An Unnatural Metropolis

An Unnatural Metropolis
Title An Unnatural Metropolis PDF eBook
Author Craig E. Colten
Publisher LSU Press
Pages 369
Release 2006-09-01
Genre Science
ISBN 0807147826

Download An Unnatural Metropolis Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city." How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis. Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000 and demonstrates that, though all cities must contend with their physical settings, New Orleans may be the city most dependent on human-induced transformations of its precarious site. In a new preface, Colten shows how Hurricane Katrina exemplifies the inability of human artifice to exclude nature from cities and he urges city planners to keep the environment in mind as they contemplate New Orleans's future. Urban geographers frequently have portrayed cities as the antithesis of nature, but in An Unnatural Metropolis, Colten introduces a critical environmental perspective to the history of urban areas. His amply illustrated work offers an in-depth look at a city and society uniquely shaped by the natural forces it has sought to harness.

An Unnatural Metropolis

An Unnatural Metropolis
Title An Unnatural Metropolis PDF eBook
Author Craig E. Colten
Publisher LSU Press
Pages 272
Release 2006-09
Genre History
ISBN 0807147818

Download An Unnatural Metropolis Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city." How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis. Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000 and demonstrates that, though all cities must contend with their physical settings, New Orleans may be the city most dependent on human-induced transformations of its precarious site. In a new preface, Colten shows how Hurricane Katrina exemplifies the inability of human artifice to exclude nature from cities and he urges city planners to keep the environment in mind as they contemplate New Orleans's future. Urban geographers frequently have portrayed cities as the antithesis of nature, but in An Unnatural Metropolis, Colten introduces a critical environmental perspective to the history of urban areas. His amply illustrated work offers an in-depth look at a city and society uniquely shaped by the natural forces it has sought to harness.

Citizens Without a City

Citizens Without a City
Title Citizens Without a City PDF eBook
Author Jan-Jonathan Bock
Publisher Indiana University Press
Pages 274
Release 2022-02
Genre History
ISBN 0253058872

Download Citizens Without a City Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In 2009, after seismic tremors struck the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, survivors were subjected to a "second earthquake"—invasive media attention and a relief effort that left them in a state of suspended citizenship as they were forcibly resettled and had to envision a new future. In Citizens without a City, Jan-Jonathan Bock reveals how a disproportionate government response exacerbated survivors' sense of crisis, divided the local population, and induced new types of political action. Italy's disenfranchising emergency reaction relocated citizens to camps and sites across a ruined townscape, without a plan for restoration or return. Through grassroots politics, arts and culture, commemoration rituals, architectural projects, and legal avenues, local people now sought to shape their hometown's recovery. Bock combines an analysis of the catastrophe's impact with insights into post-disaster civic life, urban heritage, the politics of mourning, and community fragmentation. A fascinating read for anyone interested in urban culture, disaster, and politics, Citizens without a City illustrates how survivors battled to retain a sense of purpose and community after the L'Aquila earthquake.

Crisis Cities

Crisis Cities
Title Crisis Cities PDF eBook
Author Kevin Fox Gotham
Publisher Oxford University Press, USA
Pages 353
Release 2014
Genre Political Science
ISBN 0199752214

Download Crisis Cities Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Gotham and Greenberg contend that New York and New Orleans have emerged as paradigmatic crisis cities, representing a free-market approach to post-disaster redevelopment that is increasingly dominant for crisis-stricken cities around the world. Crisis Cities questions the widespread narrative of resilience and reveals the uneven and contradictory effects of redevelopment activities in the two cities.

The Multivillage-Metropolis Baton Rouge

The Multivillage-Metropolis Baton Rouge
Title The Multivillage-Metropolis Baton Rouge PDF eBook
Author Olaf Kühne
Publisher Springer Nature
Pages 304
Release 2021-01-24
Genre Social Science
ISBN 3658307161

Download The Multivillage-Metropolis Baton Rouge Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The capital of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, has been the scene of fundamental changes in recent decades. In the context of the tripole of petrochemistry, Louisiana State University (LSU) and public administration (especially of the state of Louisiana), which has been fully developed since the end of the 1920s, general processes (such as the transition from modern to post-modern spatial development) mix with specific local and regional characteristics and logics, also in dealing with spaces (such as the eccentric location of the downtown area, the limited influence of spatial planning). The result is a social-spatial formation of a 'multivillage metropolis'. The investigation of this 'multivillage metropolis' follows a neopragmatic approach that triangulates different theories, methods, data and researcher perspectives. Videos per App: Laden Sie die Springer Nature More Media kostenlos herunter - Abbildungen im Buch per App mit Handy oder Tablet scannen, um Videos zu streamen.

Building Louisiana

Building Louisiana
Title Building Louisiana PDF eBook
Author Robert D. Leighninger Jr.
Publisher Univ. Press of Mississippi
Pages 329
Release 2009-09-18
Genre Architecture
ISBN 1604731540

Download Building Louisiana Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Robert D. Leighninger Jr. believes there may be a model for municipal building projects everywhere in the ambitious and artful structures erected in Louisiana by the Public Works Administration. In the 1930s, the PWA built a tremendous amount of infrastructure in a very short time. Most of the edifices are still in use, yet few people recognize how these schools, courthouses, and other great structures came about. Building Louisiana documents the projects one New Deal agency erected in one southern state and places these in social and political context. Based on extensive research in the National Archives and substantial field work within the state, Leighninger has gathered the story of the establishment of the PWA and the feverish building activity that ensued. He also recounts early tussles with Huey Long and the scandals involving public works discovered during the late New Deal. The book includes looks at individual projects of particular interest—“Big Charity” hospital, the Carville leprosy center, the Shreveport incinerator, and the LSU sugar plant. A concluding chapter draws lessons from the PWA's history that might be applied to current political concerns. Also included is an annotated inventory of every PWA project in the state. Finally, this composite picture honors those workers and policymakers who, in a time of despair, expressed hope for the future with this enduring investment.

Walking to New Orleans

Walking to New Orleans
Title Walking to New Orleans PDF eBook
Author Robert R. N. Ross
Publisher Wipf and Stock Publishers
Pages 597
Release 2008-09-22
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 1630872121

Download Walking to New Orleans Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Two and a half years after the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, New Orleans and south Louisiana continue to struggle in an unsettled gumbo of environmental, social, and rebuilding chaos. Citizens await the fruition of four successive recovery and reconstruction planning processes and the realization of essential infrastructure repairs. Repopulation in Orleans Parish has slowed considerably; the parish remains at best two-thirds of its former size; thousands of former residents who wish to return face barriers of many kinds. Heroic efforts at rebuilding have occurred through the efforts of individual neighborhood associations and voluntary associations who have attempted to address serious losses in affordable housing and health care services. Walking to New Orleans traces how a dominant but paradoxical model of the relation between the human and natural worlds in Western culture has informed many environmental and engineering dilemmas and has contributed to the history of social inequities and injustice that anteceded the disasters of the hurricanes and subsequent flooding. It proposes a model for collaborative recovery that links principles of ethics and engineering, in which citizens become active, ongoing participants in the process of the reconstruction and redesign of their unique locus of habitation. Equally important, it gives voice to the citizens and associations who are desperately working to rebuild their homes and lives both in urban New Orleans and in the villages of coastal Louisiana.