Nishiyama Uzō, educated as an architect between 1930 and 1933, was a key figure in Japanese urban planning. He was a prolific writer who influenced a whole generation of Japanese urban planners and his interpretations of foreign planning and local practice still influence Japanese planning theory and practice today. Nishiyama’s first publications date to the 1930s, and his last ones appeared in the 1990s, spanning a period of enormous political and spatial changes. The three articles translated here, originally published in the 1940s in professional magazines, show how Nishiyama developed his theoretical models based on a social approach to architecture and planning, focusing on land use and land control rather than aesthetic preferences. They provide insight into Nishiyama’s early thinking, his analysis of foreign examples, his reflection on large-scale regional and national spatial organization, and his architectural and urban visions, providing a remarkable and fascinating insight into the state of planning in Japan. These texts call scholarly attention to the writing of a global planning history and invite the reader to engage with a major figure in planning who is largely unknown outside Japan; to reconsider Japanese planning history; and to work towards a truly global planning history. How does Nishiyama compare to the great urban planners of the past in the West, such as Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, or Werner Hegemann? Many more translations will be necessary to answer this question.

Reflections is a theological guide for today's Christians seeking a fuller appreciation of religious faith than is represented in populist religion. The seven categories and their chapters are designed to provide the reader with an intensive study on neglected, but imperative concepts for faith. Subjects of vital importance to both theology and humanity are explored with a flowing continuity of understanding God and the world. Reflections begins with the concept of revelation and its relation to monotheism and conviction. The chapters that follow are titled "Religion Is," "Christianity Is," and "Intelligent Spirituality"; these set the foundation for the rest of the book. The sense of moderns is that they are immune to the primitive concept of idolatry. Under the category of "Perennial Idols," Garner dismantles the idolatry that plagues humanity in every generation. Reality and its creation is a category of theological thought that is essential for Christian development and sorrowfully neglected in church education. The other categories are "Sex and Romantic Love," "Popular Myths," "Being Human / Being Poor," and "Forgiveness." Garner's conviction is that the root of humanity's dysfunction is our failure to learn how to live together as male and female.

Reflections on Architecture, Society and Politics brings together a series of thirteen interview-articles by Graham Cairns in collaboration with some of the most prominent polemic thinkers and critical practitioners from the fields of architecture and the social sciences, including Noam Chomsky, Peggy Deamer, Robert A.M. Stern, Daniel Libeskind and Kenneth Frampton. Each chapter explores the relationship between architecture and socio-political issues through discussion of architectural theories and projects, citing specific issues and themes that have led to, and will shape, the various aspects of the current and future built environment. Ranging from Chomsky’s examination of the US–Mexico border as the architecture of oppression to Robert A.M. Stern’s defence of projects for the Disney corporation and George W. Bush, this book places politics at the center of issues within contemporary architecture.

Reducing residential segregation is the best way to reduce racial inequality in the United States. African American employment rates, earnings, test scores, even longevity all improve sharply as residential integration increases. Yet far too many participants in our policy and political conversations have come to believe that the battle to integrate America’s cities cannot be won. Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff write that the pessimism surrounding desegregation in housing arises from an inadequate understanding of how segregation has evolved and how policy interventions have already set many metropolitan areas on the path to integration. Scholars have debated for decades whether America’s fair housing laws are effective. Moving toward Integration provides the most definitive account to date of how those laws were shaped and implemented and why they had a much larger impact in some parts of the country than others. It uses fresh evidence and better analytic tools to show when factors like exclusionary zoning and income differences between blacks and whites pose substantial obstacles to broad integration, and when they do not. Through its interdisciplinary approach and use of rich new data sources, Moving toward Integration offers the first comprehensive analysis of American housing segregation. It explains why racial segregation has been resilient even in an increasingly diverse and tolerant society, and it demonstrates how public policy can align with demographic trends to achieve broad housing integration within a generation.