The Informal American City

The Informal American City PDF Author: Vinit Mukhija
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026252578X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
An examination of informal urban activities—including street vending, garage sales, and unpermitted housing—that explores their complexity and addresses related planning and regulatory issues. Every day in American cities street vendors spread out their wares on sidewalks, food trucks serve lunch from the curb, and homeowners hold sales in their front yards—examples of the wide range of informal activities that take place largely beyond the reach of government regulation. This book examines the “informal revolution” in American urban life, exploring a proliferating phenomenon often associated with developing countries rather than industrialized ones and often dismissed by planners and policy makers as marginal or even criminal. The case studies and analysis in The Informal City challenge this narrow conception of informal urbanism. The chapters look at informal urbanism across the country, empirically and theoretically, in cities that include Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Kansas City, Atlantic City, and New York City. They cover activities that range from unpermitted in-law apartments and ad hoc support for homeless citizens to urban agriculture, street vending and day labor. The contributors consider the nature and underlying logic of these activities, argue for a spatial understanding of informality and its varied settings, and discuss regulatory, planning, and community responses. Contributors Jacob Avery, Ginny Browne, Matt Covert, Margaret Crawford, Will Dominie, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Jeffrey Hou, Nabil Kamel, Gregg Kettles, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Kate Mayerson, Alfonso Morales, Vinit Mukhija, Michael Rios, Donald Shoup, Abel Valenzuela Jr. Mark Vallianatos, Peter M. Ward

The Informal American City

The Informal American City PDF Author: Vinit Mukhija
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026252578X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book

Book Description
An examination of informal urban activities—including street vending, garage sales, and unpermitted housing—that explores their complexity and addresses related planning and regulatory issues. Every day in American cities street vendors spread out their wares on sidewalks, food trucks serve lunch from the curb, and homeowners hold sales in their front yards—examples of the wide range of informal activities that take place largely beyond the reach of government regulation. This book examines the “informal revolution” in American urban life, exploring a proliferating phenomenon often associated with developing countries rather than industrialized ones and often dismissed by planners and policy makers as marginal or even criminal. The case studies and analysis in The Informal City challenge this narrow conception of informal urbanism. The chapters look at informal urbanism across the country, empirically and theoretically, in cities that include Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Kansas City, Atlantic City, and New York City. They cover activities that range from unpermitted in-law apartments and ad hoc support for homeless citizens to urban agriculture, street vending and day labor. The contributors consider the nature and underlying logic of these activities, argue for a spatial understanding of informality and its varied settings, and discuss regulatory, planning, and community responses. Contributors Jacob Avery, Ginny Browne, Matt Covert, Margaret Crawford, Will Dominie, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Jeffrey Hou, Nabil Kamel, Gregg Kettles, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Kate Mayerson, Alfonso Morales, Vinit Mukhija, Michael Rios, Donald Shoup, Abel Valenzuela Jr. Mark Vallianatos, Peter M. Ward

Rethinking the Informal City

Rethinking the Informal City PDF Author: Felipe Hernández
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857456075
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Latin American cities have always been characterized by a strong tension between what is vaguely described as their formal and informal dimensions. However, the terms formal and informal refer not only to the physical aspect of cities but also to their entire socio-political fabric. Informal cities and settlements exceed the structures of order, control and homogeneity that one expects to find in a formal city; therefore the contributors to this volume - from such disciplines as architecture, urban planning, anthropology, urban design, cultural and urban studies and sociology - focus on alternative methods of analysis in order to study the phenomenon of urban informality. This book provides a thorough review of the work that is currently being carried out by scholars, practitioners and governmental institutions, in and outside Latin America, on the question of informal cities.

The Informal City

The Informal City PDF Author: Michel S. Laguerre
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349235407
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
In this book, Michel S.Laguerre argues that there exists an informal city located just beneath and in the interstices of the formal city. The metaphor is not geographical, but rather structural and hermeneutical. This is the city where manoeuvres that cannot be done publicly, legally, ethically or otherwise are performed. The author shows with illustrative data drawn from the American urban experience - the San Francisco-Oakland Metropolitan area - why and how the informal city must be seen as the hidden dimension of the formal city.

The Informal American City

The Informal American City PDF Author: Vinit Mukhija
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262027070
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
An examination of informal urban activities—including street vending, garage sales, and unpermitted housing—that explores their complexity and addresses related planning and regulatory issues.Every day in American cities street vendors spread out their wares on sidewalks, food trucks serve lunch from the curb, and homeowners hold sales in their front yards—examples of the wide range of informal activities that take place largely beyond the reach of government regulation. This book examines the “informal revolution” in American urban life, exploring a proliferating phenomenon often associated with developing countries rather than industrialized ones and often dismissed by planners and policy makers as marginal or even criminal. The case studies and analysis in The Informal City challenge this narrow conception of informal urbanism.The chapters look at informal urbanism across the country, empirically and theoretically, in cities that include Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Kansas City, Atlantic City, and New York City. They cover activities that range from unpermitted in-law apartments and ad hoc support for homeless citizens to urban agriculture, street vending and day labor. The contributors consider the nature and underlying logic of these activities, argue for a spatial understanding of informality and its varied settings, and discuss regulatory, planning, and community responses.ContributorsJacob Avery, Ginny Browne, Matt Covert, Margaret Crawford, Will Dominie, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Jeffrey Hou, Nabil Kamel, Gregg Kettles, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Kate Mayerson, Alfonso Morales, Vinit Mukhija, Michael Rios, Donald Shoup, Abel Valenzuela Jr. Mark Vallianatos, Peter M. Ward

