In the highly acclaimed The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler declared suburbia "a tragic landscape" and fueled a fierce debate over how we will live in twenty-first-century America. Here, Kunstler turns his discerning eye to urban life in America and beyond in dazzling excursions to classical Rome, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, Louis-Napoleon's Paris, the "gigantic hairball" that is contemporary Atlanta, the ludicrous spectacle of Las Vegas, and more. Seeking to discover what is constant and enduring in cities at their greatest, Kunstler explores how America got lost in suburban wilderness and locates pathways that might lead to civic revival. His authoritative tour is both a concise history of cities and a stunning critique of how they can aid or hinder social and civil progress. By turns dramatic and comic, The City in Mind is an exceptional glimpse into the urban condition.

"This is a book about cities - how unexpectedly different they were in various countries and times, and cities that never existed, but someone dreamed of them or feared them. The project uses examples from a wide spectrum of different cultures, it researches the existential and universal question of what means to be human - as a child and as an adult - in order to explore the diversity of how people live globally and throughout history"--

The nature and effects of globalization are coming under critical scrutiny across all continents. This book focuses on one aspect, the globalization of cities. It examines the claim that the state is powerless to influence events, and that history, geography, and culture have become irrelevant in the worldwide trend towards a uniform urban model; a model which features increased segregation, decline of the central city, and social polarization. The international team of contributors is well placed to put these claims in perspective. Drawing on their experiences of cities as diverse as New York and Warsaw, Istanbul and Sao Paulo, they demonstrate that states and cities have adopted widely varying approaches to the advent of globalization; and that its impact has been constrained by each city's history, physical layout, location, environment, role in the international economy, and demographic composition. The diversity of urban development and political response revealed is enormous, and provides ample practical examples of what might be done to bring about improvements for the increasing number of people who live in cities.

The history of Jews in cosmopolitan maritime trading centres is a field of research that is reshaping our understanding of how Jews entered the modern world. These studies show that the utility of Jewish merchants in an era of European expansion was vital to their acculturation and assimilation.

A study of the search for shelter and the fear of exposure to strangers and new experience in Western culture--and how these two concerns have shaped the physical fabric of the city. Explores the development of urban society and structure, from the ancient world to the present.