Street Level Los Angeles In The Twenty First Century

In the latter part of the C20th, a series of seminal books were written which examined Los Angeles by the likes of Reyner Banham, Mike Davis, Edward Soja, Allen Scott, Michael Dear, Frederick Jameson, Umberto Eco, Bernard-Henri Levy, and Jean Baudrillard which have been hugely influential in thinking about cities more broadly. The debates which were generated by these works have tended to be very heated and either defensive or offensive in approach. A sufficient amount of time has since passed that a more measured approach to evaluating this work can now be taken. The first section of this book, 'Contra This and Contra That', provides such a critique of the various theories applied to Los Angeles during the last century, balancing the positive with the negative. The second part of the book is an investigation of L.A. as it exists on the ground today. While political, the theoretical stance taken in this investigation is not mounted as a platform from which to advocate a particular ideology. Instead, it encompasses cultural as well as economic issues to put forth a view of L.A. which is coherent and cogent while at the same time considering its multi-layed, complex and ever-changing qualities. It concludes by arguing that sectored off and 'totalizing' visions of the city will not do as instruments of urban analysis and that only a theory as mobile as its target will do: one that replicates the polymer nature of this place. It proposes that, extending that theory to the world beyond this particular city, only a theory that models itself on the mobile and polymer nature of the world, while still retaining a sense of the actual and the real, will do as an instrument with which to comprehend the world. In doing so, this book is not only a model by which to think through Los Angeles, but as a model by which to think through other world cities.

This volume argues that the city cannot be captured by any one mode of analysis but instead is composed of the mobile, relational, efficient, sentient, and the phenomenological with all of them cast in new theoretical configurations and combined into one methodological entity. Rather than focusing on any one city or abstract analytical model, this book instead takes a multipronged theoretical and methodological approach to present the city as an intelligent affective organism – a sentient being. It proposes that cities operate on a relational, mobile, and phenomenological basis through the mode of efficiency, calibrated by a profoundly complicated division of labor. Its starting point is that the city is a mobile unit of analysis, from its economic status to its demographic makeup, from its cultural configuration to its environmental conditions, and therefore easily evades our quantitative and qualitative methods of computation and comprehension. Twenty-First Century Urbanism provides planning and urban design academics and students with a multifaceted approach to understanding the development of cities, encouraging the examination of cities through a myriad, non-linear approach.

Winner of the 2014 John Collier Jr. Award Winner of the Jo Anne Stolaroff Cotsen Prize Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century cross-cuts the ranks of important books on social history, consumerism, contemporary culture, the meaning of material culture, domestic architecture, and household ethnoarchaeology. It is a distant cousin of Material World and Hungry Planet in content and style, but represents a blend of rigorous science and photography that these books can claim. Using archaeological approaches to human material culture, this volume offers unprecedented access to the middle-class American home through the kaleidoscopic lens of no-limits photography and many kinds of never-before acquired data about how people actually live their lives at home. Based on a rigorous, nine-year project at UCLA, this book has appeal not only to scientists but also to all people who share intense curiosity about what goes on at home in their neighborhoods. Many who read the book will see their own lives mirrored in these pages and can reflect on how other people cope with their mountains of possessions and other daily challenges. Readers abroad will be equally fascinated by the contrasts between their own kinds of materialism and the typical American experience. The book will interest a range of designers, builders, and architects as well as scholars and students who research various facets of U.S. and global consumerism, cultural history, and economic history.

