“The latest fashion among young city-dwellers, providing a new advertising niche for manufacturers of luxury products, is the good old family picnic.”—Le Monde “An upper-class English ritual traditionally confined to rural French life, the picnic has been rebranded.”—The Economist “The great charm of this social device is undoubtedly the freedom it affords. . . . To eat cold chicken and drink iced claret under trees, amid the grass and the flowers.”—Appleton’s Journal of Literature, Science, and Art, 1869 Urban picnics are a hot foodie trend right now; from The Economist to Le Monde, food journalists and lovers the world around are jumping on the blanket. Like so many of us, they want to put their hectic city lives on hold and enjoy themselves—without having to head off into the hinterland. The Urban Picnic is designed for modern gourmands and kitchen newcomers alike to inspire them to introduce a little pleasure and picnickery into their lives. With an irreverent and highly opinionated history of the picnic, strange accounts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, original illustrations and over 200 recipes—many contributed from renowned chefs such as Nigella Lawson, Mark Bittman, Regan Daley and Bob Blumer—it’s the essential how-to (and how-not-to) for anyone who was ever looking for a tasty little morsel to eat under that tree that grows in Brooklyn. Two-color throughout. Recipes include: Barbecued Lemon Chicken (Anne Lindsay) Banana-Strawberry Layer Cake (Regan Daley) Mint Julep Peaches (Nigella Lawson) Chicken Liver Crostini (Umberto Menghi) Ahi Tuna Salad with Green Papaya (Rob Feenie)

Urban picnics are a hot foodie trend right now; from The Economist to Le Monde, food journalists and lovers the world around are jumping on the blanket. Like so many of us, they want to put their hectic city lives on hold and enjoy themselves - without having to head off into the hinterland. The Urban Picnic, whimsically subtitled Being an Idiosyncratic and Lyrically Recollected Account of Menus, Recipes, History, Trivia, and Admonitions on the Subject of Alfresco Dining in Cities Both Large and Small, is designed for modern gourmands and kitchen newcomers alike, to inspire them to introduce a little pleasure and picnickery into their lives. With an irreverent and highly opinionated history of the picnic, strange accounts from the 19th and 20th centuries, original illustrations, and over 200 recipes - many contributed from renowned chefs such as Nigella Lawson, Nadine Abensur, and Mark Bittman - it's the essential how-to (and how-not-to) for anyone who was ever looking for a tasty little morsel to eat under that tree that grows in Brooklyn. Two-colour throughout. Includes more than 100 illustrations. Recipes include:Barbecued Lemon Chicken (Anne Lindsay), Banana-Strawberry Layer Cake (Regan Daley), Mint Julep Peaches (Nigella Lawson), Chicken Liver Crostini (Umberto Menghi), and Ahi Tuna Salad with Green Papaya (Rob Feenie).

For years American urban parks fell into decay due to disinvestment, but as cities began to rebound—and evidence of the economic, cultural, and health benefits of parks grew— investment in urban parks swelled. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently cited meeting the growing demand for parks and open space as one of the biggest challenges for urban leaders today. It is now widely agreed that the U.S. needs an ambitious and creative plan to increase urban parklands. Urban Green explores new and innovative ways for “built out” cities to add much-needed parks. Peter Harnik first explores the question of why urban parkland is needed and then looks at ways to determine how much is possible and where park investment should go. When presenting the ideas and examples for parkland, he also recommends political practices that help create parks. The book offers many practical solutions, from reusing the land under defunct factories to sharing schoolyards, from building trails on abandoned tracks to planting community gardens, from decking parks over highways to allowing more activities in cemeteries, from eliminating parking lots to uncovering buried streams, and more. No strategy alone is perfect, and each has its own set of realities. But collectively they suggest a path toward making modern cities more beautiful, more sociable, more fun, more ecologically sound, and more successful.

Picnics are happy occasions and have always been a diversion from every day cares. We think of the picnic as an outdoor meal, set on a blanket, usually in the middle of the day, featuring a hamper filled with tasty morsels and perhaps a bottle of wine, but historically picnics came in many forms, served any time of the day. This first culinary history reveals rustic outdoor dining in its more familiar and unusual forms, the history of the word itself, the cultural context of picnics and who arranged them, and, most important, the gastronomic appeal. Drawing on various media and literature, painting, music, and even sculpture, Walter Levy provides an engaging and enlightening history of the picnic.

Change-Transformation And Critique of Urban Spaces Urban Spaces: Typology, Media, Art and New Perspectives

Change-Transformation And Critique of Urban Spaces Urban Spaces: Policies and Identity

Journey to the edges of the Great Lakes in this engaging history of picnicking, wilderness, and foodways. This stunning venture into the American picnic explores how innovation, exploitation, and the changing wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula have shaped the experience of eating outdoors. From a photo of her grandmother picnicking in 1911, to the outdoor lunches of miners and loggers, to the picnics of vacationing celebrities like Henry Ford and Ernest Hemingway, author Candice Goucher opens an aperture into historic memories of picnics past to consider what the picnic sparks in our senses and to bring the borderlands of humans and nature into view. Through pictures, postcards, paintings, and recipes, Goucher traces the creation of a modern notion of wilderness as it emerged in the North American imagination and popular culture to navigate an entangled environmental and culinary history of the Upper Peninsula. Drawing on themes from Indigenous knowledge and the African American experience to labor activism and women's history, this tantalizing chronicle offers a taste of Americana, seasoned by the changing global forces of industrialization, transportation, immigration, tourism, war, and climate.