Jason Palmer loved being a soldier. But after returning from Iraq with an "other than honourable" discharge, he's finding rebuilding his life the toughest battle yet. Elena Cruz is a talented cop, the first woman to make Chicago's prestigious Gang Intelligence Unit. She's ready for anything the job can throw at her. Until Jason's brother, a prominent community activist, is murdered in front of his own son. Now, stalked by brutal men with a shadowy agenda, Jason and Elena must unravel a conspiracy stretching from the darkest alleys of the ghetto to the manicured lawns of the city's power brokers. In a world where corruption and violence are simply the cost of doing business, two damaged people are all that stand between an innocent child - and the killers who will stop at nothing to find him.
East Asia is a pivotal region in the advancement of media technologies, globalized consumerism and branding economies. City and urban spaces are now attracting cinematic imaginaries and the academic examination of visual images and urban space in East Asian contexts. Highlighting changing conceptions and blurring boundaries of "where city ends and cinema begins," this collection offers an original contribution to film/media and cultural studies, urban studies, and sociology.-Koichi Iwabucchi, Waseda University The originality of this book on the fragmented cities of Asia lies in the manner in which it pins down the relationship between visual images and urban space. The arguments are eloquent and persuasive, with close readings of critical media texts. Many of the dynamic issues tackled in the book are "on the edge" of film and cultural studies in Asia and should attract a wide readership.-Zhou Xuelin, University of Auckland
This series of essays outlines a number of case studies from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia and provides first hand accounts of the experiences that planners, architects and politicians have had in reshaping cities. These insights provide a pragmatic assessment of the challenges and constraints posed by changing patterns of urban growth in a broad spectrum of urban environments. The reader will discover, through these multiple voices and views, the diverse forms of global cities, and will have a grasp of where the debate on urban design stands today, and where it may be going in the future.
Annotation. This thesis is about urban ideal images. It is about dreams - not fictitious beliefs, but dreams that humankind can realize tomorrow. It is about images from intellectuals, pastry cooks, urban planners and firemen. About people who deeply care about their cities, about their hopes, frustrations, anger and optimism. They describe their ideals in city debates to gain support, and try to eliminate those with different urban ideal images. They grouse, cuddle, quarrel, adore allies and blacken enemies. But are they successful? Do people change their urban ideal images because of these discussions? Does the local planning council change their plans because they conflict with ideals of citizens? The answers can be found in this book. This title can be previewed in Google Books - http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9789056293826.
Award-winning translator Peter Hargitai celebrates 100 years of Attila Jzsef (1905?1937) in this new selection of 100 poems. His previous selection, Perched On Nothing's Branch (1986), enjoyed a remarkable run of five editions and won for him the Academy of American Poets' Landon Translation Award. His translation of Attila Jzsef is listed among the world classics cited by Harold Bloom in The Western Canon. Praise for Peter Hargitai's translation of Attila Jzsef: "These grim, bitter, iron-cold poems emerge technically strong, spare and authentic in English, and they are admirably contemporary in syntax." -MAY SWENSON in Citation for the Academy of American Poets "A rich nuanced translation by Peter Hargitai. These poems are ageless, mirroring the human conditions and focusing in humankind's existential loneliness." -MAXINE KUMIN "I have long thought of Attila Jzsef as one of the great poets of the century, a tragic realist whose work beautifully redeemed the unbearable conditions of the life to which history condemned him. These new translations by Peter Hargitai will be welcomed by Jzsef's admirers and will certainly add to their number." -DONALD JUSTICE "[Other] translations of Jzsef's work are stiff and academic, whereas Peter Hargitai's versions are colloquial and emotionally charged as the originals. Reading them one lapses into the silence that attends the reception of all great poetry." -DAVID KIRBY
For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use—or could use—the spaces where they live and work. In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people. Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl emphasizes four human issues that he sees as essential to successful city planning. He explains how to develop cities that are Lively, Safe, Sustainable, and Healthy. Focusing on these issues leads Gehl to think of even the largest city on a very small scale. For Gehl, the urban landscape must be considered through the five human senses and experienced at the speed of walking rather than at the speed of riding in a car or bus or train. This small-scale view, he argues, is too frequently neglected in contemporary projects. In a final chapter, Gehl makes a plea for city planning on a human scale in the fast- growing cities of developing countries. A “Toolbox,” presenting key principles, overviews of methods, and keyword lists, concludes the book. The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl’s work around the globe.
