Short Walks from Bogotá

Short Walks from Bogotá

Author: Tom Feiling

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2012-08-30

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1846145848

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For decades, Colombia was the 'narcostate'. Now travel to Colombia and South America is on the rise, and it's seen as one of the rising stars of the global economy. Where does the truth lie? Writer and journalist Tom Feiling, author of the acclaimed study of cocaine The Candy Machine, has journeyed throughout Colombia, down roads that were until recently too dangerous to travel, to paint a fresh picture of one of the world's most notorious and least-understood countries. He talks to former guerrilla fighters and their ex-captives; women whose sons were 'disappeared' by paramilitaries; the nomadic tribe who once thought they were the only people on earth and now charge $10 for a photo; the Japanese 'emerald cowboy' who made a fortune from mining; and revels in the stories that countless ordinary Colombians tell. How did a land likened to paradise by the first conquistadores become a byword for hell on earth? Why is one of the world's most unequal nations also one of its happiest? How is it rebuilding itself after decades of violence, and how successful has the process been so far? Vital, shocking, often funny and never simplistic, Short Walks from Bogota unpicks the tangled fabric of Colombia, to create a stunning work of reportage, history and travel writing.


Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Author: Charles Montgomery

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1429969539

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A globe-trotting, eye-opening exploration of how cities can—and do—make us happier people Charles Montgomery's Happy City will revolutionize the way we think about urban life. After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and tower dwelling an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl? The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, and during an exhilarating journey through some of the world's most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a "sexy" lipstick-red bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris's urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have transformed their lives by hacking the design of their streets and neighborhoods. Full of rich historical detail and new insights from psychologists and Montgomery's own urban experiments, Happy City is an essential tool for understanding and improving our own communities. The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting our cities for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city, the green city, and the low-carbon city are the same place, and we can all help build it.


Urban Socio-Economic Segregation and Income Inequality

Urban Socio-Economic Segregation and Income Inequality

Author: Maarten van Ham

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-03-29

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 303064569X

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This open access book investigates the link between income inequality and socio-economic residential segregation in 24 large urban regions in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. It offers a unique global overview of segregation trends based on case studies by local author teams. The book shows important global trends in segregation, and proposes a Global Segregation Thesis. Rising inequalities lead to rising levels of socio-economic segregation almost everywhere in the world. Levels of inequality and segregation are higher in cities in lower income countries, but the growth in inequality and segregation is faster in cities in high-income countries. This is causing convergence of segregation trends. Professionalisation of the workforce is leading to changing residential patterns. High-income workers are moving to city centres or to attractive coastal areas and gated communities, while poverty is increasingly suburbanising. As a result, the urban geography of inequality changes faster and is more pronounced than changes in segregation levels. Rising levels of inequality and segregation pose huge challenges for the future social sustainability of cities, as cities are no longer places of opportunities for all.


The Globalizing Cities Reader

The Globalizing Cities Reader

Author: Xuefei Ren

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-12

Total Pages: 848

ISBN-13: 1317410467

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The newly revised Globalizing Cities Reader reflects how the geographies of theory have recently shifted away from the western vantage points from which much of the classic work in this field was developed. The expanded volume continues to make available many of the original and foundational works that underpin the research field, while expanding coverage to familiarize students with new theoretical and epistemological positions as well as emerging research foci and horizons. It contains 38 new chapters, including key writings on globalizing cities from leading thinkers such as John Friedmann, Michael Peter Smith, Saskia Sassen, Peter Taylor, Manuel Castells, Anthony King, Jennifer Robinson, Ananya Roy, and Fulong Wu. The new Reader reflects the fact that world and global city studies have evolved in exciting and wide-ranging ways, and the very notion of a distinct "global" class of cities has recently been called into question. The sections examine the foundations of the field and processes of urban restructuring and global city formation. A large number of new entries focus on the emerging urban worlds of Asia, Latin America and Africa, including Beijing, Bogota, Cairo, Cape Town, Delhi, Istanbul, Medellin, Mumbai, Phnom Penh, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai. The book also presents cases off the conventional map of global cities research, such as smaller cities and less known urban regions that are undergoing processes of globalization. The book is a key resource for students and scholars alike who seek an accessible compendium of the intellectual foundations of global urban studies as well as an overview of the emergent patterns of early 21st century urbanization and associated sociopolitical contestation around the world.


Bogotá

Bogotá

Author: Alan Grostephan

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2013-06-30

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0810152304

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In Bogotá, a taut, moving novel set in present-day Colombia, Wilfredo decides to uproot his family from their small town, where his ferry service on the river subjects him to the gruesome errands demanded by the local paramilitary. Moving in with relatives in a slum in Bogotá, the family tries desperately to achieve the smallest measure of comfort and hope in a world of almost total ruin, wracked by deprivation, fear, and ceaseless violence. Alan Grostephan depicts with startling immediacy an urban landscape of extreme harshness and oppressive instability. The tension between the desperate conditions surrounding his characters and their efforts to hold on to their humanity gives Bogotá a ferocious energy. As Wilfredo and his family fight to stay alive and stay together, their plight emerges as equally enraging and uplifting, constituting a portrait of a society always on the verge of disintegration.


