Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. BROKEN METROPOLIS: QUEER TALES OF CITY THAT NEVER WAS (edited by dave ring) explores the edges of urban fantasy through queer narratives in the tradition of Swords of the Rainbow (Alyson Publications, 1996) and Bending the Landscape (Overlook Books, 1997). This collection contains ten of those edges, each one bright and gleaming, from Claire Rudy Foster's story of a scientist learning to accept not only herself but the very real impact of astrology on her love life, to Caspian Gray's tale of a young man looking for an urban legend in the halls of a hospital ward so that he can save the matriarch of his found family. Queer communities hold multitudes, and fantasy writing is a place to explore the magic of possibility. Come explore some of those possibilities in a city that never was.

Metropolis and Experience: Defoe, Dickens, Joyce offers a close reading of the major texts of Defoe, Dickens, and Joyce, in their respective historical contexts and in comparison with their intertextual companions, from seventeenth-century “character” pamphlets through Baudelaire to Calvino. In doing so, it challenges the quietist complacency of specialization prevalent in current academia to contribute to a critique of urban modernity in the tradition of Simmel, Benjamin, and Lefebvre. Taking its cue from Benjamin’s bisection of “experience” into subjective sensory Erlebnis and communal reflective Erfahrung, Metropolis and Experience uses this binary pair as a categorical guide in its analysis of the stylistic and thematic adventures of the three centerpiece authors. Whereas Defoe’s novels embody a Simmelian metropolitan mentality through its narration of lived experience in paratactic prose, Dickens strives to humanize the sprawling Victorian metropolis into an experience for communal sharing. In Joyce’s works, the colonial dejections and belatedness of the Hibernian metropolis are transformed into an exuberant excess where both Erlebnis and Erfahrung meet their joyous end. This investigation of the interconnections between the metropolis, experience, and the novel takes place in tandem with a sustained query on non-literary subtopics such as finance capitalism and urban class antagonism. This is literary criticism charged with relevance for the age of “Occupy Wall Street.”

In a captivating tour of cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious, millennia-spanning story how urban living sparked humankind's greatest innovations. “A towering achievement.... Reading this book is like visiting an exhilarating city for the first time—dazzling.” —The Wall Street Journal During the two hundred millennia of humanity’s existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. From their very beginnings, cities created such a flourishing of human endeavor—new professions, new forms of art, worship and trade—that they kick-started civilization. Guiding us through the centuries, Wilson reveals the innovations nurtured by the inimitable energy of human beings together: civics in the agora of Athens, global trade in ninth-century Baghdad, finance in the coffeehouses of London, domestic comforts in the heart of Amsterdam, peacocking in Belle Époque Paris. In the modern age, the skyscrapers of New York City inspired utopian visions of community design, while the trees of twenty-first-century Seattle and Shanghai point to a sustainable future in the age of climate change. Page-turning, irresistible, and rich with engrossing detail, Metropolis is a brilliant demonstration that the story of human civilization is the story of cities.

Until now, much research in the field of urban planning and change has focused on the economic, political, social, cultural and spatial transformations of global cities and larger metropolitan areas. In this topical new volume, David Bell and Mark Jayne redress this balance, focusing on urban change within small cities around the world. Drawing together research from a strong international team of contributors, this four part book is the first systematic overview of small cities. A comprehensive and integrated primer with coverage of all key topics, it takes a multi-disciplinary approach to an important contemporary urban phenomenon. The book addresses: political and economic decision making urban economic development and competitive advantage cultural infrastructure and planning in the regeneration of small cities identities, lifestyles and ways in which different groups interact in small cities. Centering on urban change as opposed to pure ethnographic description, the book’s focus on informed empirical research raises many important issues. Its blend of conceptual chapters and theoretically directed case studies provides an excellent resource for a broad spectrum of undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as providing a rich resource for academics and researchers.

Andreas Huyssen explores the history and theory of metropolitan miniatures—short prose pieces about urban life written for European newspapers. His fine-grained readings open vistas into German critical theory and the visual arts, revealing the miniature to be one of the few genuinely innovative modes of spatialized writing created by modernism.

A proven approach for addressing explosive metropolitan growth in an integrated and holistic manner “The book provides a basis for the contemplation of the old network paradigm of the megalopolis into the informational meshwork of the mega- or metacity of the future. The handbook’s review of the networked past is invaluable, while its projection of these networks into future plans raises very many important questions for planners, urban designers, architects, and concerned citizens alike.” –From the Foreword by Professor Grahame Shane, Columbia University For the first time, half the global population is living in urban areas—and that number is growing exponentially. Written by noted urban planner Pedro Ortiz, who served as director of the groundbreaking Madrid Metropolitan-Regional Plan, The Art of Shaping the Metropolis presents an innovative, agile solution for managing urban growth that enhances economic activity, environmental stability, and quality of life. Based on the findings from Madrid and other cities, this timely guide offers a methodical system for addressing the crucial issues facing governments, professionals, the private and public sectors, developers, stakeholders, and inhabitants of twenty-first-century metropolises. The book details new rubrics to identify the process of growth and its evolution, new tools to monitor and gauge them, and new methods to synthesize them into a professional praxis that will be sustainable for the long term. Ortiz demonstrates how metropolises can be organized for a future that preserves the historic nucleus of the city and the environment, while providing for the necessary sustainable expansion of transportation, housing, and social and productive facilities. Coverage includes: The dialogues of the metropolis The challenge The inheritance Balanced urban development—fabric and form The chess on a tripod (CiTi) method to build the model Madrid as testing ground Practical considerations in implementing a metropolitan plan Translating the model elsewhere

Repairing the American Metropolis is based on Douglas Kelbaugh’s Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design, first published in 1997. It is more timely and significant than ever, with new text, charts, and images on architecture, sprawl, and New Urbanism, a movement that he helped pioneer. Theory and policies have been revised, refined, updated, and developed as compelling ways to plan and design the built environment. This is an indispensable book for architects, urban designers and planners, landscape architects, architecture and urban planning students and scholars, government officials, developers, environmentalists, and citizens interested in understanding and shaping the American metropolis.