Portland Renaissance

There was a time in Portland, Oregon, long before safe bike lanes and inviting coffee shops, that the city featured an outdated downtown, a lagging economy, and not much hope for the future. Then the 1980s and '90s came and a new Portland was making its presence felt, a Portland steeped in creativity and bold initiative. Eventually, Portland would gain national attention in areas such as urban living, advertising, athletic wear, dining, and craft brewing. That can be hard to remember in the aftermath of Covid, rising crime, and tent cities, but beneath the graffiti, Portland remains a vibrant, livable city with much to celebrate. Portland Renaissance reminds readers of what shaped Portland into a great city and how so much of it began in the last two decades of the 20th century.

Confronting Urban Legacy fills a critical lacuna in urban scholarship. As almost all of the literature focuses on global cities and megacities, smaller, secondary cities, which actually hold the majority of the world’s population, are either critically misunderstood or unexamined in their entirety. This neglect not only biases scholars’ understanding of social and spatial dynamics toward very large global cities but also maintains a void in students’ learning. This book specifically explores the transformative relationship between globalization and urban transition in Hartford, Connecticut, while including crucial comparative chapters on other forgotten New England cities: Portland, Maine, along with Lawrence and Springfield, Massachusetts. Hartford’s transformation carries a striking imprint of globalization that has been largely missed: from its 17th century roots as New England first inland colonial settlement, to its emergence as one of the world’s most prosperous manufacturing and insurance metropolises, to its present configuration as one of America’s poorest post-industrial cities, which by still retaining a globally lucrative FIRE Sector is nevertheless surrounded by one of the nation’s most prosperous metropolitan regions. The myriad of dilemmas confronting Hartford calls for this book to take an interdisciplinary approach. The editors’ introduction places Hartford in a global comparative perspective; Part I provides rich historical delineations of the many rises and (not quite) falls of Hartford; Part II offers a broad contemporary treatment of Hartford by dissecting recent immigration and examining the demographic and educational dimensions of the city-suburban divide; and Part III unpacks Hartford’s current social, economic, and political situation and discusses what the city could become. Using the lessons from this book on Hartford and other underappreciated secondary cities in New England, urban scholars, leaders, and residents alike can gain a number of essential insights—both theoretical and practical.

In Within Walking Distance, journalist and urban critic Philip Langdon looks at why and how Americans are shifting toward a more human-scale way of building and living. He shows how people are creating, improving, and caring for walkable communities. To draw the most important lessons, Langdon spent time in six communities that differ in size, history, wealth, diversity, and education, yet share crucial traits: compactness, a mix of uses and activities, and human scale. To improve conditions and opportunities for everyone, Langdon argues that places where the best of life is within walking distance ought to be at the core of our thinking. This book is for anyone who wants to understand what can be done to build, rebuild, or improve a community while retaining the things that make it distinctive.

Until now, much research in the field of urban planning and change has focused on the economic, political, social, cultural and spatial transformations of global cities and larger metropolitan areas. In this topical new volume, David Bell and Mark Jayne redress this balance, focusing on urban change within small cities around the world. Drawing together research from a strong international team of contributors, this four part book is the first systematic overview of small cities. A comprehensive and integrated primer with coverage of all key topics, it takes a multi-disciplinary approach to an important contemporary urban phenomenon. The book addresses: political and economic decision making urban economic development and competitive advantage cultural infrastructure and planning in the regeneration of small cities identities, lifestyles and ways in which different groups interact in small cities. Centering on urban change as opposed to pure ethnographic description, the book’s focus on informed empirical research raises many important issues. Its blend of conceptual chapters and theoretically directed case studies provides an excellent resource for a broad spectrum of undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as providing a rich resource for academics and researchers.

The essays in this volume transcend Eastern and Western geographical boundaries during a loosely defined medieval and early modern period, ranging from Carolingian Europe to Qing China, and pull rituals out of their geographical contexts. Cultural history binds these essays together. This volume permits readers to compare ritual in religious and secular contexts, in the East and West, and to focus on the purposes of ritual, without being caught up in localism or historical jingoism. The various essays are organized chronologically and thematically; they focus on ritual and gender, law, identity and political legitimization. They cover topics as varied as the spatial appropriation of surfaces and territories, charity, carnival, women's magic, the Jesuits, graffiti, theater, business, medicine, Qing imperial ceremonies, Chinese princesses coming of age, spiritual reconciliation, and the Great Western Schism. Contributors include: Catherine Bell, Virginia A. Cole, Andrée Courtemanche, James L. Hevia, Michael W. Maher, S.J., Véronique Plesch, Marguerite Ragnow, Martha Rampton, Eric C. Rath, Dylan Reid, Kathryn Reyerson, Joëlle Rollo-Koster, and Ann Waltner.