Dog Days Bogotá

Dog Days Bogotá

Author: Alec Soth

Publisher: Steidl

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13:

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After completing the shooting of Sleeping by the Mississippi in 2002, Alec Soth traveled to Bogot�, Colombia to adopt a baby girl. While the courts processed paperwork, he and his wife spent two months in the capital city waiting to take their new baby home. "The baby's birth mother gave the new parents a book filled with letters, pictures and poems. I hope that the hardness of the world will not hurt your sensitivity," she wrote, "When I think about you I hope that your life is full of beautiful things." With these words as a mission statement, Soth began making his own book for his daughter. Soth writes, "In photographing the city of her birth, I hope I've described some of the beauty in this hard place." Beauty makes itself known through ramshackle architecture, the companionship of animals, and the perseverance of the human spirit. Yet, in Dog Days, Bogot�, Soth's photographs transcend the simple description of beauty and poetically roam through a cast of strays, tough souls, and hints of hope. Alec Soth, born in 1969, is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the recipient of several major fellowships from the McKnight and Jerome Foundations and was awarded the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography. His work is represented in major public and private collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Soth's photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney and S�o Paulo Biennials. His monographs Sleeping by the Mississippi and NIAGARA were published by Steidl. Soth is an associate photographer with Magnum Photos


A Reference Guide to Latin American History

A Reference Guide to Latin American History

Author: James D. Henderson

Publisher: M.E. Sharpe

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 626

ISBN-13: 1563247445

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A guide to Latin American history includes a chronology of key events from pre-Columbian history through the present, a thematic survey following each topic (economic change, cultural development, politics and government) across time, and 300 biographies of Latin Americans throughout history.


The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda

The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda

Author: United Nations Human Settlements Programme

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780815379294

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The purpose of The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda is to start a discussion that both challenges this status quo and opens up new lines of enquiry. It intentionally does not propose a manifesto made up of simplistic slogans and recommendations as cities in the 21st century are more fragile and complex. Its content, therefore, is intentionally broad, ranging from architecture, planning and urban design, to land ownership and regulation, water management and environmental philosophy. This multifaceted assembly of perspectives critiques the tenets of the Charter of Athens, identify new trends and propose new insights on contemporary urbanization.


The Assassination of Gaitán

The Assassination of Gaitán

Author: Herbert Braun

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13:

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Drawn in part from personal interviews with participants and witnesses, Herbert Braun’s analysis of the riot’s roots, its patterns and consequences, provides a dramatic account of this historic turning point and an illuminating look at the making of modern Colombia. Braun’s narrative begins in the year 1930 in Bogotá, Colombia, when a generation of Liberals and Conservatives came to power convinced they could kept he peace by being distant, dispassionate, and rational. One of these politicians, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, was different. Seeking to bring about a society of merit, mass participation, and individualism, he exposed the private interests of the reigning politicians and engendered a passionate relationship with his followers. His assassination called forth urban crowds that sought to destroy every visible evidence of public authority of a society they felt no longer had the moral right to exist. This is a book about behavior in public: how the actors—the political elite, Gaitán, and the crowds—explained and conducted themselves in public, what they said and felt, and what they sought to preserve or destroy, is the evidence on which Braun draws to explain the conflicts contained in Colombian history. The author demonstrates that the political culture that was emerging through these tensions offered the hope of a peaceful transition to a more open, participatory, and democratic society. “Most Colombians regard Jorge Eliécer Gaitán as a pivotal figure in their nation’s history, whose assassination on April 9, 1948 irrevocably changed the course of events in the twentieth century. . . . As biography, social history, and political analysis, Braun’s book is a tour de force.”—Jane M. Rausch, Hispanic American Historical Review


Learning from Bogotá

Learning from Bogotá

Author: Rachel Berney

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2017-01-17

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1477311068

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Once known as a “drug capital” and associated with kidnappings, violence, and excess, Bogotá, Colombia, has undergone a transformation that some have termed “the miracle of Bogotá.” Beginning in the late 1980s, the city emerged from a long period of political and social instability to become an unexpected model of urban development through the redesign and revitalization of the public realm—parks, transportation, and derelict spaces—under the leadership of two “public space mayors,” Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa (the latter reelected in 2015). In Learning from Bogotá, Rachel Berney analyzes how these mayors worked to reconfigure the troubled city into a pedagogical one whose public spaces and urban policy have helped shape a more tolerant and aware citizenry. Berney examines the contributions of Mockus and Peñalosa through the lenses of both spatial/urban design and the city’s history. She shows how, through the careful intertwining of new public space and transportation projects, the reclamation of privatized public space, and the refurbishment of dilapidated open spaces, the mayors enacted an ambitious urban vision for Bogotá without resorting to the failed method of the top-down city master plan. Illuminating the complex interplay between formal politics, urban planning, and improvised social strategies, as well as the negative consequences that accompanied Bogotá’s metamorphosis, Learning from Bogotá offers significant lessons about the possibility for positive and lasting change in cities around the world.