Unhealthy Cities

The purpose of this book is to show the important role that space and place plays in the health of urban residents, particularly those living in high poverty ghettos. The book brings together research and writing from a variety of disciplines to demonstrate the health costs of being poor in America’s cities. Both authors are committed to raising awareness of structural factors that promote poverty and injustice in a society that proclaims its commitment to equality of opportunity. Our health is often dramatically affected by where we live; some parts of the city seem to be designed to make people sick. The book is intended for students and professionals in urban sociology, medical sociology, public health, and community planning.

First published in 2013. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Unhealthy Places focuses on issues of health in today's cities. By arguing that place matters in relation to the population's health, Kevin Fitzpatrick and Mark LaGory make a convincing argument about the general unhealthiness of urban environments and, thus, of the urban dweller. The authors offer a place-oriented approach to health and cover such topics as the ecology of everyday urban life, the sociology of health, needs and risks of the socially disadvantaged, needs and risks of children and the elderly in cities, and strategies for better health services in urban environments.

This volume brings together ten original papers on the population dynamics and development of Western European port cities. In a substantial overview chapter Lawton and Lee examine "Port Development and the Demographic Dynamics of European Urbanisation", setting in context the individual case studies that follow. These studies – of Bremen, Cork, Genoa, Glasgow, Hamburg, Liverpool, Malmö, Nantes, Portsmouth and Trieste – provide an important enhancement of our understanding of the particular socio-economic and demographic characteristics of port cities, and point to the existence of a particular port demographic regime. They emphasize the central importance of the high proportion of unskilled and casual labor, the susceptibility of cyclical employment, the inflated risk of epidemic infection, and other demographic and economic factors specific to port cities.

Originally published in 1898 as To-Morrow: A peaceful path to reform, "the book", writes F.J. Osborn "holds a unique place in town planning literature, is cited in all planning bibliographies, stands on the shelves of the more important libraries, and is alluded to in most books on planning; yet most of the popular writers on planning do not seem to have read it - or if they have read it, to remember what it says." The book led directly to two experiments in town-founding that by imitation, and imitation of imitation, have had a profound influence on practical urban development throughout the world. The book was responsible for the introduction of the term Garden City in numbers of languages - Cite-Jardin, Gartenstadt, Ciudad-jardin, Tuinstad - and set into motion ideas that have helped transform the scientific and political outlook on town structure and town growth. With urban renewal and the development of suburban communities as features of the contemoprary American scene, Garden cities of To-Morrow becomes "must" reading. In the words of Lewis Mumford: "This is not merely a book for Technicians: above all it is a book for citizens, for the people whose actively expressed needs, desires and interests should guide the planner and administrator at every turn." This book was first published in it's current form in 1965.

The purpose of this book is to show the important role that space and place plays in the health of urban residents, particularly those living in high poverty ghettos. The book brings together research and writing from a variety of disciplines to demonstrate the health costs of being poor in America's cities. Both authors are committed to raising awareness of structural factors that promote poverty and injustice in a society that proclaims its commitment to equality of opportunity. Our health is often dramatically affected by where we live; some parts of the city seem to be designed to make people sick. The book is intended for students and professionals in urban sociology, medical sociology, public health, and community planning.

An examination of how early twentieth-century American Jewish men experienced manhood and presented their masculinity to others. How did American Jewish men experience manhood, and how did they present their masculinity to others? In this distinctive book, Sarah Imhoff shows that the project of shaping American Jewish manhood was not just one of assimilation or exclusion. Jewish manhood was neither a mirror of normative American manhood nor its negative, effeminate opposite. Imhoff demonstrates how early twentieth-century Jews constructed a gentler, less aggressive manhood, drawn partly from the American pioneer spirit and immigration experience, but also from Hollywood and the YMCA, which required intense cultivation of a muscled male physique. She contends that these models helped Jews articulate the value of an acculturated American Judaism. Tapping into a rich historical literature to reveal how Jews looked at masculinity differently than Protestants or other religious groups, Imhoff illuminates the particular experience of American Jewish men. “There is so much literature—and very good scholarship—on Judaism and gender, but the majority of that literature reflects an interest in women. A hearty thank you to Sarah Imhoff for writing the other half of the story and for doing it so elegantly.” —Claire Elise Katz, author of Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism “Invariably lucid and engaging, Sarah Imhoff provides a secure foundation for how religion shaped American masculinity and how masculinity shaped American Judaism in the early twentieth century.” —Judith Gerson, author of By Thanksgiving We Were Americans: German Jewish Refugees and Holocaust Memory