Books about Metropolis from Amazon.com

The greatest humanitarian challenge we face today is that of providing shelter. Currently one in seven people lives in a slum or refugee camp, and more than 3,000,000,000 people--nearly half the world's population--do not have access to clean water or adequate sanitation. The physical design of our homes, neighborhoods and communities shapes every aspect of our lives. Yet too often architects are desperately needed in the places where they can least be afforded.Edited by Architecture for Humanity and now on its third printing, Design Like You Give a Damn is a compendium of innovative projects from around the world that demonstrate the power of design to improve lives. The first book to bring the best of humanitarian architecture and design to the printed page, Design Like You Give a Damn offers a history of the movement toward socially conscious design, and showcases more than 80 contemporary solutions to such urgent needs as basic shelter, healthcare, education and access to clean water, energy and sanitation.Design Like You Give a Damn is an indispensable resource for designers and humanitarian organizations charged with rebuilding after disaster and engaged in the search for sustainable development. It is also a call to action to anyone committed to building a better world. (20061116).
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In this groundbreaking work, a Yale University professor of history gives an environmental perspective on the history of 19th-century America "No one has written about Chicago with more power, clarity, and intelligence than Cronon. Indeed, no one has ever written a better book about a city."--Boston Globe. Photographs and maps..
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The Edible Estates project proposes the replacement of the domestic front lawn with a highly productive edible landscape It was initiated by architect and artist Fritz Haeg on Independence Day, 2005, with the planting of the first regional prototype garden in the geographic center of the United States, Salina, Kansas. Since then three more prototype gardens have been created, in Lakewood, California; Maplewood, New Jersey and London, England. Edible Estates regional prototype gardens will ultimately be established in nine cities across the United States.
Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn documents the first four gardens with personal accounts written by the owners, garden plans and photographs illustrating the creation of the gardens--from ripping up the grass to harvesting a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Essays by Haeg, landscape architect Diana Balmori, garden and food writer Rosalind Creasy, author Michael Pollan and artist and writer Lesley Stern set the Edible Estates project in the context of larger issues concerning the environment, global food production and the imperative to generate a sense of community in our urban and suburban neighborhoods. This smart, affordable and well-designed book also includes reports and photographs from the owners of other edible front yards around the country, as well as helpful resources to guide you in making your own Edible Estate..
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Forgotten New York is your passport to more than 300 years of history, architecture, and memories hidden in plain sight.

Houses dating to the first Dutch settlers on Staten Island; yellow brick roads in Brooklyn; clocks embedded in the sidewalk in Manhattan; bishop's crook lampposts in Queens; and a white elephant in the Bronx—this is New York and this is your guide to seeing it all. Forgotten New York covers all five boroughs with easy-to-use maps and suggested routes to hundreds of out-of-the way places, antiquated monuments, streets to nowhere, and buildings from a time lost.

Forgotten New York features:

• Quiet Places
• Truly Forgotten
• History Happened Here
• What Is This Thing?
• Forgotten People
• And so much more

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Expanding Architecture presents a new generation of creative design carried out in the service of the greater public and the greater good. Questioning how design can improve daily lives, editors Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford map an emerging geography of architectural activism--or "public-interest architecture"--that might function akin to public-interest law or medicine by expanding architecture's all too often elite client base. With 30 essays by practicing architects and designers, urban and community planners, historians, landscape architects, environmental designers and members of other fields, this volume presents recent work from around the world that illustrates the ways in which design can address issues of social justice, allow individuals and communities to plan and improve their own lives and serve a much larger percentage of the population than it has in the past. This new inclusionary practice must define new services and new processes, and these are illuminated in the generously illustrated texts as well.
Building on the momentum of Bell's Good Deeds, Good Design and other recent landmark publications such as Rural Studio and Design Like You Give a Damn, Expanding Architecture examines evolving notions of socially conscious practice and serves as a guide for designers who are willing to take on the social, economic and environmental challenges we face today.
Bryan Bell is the Executive Director of the Raleigh, North Carolina-based Design Corps, which he founded in 1991 to provide community service through architecture. His other initiatives include the Design Corps Fellowship program, the Design Corps Summer Studio and the Structures for Inclusion annual conference. In 2007 he received a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.
Katie Wakeford received her M.Arch from North Carolina State University School of Architecture, where she became interested in community design. She began working with Design Corps in 2002, and currently serves as an intern architect with the North Carolina State College of Design's Home Environments Design Initiative, a research and community outreach endeavor focused on affordable and sustainable housing..
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Regarding issues of urban sprawl Visit Sprawl Net, at Rice University. It's under construction, but it should be an interesting resource. Check out the traffic in the land of commuting. And, finally, enjoy Los Angeles: Revisiting the Four Ecologies..
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