Urban America In Transformation

Urban America in Transformation analyzes the changing federal system of urban policy making as an evolving complex of interorganizational networks and relates it to the restructuring of American urbanism over the past half century. Comparing the major perspectives (ecological and Marxist), the book provides a thorough review of the evolution of the urban policy system in the 20th century, and explores its significance for the postindustrial transition of older big cities. This book is timely and innovative in its approach and suggests a new method of analyzing the federal system of urban-related policy making. Advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars in policy studies, political science, sociology, and urban planning will find this book to be an innovative and valuable contribution to the field.

This fully updated edition surveys the remarkable transformation that is taking place in urban America. Arguing that technology has both created and recast cities throughout history, Leonard I. Ruchelman explores how cities are being affected by new technology and how they will evolve in the future. Countries such as the United States and Japan have passed through the preindustrial and industrial stages of urban development and have now entered the stage of post-industrialism—what the Tofflers called the "third wave." Considering key questions, Ruchelman asks: How do the computer and communications technologies that are fueling an information economy affect cities and suburbs? How do urban places adapt to changing conditions brought about by deindustrialization and the globalization of business enterprise? What kinds of strategies do they devise to attract and retain investment and jobs? Why do some cities appear to prosper in the new postindustrial era while others become victims? Helping students understand what it will take for their cities, and other cities around the world, to survive and even thrive in this fast-moving environment, this book will be a valuable supplement for a range of courses in urban studies.

While designers possess the creative capabilities of shaping cities, their often-singular obsession with form and aesthetics actually reduces their effectiveness as they are at the mercy of more powerful generators of urban form. In response to this paradox, Designing Urban Transformation addresses the incredible potential of urban practice to radically change cities for the better. The book focuses on a powerful question, "What can urbanism be?" by arguing that the most significant transformations occur by fundamentally rethinking concepts, practices, and outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, the book proposes three conceptual shifts for transformative urban practice: (a) beyond material objects: city as flux, (b) beyond intentions: consequences of design, and (c) beyond practice: urbanism as creative political act. Pragmatism encourages us to consider how we can make deeper and more systemic changes and how urbanism itself can be a design strategy for such transformations. To illuminate how these conceptual shifts operate in vastly different contexts through analysis of transformative urban initiatives and projects in Belo Horizonte, Boston, Cairo, Karachi, Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Paris. The book is a rare integration of theory and practice that proposes essential ways of rethinking city-design-and-building processes, while drawing critical lessons from actual examples of such processes.

Cities in the Third Wave surveys the remarkable transformation that is taking place in urban America. In the belief that technology is the force that has created and recast cities throughout history, this book addresses the important question of how the modern-day technology affects cities today and how it will shape cities in the future.

In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach presents a detailed picture of what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He spotlights these changes while placing them in their larger economic, social and political context. Most importantly, he explores the pervasive significance of race in American cities, and looks closely at the successes and failures of city governments, nonprofit entities, and citizens as they have tried to address the challenges of change. The Divided City concludes with strategies to foster greater equality and opportunity, firmly grounding them in the cities' economic and political realities.

Winner of the 2009 Book Award in Social Sciences, Association for Asian American Studies This innovative work provides a new model for the analysis of ethnic and racial settlement patterns in the United States and Canada. Ethnoburbs—suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas—are multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual, and often multinational communities in which one ethnic minority group has a significant concentration but does not necessarily constitute a majority. Wei Li documents the processes that have evolved with the spatial transformation of the Chinese American community of Los Angeles and that have converted the San Gabriel Valley into ethnoburbs in the latter half of the twentieth century, and she examines the opportunities and challenges that occurred as a result of these changes. Traditional ethnic and immigrant settlements customarily take the form of either ghettos or enclaves. Thus the majority of scholarly publications and mass media covering the San Gabriel Valley has described it as a Chinatown located in Los Angeles’ suburbs. Li offers a completely different approach to understanding and analyzing this fascinating place. By conducting interviews with residents, a comparative spatial examination of census data and other statistical sources, and fieldwork—coupled with her own holistic view of the area—Li gives readers an effective and fine-tuned socio-spatial analysis of the evolution of a new type of racially defined place. The San Gabriel Valley tells a unique story, but its evolution also speaks to those experiencing a similar type of ethnic and racial conurbation. In sum, Li sheds light on processes that are shaping other present (and future) ethnically and racially diverse communities. The concept of the ethnoburb has redefined the way geographers and other scholars think about ethnic space, place, and process. This book will contribute significantly to both theoretical and empirical studies of immigration by presenting a more intensive and thorough "take" on arguments about spatial and social processes in urban and suburban America.

American cities are in the midst of fundamental changes. De-industrialization of large, aging cities has been enormously disruptive for urban communities, which are being increasingly fragmented. Though often overlooked, religious organizations are important actors, both culturally and politically in the restructuring metropolis. Public Religion and Urban Transformation provides a sweeping view of urban religion in response to these transformations. Drawing on a massive study of over seventy-five congregations in urban neighborhoods, this volume provides the most comprehensive picture available of urban places of worship-from mosques and gurdwaras to churches and synagogues-within one city. Revisiting the primary site of research for the early members of the Chicago School of urban sociology, the volume focuses on Chicago, which provides an exceptionally clear lens on the ways in which religious organizations both reflect and contribute to changes in American pluralism. From the churches of a Mexican American neighborhood and of the Black middle class to communities shared by Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Muslims and the rise of "megachurches," Public Religion and Urban Transformation illuminates the complex interactions among religion, urban structure, and social change at this extraordinary episode in the history of urban America.

First published in Washington by the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties in 1980.