Benjamin Looker investigates the cultural, social, and economic complexities of the idea of neighborhood in postwar America. In the face of urban decline, competing visions of the city neighborhood s significance and purpose became proxies for broader debates over the meaning and limits of American democracy. Looker examines radically different neighborhood visions by urban artists, critics, writers, and activists to show how sociological debates over what neighborhood values resonated in art, political discourse, and popular culture. The neighborhood- both the epitome of urban life and, in its insularity, an escape from it was where twentieth-century urban Americans worked out solutions to tensions between atomization or overcrowding, harsh segregation or stifling statism, ethnic assimilation or cultural fragmentation."

In an effort to make neighborhoods compatible with 21st century ideals, Talen has produced a singular resource for understanding what is meant by neighborhood--a multi-dimensional, comprehensive view of what neighborhoods signify, how they're idealized and measured, and what their historical progression has been.

Drawing on economics, sociology, geography, and psychology, Galster delivers a clear-sighted explanation of what neighborhoods are, how they come to be—and what they should be. Urban theorists have tried for decades to define exactly what a neighborhood is. But behind that daunting existential question lies a much murkier problem: never mind how you define them—how do you make neighborhoods productive and fair for their residents? In Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves, George C. Galster delves deep into the question of whether American neighborhoods are as efficient and equitable as they could be—socially, financially, and emotionally—and, if not, what we can do to change that. Galster aims to redefine the relationship between places and people, promoting specific policies that reduce inequalities in housing markets and beyond.

Architect and author Chapin describes existing pocket neighborhoods and co-housing communities while providing inspiration for creating new ones.

"This book explores the promise and limits of bottom-up, grass-roots strategies of community organizing, development, and planning as blueprints for successful revitalization and maintenance of urban neighborhoods. Peterman proposes conditions that need to be met for bottom-up strategies to succeed. Successful neighborhood development depends not only on local actions, but also on the ability of local groups to marshal resources and political will at levels above that of the neighborhood itself. While he supports community-based initiatives, he argues that there are limits to what can be accomplished exclusively at the grassroots level, where most efforts fail"--Back cover.