city? City on the Edge explores this question through the lives of five people in Syracuse, New York, a quintessential rust-belt metropolis. Once a booming industrial center with a dynamic civic life and prominence on the world stage, Syracuse has endured decades of crime, drugs, economic depression, absent-minded political leadership, and population decline. Michael Streissguth spent more than three years interviewing a young survivor of the streets, a refugee from Cuba, an urban farmer, a community activist, and a city elder, who shared their stories as they found ways to make life work against sometimes formidable odds. He also contextualizes their extended commentary and storytelling with secondary characters and various episodes, such as a tragic Father's Day riot and the trial that followed. The result is an eye-opening look at life in America in the twenty-first century, where people strive to turn their ideas, frustrations, and disadvantages into new hope for themselves and the city where they live.

Edge City, from the author of Low Bite, takes place in an every-noir-city (a thinly veiled portrait of San Francisco’s North Beach), and its newest resident is Reno, an angry fledgling just hatched out of prison. Getting out is like a weird dream, and the streets of the City are a muddle of sensations pooling around her. First there’s the bustle—everybody busy with mysterious businesses—an amplifying racket of choices. Staggering out onto the late night streets of the City, Reno ends up at the infamous Istanbul Club: dim lights, Arabic music and the sensual Su’ad dancing. Music, booze, babes and drugs: what more could a felonious girl want? She encounters Huntington, the poisonous charmer who lives above the Club—perverse and powerful in the way only the wealthy can be. Eddie, the underage bartender, is happy to chemically enhance every waking moment. Slowmotion, the sound light technician, huge and darkly mysterious, has connections to people and places that Reno didn’t even know existed. Slowmotion’s elegant friend, Poppy, offers mental transport to realms beyond Xanadu; in her little valise there’s everything necessary for any trip, including the hallucinogenic “Teeth of Idi Amin.” The owner of the club, handsome gambler Sinclair, hires Reno to waitress. Grumbling, drinking, snarling, and swearing, Reno bangs her way through everyone else’s complicated plans, entangling herself in a byzantine labyrinth of betrayal, revenge, general mayhem, and yes, good times.

An engaging account of the uniquely creative spirit and bustling cultural ecology of contemporary Los Angeles How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? In City at the Edge of Forever, Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences. In its pages, modernist architecture and lifestyle capitalism come together via a surfer girl named Gidget; Joan Didion's yellow Corvette is the brainchild of a car-crazy Japanese-American kid interned at Manzanar; and the music of the Manson Family segues into the birth of sci-fi fandom. One of the book's innovations is to brand Los Angeles as the alchemical city. Earth became real estate when the Yankees took control in the nineteenth century. Fire fueled the city's early explosive growth as the Southland's oil fields supplied the inexhaustible demands of drivers and their cars. Air defined the area from WWII to the end of the Cold War, with aeronautics and aerospace dominating the region's industries. Water is now the key element, and Southern California's ports are the largest in the western hemisphere. What alchemists identify as the ethereal fifth element, or quintessence, this book positions as the glamour of Hollywood, a spell that sustains the city but also needs to be broken in order to understand Los Angeles now. Lunenfeld weaves together the city's art, architecture, and design, juxtaposes its entertainment and literary histories, and moves from restaurant kitchens to recording studios to ultra-secret research and development labs. In the process, he reimagines Los Angeles as simultaneously an exemplar and cautionary tale for the 21st century.

A timely study of Hong Kong's politics and society since the 1997 handover that explores the city's long history of resistance.

"A love song for the city . . . [this] volume, attractivelypackaged and richly illustrated, is really a cookbook for downtownrevitalization." --Wall Street Journal In this pioneering book on successful urban recovery, two urbanexperts draw on their firsthand observations of downtown changeacross the country to identify a flexible, effective approach tourban rejuvenation. From transportation planning and sprawlcontainment to the threat of superstore retailers, they address ahost of key issues facing our cities today. Roberta Brandes Gratz (New York, NY), an award-winning journalistand urban critic, is author of the urban design classic The LivingCity. A former staff reporter for the New York Post, Gratz haswritten for the New York Times Magazine and other publications.Norman Mintz (New York, NY) has played a leading role in the fieldof downtown revitalization for more than twenty-five years. He isDesign Director at the 34th Street Partnership in New York City anda consultant on downtown revitalization across the country.