Often the urban experience and its issues are out of reach for the "non urbanite." This book helps bring that experience closer to new writers by developing the experience as a context for writing and connecting it to real life experiences of the writer. Over 52 readings focus on various urban issue and realities such as neighborhood and community; crime; art; city life; what happened in LA, style, and more. Writers who want to expand their writing skills to more controversial, urban issues.

THE GOOD SOCIETY examines how many of our institutions- from the family to the government itself- fell from grace, and offers concrete proposals for revitalizing them.

An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure. Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground—the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative—“sustainable,” “livable,” “resilient”—often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens. Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities’ development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this “urban planners’ dream” created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities’ productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.

This study explains the parallel development of urbanization and modernization in late nineteenth-century American society, demonstrating how the successful features of big-city life spread across the country and transformed towns all over America.

"Major changes are affecting the cultural sector around the world, and there is a need for new skills and knowledge in arts and cultural administration. This book features insightful interviews with 22 leading arts and cultural directors/CEOs in Hong Kong - discussing the most up-to-date trends and professional practices in this field. The institutions represented in the work are quite diverse, covering art archives, performing arts institutions, and even literary festivals and orchestras, etc. This book is of definite interest to arts and cultural administration professionals who are already practicing in the field, mid-level managers who are aspiring to advance their careers and to become future leaders, as well as general readers who just want to know more about the current state of arts management and the roles that our artists and organizations play in Hong Kong and in the global context"--