How the U.S. empire-state transformed post-1945 Afghanistan into a key site for reimagining development Established in 1961 by President Kennedy, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is often viewed as an extension of the security state, playing a constant role on the ground in Afghanistan since the early sixties. The Quiet Violence of Empire traces USAID’s long and bloody history of development work in the region, revealing an empirically rich account of the transnational entanglements of imperialism and racial capitalism. Wesley Attewell carefully analyzes three chronological moments of development as counterinsurgency in action: the Helmand Valley Project, the Soviet–Afghan conflict, and the post-9/11 occupation in Afghanistan. These case studies expose how USAID’s very public commitment to bringing seemingly inclusionary forms of self-help, technical assistance, and market development to Afghanistan has been undergirded by longer-standing infrastructures of race war and racial management. Attewell exposes how one of the net effects of USAID’s development mission to Afghanistan has been to constrain the life chances of Afghan beneficiaries while simultaneously diverting development capital back to U.S. contractors, deftly underscoring the notion of development as a form of slow violence. The Quiet Violence of Empire asks the critical question: how might we refuse the ruse of USAID and its endlessly deferred promise of development? Thinking relationally across the fields of human geography, global studies, and critical ethnic studies, it uncovers the explicitly racial underpinnings of international development theory and praxis.
Dysfunction. Anyone who has sojourned through congregations or denominations would agree that these are not immune to dysfunction. These holy organizations often eschew the standards upheld by secular organizations. It matters not that those “profane” or “worldly” processes accomplish those organizations’ missions and serve humanity well—all within sound ethical boundaries. Consequently, many church organizations deny themselves the best practices of better organized entities. Their leaders think they have nothing to learn from secular leadership theory and practice. They fail to realize that not every leadership or organizational practice portrayed in the Bible is healthy or appropriate for our times. And Lead Us Not Into Dysfunction pursues the conviction that church organizations and their leaders can perform far better than they do. The book explores the causes of anything from mediocrity to dysfunction in church organizations, and outlines several helpful measures that congregations and denominations may embrace to secure organizational and leadership health. This book is a must-have for every pastor, church leader, denominational leader, seminarian, and leadership and organizational dynamics student.
This book contains the proceedings of the sixth conferences on the topic of sustainable regional development organized by the Wessex Institute of Technology. First held in 2003, the conference facilitates communication between all scientists specialising in the wide range of subjects included within sustainable development and planning. These include planners, environmentalists, architects, engineers, policy makers and economists, who all must work together in order to ensure that planning leads to sustainable development that meets present needs without compromising our future.The papers included in the book cover Regional planning; City planning; Sustainability and the built environment; Cultural heritage; Environmental management; Resources management; Social and political issues; Rural developments; Sustainable solutions in developing countries; Transportation; Energy resources; Environmental economics.
Urban policy makers are increasingly striving to strengthen the economic competitiveness of their cities. Currently, they do that mainly in the field of the creative knowledge economy - arts, media, entertainment, creative business services, architecture, publishing, design; and ICT, R&D, finance, and law. This book is about the policies that help to realise such objectives: policies driven by classic location theory, cluster policies, ‘creative class’ policies aimed at attracting talent, as well as policies that connect to pathways, place and personal networks. The experiences and policy strategies of 13 city-regions across Europe have been investigated: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, Budapest, Dublin, Helsinki, Leipzig, Milan, Munich, Poznan, Riga, Sofia and Toulouse. All have different histories and roles: capital cities and secondary cities; cities with different economies and industries; port-based cities and land-locked cities. And all 13 have different cultural, political and welfare state traditions. Through this wide set of contexts, Place-making and Policies for Competitive Citiescontributes to the debate about the development of creative knowledge cities, their economic growth and competitiveness and advocates the development of context-sensitive tailored approaches. Chapter authors from the 13 European cities rigorously evaluate, reformulate and test assumptions behind old and new policies. This solidly-grounded and policy-focused study on the urban policy of place-making highlights practices for different contexts in managing knowledge-intensive cities and, by drawing on the varied experiences from across Europe, it establishes the state-of-the-art for both academic and policy debates in a fast-moving field.
