While the typical Japanese male politician glides through his district in air-conditioned taxis, the typical female voter trundles along the side streets on a simple bicycle. In this first ethnographic study of the politics of the average female citizen in Japan, Robin LeBlanc argues that this taxi-bicycle contrast reaches deeply into Japanese society. To study the relationship between gender and liberal democratic citizenship, LeBlanc conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in suburban Tokyo among housewives, volunteer groups, consumer cooperative movements, and the members of a committee to reelect a female Diet member who used her own housewife status as the key to victory. LeBlanc argues that contrary to popular perception, Japanese housewives are ultimately not without a political world. Full of new and stimulating material, engagingly written, and deft in its weaving of theoretical perspectives with field research, this study will not only open up new dialogues between gender theory and broader social science concerns but also provide a superb introduction to politics in Japan as a whole.

This is the first history of the bicycle to trace not only the technical background to its invention, but also to contrast its social and cultural impact in different parts of the world, and assess its future as a continuing global phenomenon.

"From traffic-dodging-bike messengers to tattooed teenagers on battered bikes, from riders in spandex to well-dressed executives, ordinary citizens are becoming transportation revolutionaries. Jeff Mapes traces the growth of bicycle advocacy and explores the environmental, safety, and health aspects of bicycling. He rides with bicycle advocates who are taming the streets of New York City, joins the street circus that is Critical Mass in San Francisco, and gets inspired by the everyday folk pedaling in Amsterdam, the nirvana of American bike activists. Chapters focused on big cities, college towns, and America's most successful bike city, Portland, show how cyclists, with the encouragement of local officials, are claiming a share of the valuable streetscape."--BOOK JACKET.

Modern cities are increasingly involving citizens in decisions that affect them. This trend is a part of a movement toward a new standard of city management and planning—falling under the names public involvement, public engagement, collaborative governance, civic renewal, participatory democracy, and citizen-centered change. City administrators have long focused on attaining excellence in their technical domains; they are now expected to achieve an equal standard of excellence in public involvement. Toward this end, Citizen-Centered Cities provides a body of experience about public involvement that would take years for municipal administrators to accumulate on the job. The opening chapter summarizes nine challenges for public involvement, together with over sixty aspirational recommendations. Subsequent chapters provide detailed case studies illustrating these challenges for a range of projects—a new bridge, a light rail line, a highway interchange, neighborhood street modifications, urban streetscaping, bicycle routes, movement of freight, and a transportation master plan. The close government-academic cooperation required to carry out this project builds on an innovative partnership between the City of Edmonton and the University of Alberta called the Center for Public Involvement.

Emmeline Escot knows that she was born to ride in Seren’s cutthroat velocipede races. The only problem: She’s female in a world where women lead tightly laced lives. Emmeline watches her twin brother gain success as a professional racing jockey while her own life grows increasingly narrow. Ever more stifled by rules, corsets, and her upcoming marriage of convenience to a brusque stranger, Emmy rebels—with stunning consequences. Can her dream to race survive scandal, scrutiny, and heartbreak?