Our approach to police organizational management is proactive rather than reactive, with police managers anticipating events through planning, using police personnel and resources effectively, and delivering a whole range of police services to the community. This proactive concept is not new. In the preface of the 1829 duty manual of the recently organized London Metropolitan Police, Commissioners Rowan and Mayne wrote, It should be understood, at the outset, that the object to be obtained is the prevention of crime. To this great end every effort of the police is to be directed. The security of person and property, the preservation of public tranquility, and all other objects of a police establishment will thus be better effected than by the detection and punishment of the offender after he has succeeded in committing the crime. Every member of the police force, as the guide for personal and professional conduct should constantly keep this in mind. Officers and police constables should endeavor by such vigilance and activity as may render it impossible for anyone to commit a crime within that portion of the town under their charge. Thus proactive policing is a grand and noble tradition of the first modern police force and policing throughout the ages. Based on the authors' experience in education, policing, and management, three important considerations must be made before discussing proactive management for American policing. First, we believe that sound management is management based on a combination of theory and practice. Practice without analysis causes us to repeat the mistakes of history, so our theoretical analysis must be directed toward the practical for implementation into the day-to-day rigors of operating a police department. Second, we reject complete adherence to the authoritarian as well as to the purely participatory styles of management. In the authoritarian model, which dominates many police organizations, important elements of planning and communications are eliminated or lost. In the full participatory model, response to emergency and life-threatening situations is hampered because too many people are involved, and decisions take too long. In crisis management, for example, one person has to be in charge of the crisis-management team, with subordinates responding to this top administrator. Third, we rely to a great extent on the consultative style of management. As will be shown, the consultative style leaves room for change and "doors open" throughout all elements of the police organization. It can be an efficient and dynamic style of management, provided that the necessary elements of a well-run law enforcement agency are met. Consultation also includes discussions with the community on law enforcement and safety problems. It is one of the key ingredients for community-oriented and problem-oriented policing, which are being publicly advanced by police and community leaders. Proactive planning to deal with an infrastructure attack or activity by a "spree" sniper has to be done in consultation with private and public agencies and the community. This new edition of Proactive Police Management provides a review, analysis, and synthesis of the various approaches to police management, including traditional scientific management, the behavioral/systems approach, and the human relations approach. There is enough detail concerning basic organization and management skills that police managers and students of police management will find the text useful. At the same time, major conceptual contributions from the behavioral sciences and human relations are explored in the context of police management. Most important is the constant theme of being proactive: planning ahead, anticipating the future, and attempting to establish some control by police managers over those future events. Community policing is emphasized. Overall, community policing echoes the relationship between police and the community before automobiles and wireless radios. Much attention is also paid to evolving theories, such as total quality management and reengineering, along with new applications of computer technology, such as the spatial and time analysis of crime events. This combination of new proactive management concepts and the application of new technology continues to revolutionize policing as well as other private and public services in the United States. In the first edition, we wrote that most police departments operate on traditional organization principles as stated in O.W Wilson's classic police administration text from the 1950s. Since the 1990s, college-educated and professionally trained managers have become concerned with twenty-first-century proactive communication advances and organizational theories that can be readily applied to their departments. Policing today remains in the limelight in terms of ethics, the use of authority and force, the crime problem as related to increased drug use and trafficking, and repeated calls by state and national leaders for dealing with crime and terrorism problems. Correspondingly, many police managers complain that they must do more with less under the burden of antiquated civil service and collective bargaining rules and reduced budgets. From the viewpoint of the general public, there is widespread support for police to contain crime. Communities will no longer tolerate corruption and brutality, as shown by the response to police brutality and racism in Los Angeles, New York City, and Cincinnati, along with the racial profiling issues in New Jersey and Maryland. The events of September 11, 2001, have had a profound impact on American policing. Departments of all sizes and types are now taking on additional responsibilities related to homeland security and emergency planning. It is against this background that we present the proactive style of management. This book is widely used both as a textbook for college and university classes in police management and as a reference text for police managers in dealing with operational issues in their departments. It is also used for training police supervisors and administrators and is required reading for civil service promotional examinations.

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

"The most comprehensive guide over published to the man-made environment of Southern California. Contains hundreds of entries plus notes on city history, freeways, murals, and historic preservation. Also, a comprehensive bibliography, a photographic history of Los Angeles architecture, and an unequalled style glossary. David Gebhard and Robert Winter deftly pilot the enthusiast through one of the richest architectural regions in the world. With perception, understanding, and wit, the authors point out the classical monuments, the tacky copies, the sublime, and the bizarre. They lead us to the famous buildings and through the backstreets and alleys to find the unsung treasures. Loaded with maps and photographs."--Back cover.

The definitive book on Mexico City: a vibrant, seductive, and paradoxical metropolis-the second-biggest city in the world, and a vision of our urban future. First Stop in the New World is a street-level panorama of Mexico City, the largest metropolis in the western hemisphere and the cultural capital of the Spanish-speaking world. Journalist David Lida expertly captures the kaleidoscopic nature of life in a city defined by pleasure and danger, ecstatic joy and appalling tragedy-hanging in limbo between the developed and underdeveloped worlds. With this literary-journalist account, he establishes himself as the ultimate chronicler of this bustling megalopolis at a key moment in its-and our-history.