Toronto prides itself on being “the world’s most diverse city,” and its officials seek to support this diversity through programs and policies designed to promote social inclusion. Yet this progressive vision of law often falls short in practice, limited by problems inherent in the political culture itself. In Everyday Law on the Street, Mariana Valverde brings to light the often unexpected ways that the development and implementation of policies shape everyday urban life. Drawing on four years spent participating in council hearings and civic association meetings and shadowing housing inspectors and law enforcement officials as they went about their day-to-day work, Valverde reveals a telling transformation between law on the books and law on the streets. She finds, for example, that some of the democratic governing mechanisms generally applauded—public meetings, for instance—actually create disadvantages for marginalized groups, whose members are less likely to attend or articulate their concerns. As a result, both officials and citizens fail to see problems outside the point of view of their own needs and neighborhood. Taking issue with Jane Jacobs and many others, Valverde ultimately argues that Toronto and other diverse cities must reevaluate their allegiance to strictly local solutions. If urban diversity is to be truly inclusive—of tenants as well as homeowners, and recent immigrants as well as longtime residents—cities must move beyond micro-local planning and embrace a more expansive, citywide approach to planning and regulation.

How local, specific, and personal understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. In Owning the Street, Amelia Thorpe examines everyday experiences of and feelings about property and belonging in contemporary cities. She grounds her account in an empirical study of PARK(ing) Day, an annual event that reclaims street space from cars. A popular and highly recognizable example of DIY Urbanism, PARK(ing) Day has attracted considerable media attention, but has not yet been the subject of close scholarly examination. Focusing on the event's trajectories in San Francisco, Sydney, and Montreal, Thorpe addresses this gap, making use of extensive interview data, field work, and careful reflection to explore these tiny, temporary, and often transformative interventions. PARK(ing) Day is based on a creative interpretation of the property producible by paying a parking meter. Paying a meter, the event’s organizers explained, amounts to taking out a lease on the space; while most “lessees” use that property to store a car, the space could be put to other uses—engaging politics (a free health clinic for migrant workers, a same sex wedding, a protest against fossil fuels) and play (a dance floor, giant Jenga, a pocket park). Through this novel rereading of everyday regulation, PARK(ing) Day provides an example of the connection between belief and action—a connection at the heart of Thorpe’s argument. Thorpe examines ways in which local, personal, and materially grounded understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. Her analysis offers insights into the ways in which citizens can shape the governance of urban space, particularly in contested environments. The book's foreword is by Davina Cooper, Research Professor in Law at King’s College London.

“A well-supported critique of therapeutic policing and, by extension, of similar paternalistic efforts to help the poor by hassling them into good behavior.” —Los Angeles Times In his first year working in Los Angeles’s Skid Row, Forrest Stuart was stopped on the street by police fourteen times. Usually for doing little more than standing there. Juliette, a woman he met during that time, has been stopped by police well over one hundred times, arrested upward of sixty times, and has given up more than a year of her life serving week-long jail sentences. Her most common crime? Simply sitting on the sidewalk—an arrestable offense in LA. Why? What purpose did those arrests serve, for society or for Juliette? How did we reach a point where we’ve cut support for our poorest citizens, yet are spending ever more on policing and prisons? That’s the complicated, maddening story that Stuart tells in Down, Out & Under Arrest, a close-up look at the hows and whys of policing poverty in the contemporary United States. What emerges from Stuart’s years of fieldwork—not only with Skid Row residents, but with the police charged with managing them—is a tragedy built on mistakes and misplaced priorities more than on heroes and villains. At a time when distrust between police and the residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods has never been higher, Stuart’s book helps us see where we’ve gone wrong, and what steps we could take to begin to change the lives of our poorest citizens—and ultimately our society itself—for the better.

This practical, down-to-earth approach to the law will be an important tool in your classroom. Included are questions and answers to explain the basic principles of law, criminal law, lawmaking, law enforcement, judging the law and constitutional law. Twenty-two hypothetical cases on topics of concern to young people give instruction in what the law says and invite student opinion and discussion.

Know your rights and how to protect them -- with the new and comprehensive handbook of everyday law. This New Fourth Edition of the Handbook of Everyday Law has been enlarged and revised to incorporate nearly every legal matter the average adult encounters. Find out: * What are the new wrinkles in the gift tax law? * In what states are common-law marriages recognized? * How legally binding are oral wills? * What does the new Freedom of Information Act mean to you? * What is no-fault divorce? * Is discrimination against women based on law or practice? * What are the new laws on bankruptcy? * How does the new Equal Credit Opportunity Act affect you? Plus more . . . .

If you are an individual with a disability and believe you have been discriminated against, it is often hard to find a lawyer to help remedy your situation. Accordingly, 'self-help' may often be your most, or your only, viable strategy. But how to proceed? This book serves as a badly needed practical guide to disability discrimination law. Covering a wide range of issues faced by individuals with different kinds of disabilities, it not only describes those individuals' legal rights but also suggests solutions to disability discrimination issues that are more practical and less expensive than filing a lawsuit. Written by two disability law experts, Ruth Colker, whose son is developmentally disabled, and Adam Milani, who is paralyzed from the chest down, this book is informed by their scholarly expertise but is also based on their collective practical experience from years of navigating issues of disability discrimination. Everyday Law for Individuals with Disabilities is the first in a series of practical guides to the law, organized by series editors Richard Delgado and Jean Stephancic, packed with useful overviews and advice for the people who need it most and can least afford it.