When Hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017, their destructive force further devastated an archipelago already pummeled by economic austerity, political upheaval, and environmental calamities. To navigate these ongoing multiple crises, Afro–Puerto Rican women have drawn from their cultural knowledge to engage in daily improvisations that enable their communities to survive and thrive. Their life-affirming practices, developed and passed down through generations, offer powerful modes of resistance to gendered and racialized exploitation, ecological ruination, and deepening capitalist extraction. Through solidarity, reciprocity, and an ethics of care, these women create restorative alternatives to dispossession to produce good, meaningful lives for their communities. Making Livable Worlds weaves together autobiography, ethnography, interviews, memories, and fieldwork to recast narratives that continuously erase Black Puerto Rican women as agents of social change. In doing so, Lloréns serves as an “ethnographer of home” as she brings to life the powerful histories and testimonies of a marginalized, disavowed community that has been treated as disposable.

Chronicles the demise of public housing and social democratic reform.

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway's reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time.

Questions of how the design of cities can respond to the challenge of climate change dominate the thoughts of urban planners and designers across the U.S. and Canada. With admirable clarity, Patrick Condon responds to these questions. He addresses transportation, housing equity, job distribution, economic development, and ecological systems issues and synthesizes his knowledge and research into a simple-to-understand set of urban design recommendations. No other book so clearly connects the form of our cities to their ecological, economic, and social consequences. No other book takes on this breadth of complex and contentious issues and distills them down to such convincing and practical solutions.

Latina/o/x places exist as both tangible physical phenomena and gatherings created and maintained by creative cultural practices. In this collection, an interdisciplinary group of contributors critically examines the many ways that varied Latina/o/x communities cohere through cultural expression. Authors consider how our embodied experiences of place, together with our histories and knowledge, inform our imagination and reimagination of our surroundings in acts of placemaking. This placemaking often considers environmental sustainability as it helps to sustain communities in the face of xenophobia and racism through cultural expression ranging from festivals to zines to sanctuary movements. It emerges not only in specific locations but as movement within and between sites; not only as part of a built environment, but also as an aesthetic practice; and not only because of efforts by cultural, political, and institutional leaders, but through mass media and countless human interactions. A rare and crucial perspective on Latina/o/x people in the Midwest, Building Sustainable Worlds reveals how expressive culture contributes to, and sustains, a sense of place in an uncertain era.

In Paths to Discovery a group of extraordinary Chicanas trace how their interest in math and science at a young age developed into a passion fed by talent and determination. Today they are teaching at major universities, setting public and institutional policy, and pursuing groundbreaking research. These testimonios--personal stories--will encourage young Chicanas to enter the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering and to create futures in classrooms, boardrooms, and laboratories across the nation.

Discover how to help young people "make it" in a rapidly changing world Author Stephanie Malia Krauss gets it. Every day she works with leaders across the country as they upgrade learning experiences to better equip young people for a changing world. A mother, former teacher and school leader, Stephanie knows firsthand how hard it is to balance school and program requirements with young people's needs. In Making It: What Today's Kids Need for Tomorrow's World, she lays out what adults can do to get young people ready for the future. What you learn may surprise you. With so much changing so fast—accelerated by the impacts of COVID-19—the most in-demand jobs and skills of today may be obsolete by the time our youngest become adults. For kids to be ready for this new reality, they must acquire four critical "currencies" that will serve them well, whatever their future holds: credentials, competencies, connections, and cash. This book focuses on how to prioritize these four key outcomes whenever and wherever learning happens. The author shares research and experience to help you understand and apply a human-centered and future-focused lens directly to your classroom, school, program, or at home. Learn about how the world and workforce is changing, and what that means for the education and preparation young people need Understand how these changes are impacting young people, reshaping their childhoods and transitions into adulthood Glean practical information and ideas you can use to help young people—at every age and stage—to gain readiness "currencies" in the form of credentials, competencies, connections, and cash Challenge your beliefs about what knowledge, experiences and resources are most important for kids to have, and what a college- and career-ready education really requires Discover community-wide strategies that prioritize equity, learning and readiness for the future This book will benefit teachers, counselors, youth workers, parents, school board members, and state education leaders alike. Whether you work in K-12, youth development, or you just want to know how to best support the kids in your life, you will find a timely and useful resource putting young people first and modernizing their learning experiences for the better.

Inspiring and accessible, Toward the Livable City combines firsthand accounts of the attractions -- and distractions -- of urban life to show how to create successful cities. For city dwellers and commuters, urban planners and architects, neighborhood groups and activists, this book outlines specific strategies for change. Fifteen leading thinkers including James Howard Kunstler, Jane Holtz Kay, Tony Hiss, Bill McKibben, and Jay Walljasper explore smart growth, riverfront redevelopment, urban farming, pedestrian rights, traffic, opportunity-based housing, and suburban vs. city living. They tell how the mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, built dedicated busways and closed downtown streets to cars; how urban agriculture in vacant lots and backyards in Boston produces 10,000 pounds of vegetables each season; and how Minneapolis successfully redeveloped its riverfront, among other shining examples. Photographs are featured.

From the internationally bestselling creator of Wreck This Journal, an interactive guide for exploring and documenting the art and science of everyday life. Artists and scientists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways, by observing, collecting, documenting, analyzing, and comparing. In this captivating guided journal, readers are encouraged to explore their world as both artists and scientists. The mission Smith proposes? To document and observe the world around you as if you’ve never seen it before. Take notes. Collect things you find on your travels. Document findings. Notice patterns. Copy. Trace. Focus on one thing at a time. Record what you are drawn to. Through this series of beautifully hand-illustrated interactive prompts, readers will enjoy exploring and discovering the world in ways they never even imagined.

A vital guide to the frontlines of our fight against climate change and the scientific and technological innovations that will revolutionize the world. The United States’ accelerated plans to combat the existential threat of climate change finally give reason to hope. In Our Livable World, research specialist and author Marc Schaus explores the incredible new green innovations in science and engineering that can allow us to avoid the worst repercussions of global warming as we work to usher in a sustainable, livable world. To beat a challenge the size of climate change, our solutions will have to be ambitious: solar thermal cells capable of storing energy long after the sun goes down, “smart highways” designed to charge your vehicle as you drive, indoor vertical farms automated to maximize crop growth with no pesticides, bioluminescent vines ready to one day replace our streetlights, jet fuel created from landfill trash—and next-generation carbon capture techniques to remove the emissions we have already released over the past several decades. Far from the geoengineering schemes of cli-fi action thrillers, real solutions are being developed, right this moment. Our Livable World features interviews with the innovators, real talk on the revolutionary technology, and a clear picture of a cleaner planet in the future. “An important book that shows the dawn of a new kind of environmental movement―an age where we invest in deeply creative and fascinating technical solutions that work in harmony with the Earth. Marc Schaus lays out the exciting future of environmental innovation before us.” —Katie Patrick, author of How to Save the World