Cities From Scratch

Cities From Scratch PDF Author: Brodwyn Fischer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822377497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This collection of essays challenges long-entrenched ideas about the history, nature, and significance of the informal neighborhoods that house the vast majority of Latin America's urban poor. Until recently, scholars have mainly viewed these settlements through the prisms of crime and drug-related violence, modernization and development theories, populist or revolutionary politics, or debates about the cultures of poverty. Yet shantytowns have proven both more durable and more multifaceted than any of these perspectives foresaw. Far from being accidental offshoots of more dynamic economic and political developments, they are now a permanent and integral part of Latin America's urban societies, critical to struggles over democratization, economic transformation, identity politics, and the drug and arms trades. Integrating historical, cultural, and social scientific methodologies, this collection brings together recent research from across Latin America, from the informal neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, Managua and Buenos Aires. Amid alarmist exposés, Cities from Scratch intervenes by considering Latin American shantytowns at a new level of interdisciplinary complexity. Contributors. Javier Auyero, Mariana Cavalcanti, Ratão Diniz, Emilio Duhau, Sujatha Fernandes, Brodwyn Fischer, Bryan McCann, Edward Murphy, Dennis Rodgers

Close-Up

Close-Up PDF Author: Grady Clay
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226109459
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
"Grady Clay looks hard at the landscape, finding out who built what and why, noticing who participates in a city's success and who gets left in a 'sink,' or depressed (often literally) area. Clay doesn't stay in the city; he looks at industrial towns, truck stops, suburbs—nearly anywhere people live or work. His style is witty and readable, and the book is crammed with illustrations that clarify his points. If I had to pick up one book to guide my observations of the American scene, this would be it."—Sonia Simone, Whole Earth Review "The emphasis on the informal aspects of city-shaping—topographical, historical, economic and social—does much to counteract the formalist approach to American urban design. Close-Up...should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand Americans and their cities."—Roger Cunliffe, Architectural Review "Close-Up is a provocative and stimulating book."—Thomas J. Schlereth, Winterthur Portfolio "Within this coherent string of essays, the urban dweller or observer, as well as the student, will find refreshing strategies for viewing the environmental 'situations' interacting to form a landscape."—Dallas Morning News "Clay's Close-Up, first published in 1973, is still a key book for looking at the real American city. Too many urban books and guidebooks concentrate on the good parts of the city....Clay looks at all parts of the city, the suburbs, and the places between cities, and develops new terms to describe parts of the built environment—fronts, strips, beats, stacks, sinks, and turf. No one who wants to understand American cities or to describe them, should fail to know this book. The illustrations are of special interest to the guidebook writer."—American Urban Guidenotes

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The Death and Life of Great American Cities PDF Author: Jane Jacobs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : City planning
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Drug Policy and the Decline of the American City

Drug Policy and the Decline of the American City PDF Author: Sam Staley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351521586
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The drug trade is a growth industry in most major American cities, fueling devastated inner-city economies with revenues in excess of $100 billion. In this timely volume, Sam Staley provides a detailed, in-depth analysis of the consequences of current drug policies, focusing on the relationship between public policy and urban economic development and on how the drug economy has become thoroughly entwined in the urban economy. The black market in illegal drugs undermines essential institutions necessary for promoting long-term economic growth, including respect for civil liberties, private property, and nonviolent conflict resolution. Staley argues that America's cities can be revitalized only through a major restructuring of the urban economy that does not rely on drug trafficking as a primary source of employment and income-the inadvertent outcome of current prohibitionist policy. Thus comprehensive decriminalization of the major drugs (marijuana, cocaine, and heroin) is an important first step toward addressing the economic and social needs of depressed inner cities. Staley demonstrates how decriminalization would refocus public policy on the human dimension of drug abuse and addiction, acknowledge that the cities face severe development problems that promote underground economic activity, and reconstitute drug policy on principles consistent with limited government as embodied in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Designed to cross disciplinary boundaries, Staley's provocative analysis will be essential reading for urban policymakers, sociologists, economists, criminologists, and drug-treatment specialists.

The American city

The American city PDF Author: Arthur Hastings Grant
Publisher: Рипол Классик
ISBN: 5875132477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Remaking the American Dream

Remaking the American Dream PDF Author: Vinit Mukhija
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262372401
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The redefinition of the single-family house, the urban landscape, and the American Dream. Sitting squarely at the center of the American Dream, the detached single-family home has long been the basic building block of most US cities. In Remaking the American Dream, Vinit Mukhija considers how this is changing, in both the American psyche and the urban landscape. In defiance of long-held norms and standards, single-family housing is slowly but significantly transforming through incremental additions of second and third units. Drawing on empirical evidence of informal and formal changes, Remaking the American Dream documents homeowners’ quiet unpermitted modifications, conversions, and workarounds, as well as gradual institutional alterations to once-rigid local land-use regulations. Mukhija’s primary case study is Los Angeles and the role played by the State of California—findings he contrasts with the experience of other cities including Santa Cruz, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and Vancouver. In each instance, he shows how, and asks why, homeowners are adapting their homes and governments are changing the rules that regulate single-family housing to allow for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) or second units. Key to Mukhija’s research is the question of why the idea of single-family living is changing and what this means for the future of US cities. The answer, this book suggests, heralds nothing less than a redefinition of American urbanism—and the American Dream.