"This book explores two centuries of suburban growth as integral to global urbanism. It argues that the future of an urbanizing world will be a suburban world and presents suburbs as places that are interesting and viable on their own terms rather than simply poor cousins of big cities. Examples come from every peopled continent, offering glimpses of suburbs from London to Lima, Sao Paolo to Singapore, Cairo to Chicago, and Dublin to Delhi. The approach is both historical and thematic. The book first traces the history of suburban development in England and North America to 1940 and then examines three different trajectories of suburbanization in more recent decades. The United States and other nations drawing on British planning traditions have built low density suburbia characterized by owner-occupied housing, dependence on automobiles, planned new towns, and a legacy of racial residential segregations. High-rise housing built by national governments dominated suburban rings in Eastern Europe and parts of Western Europe and East Asia. Where neither government nor private market has been able to meet demand, residents have acted themselves to create informal communities with self-built housing on cheap peripheral land, sometimes misleadingly called shantytowns. After this world tour, a chapter explores suburban rings as places of work, from early dispersed manufacturing and industrial suburbs to research and development suburbs in developed economies about the world. Another thematic chapter examines the negative and even dystopian reputation of suburbs and sprawl in literature, popular media, and science fiction"--

City planning is a practice and a profession. It is also a set of goals and--sometimes utopian--aspirations. Formal thought about the shaping of cities as physical spaces and social environments calls on the same range of disciplines and approaches that we use for understanding cities themselves, from art and literature through the social and natural sciences. Surrounding the core profession of city planning, also known as urban or town planning, are related fields of architecture, landscape design, engineering, geography, political science and policy, sociology, and social work. In addition, the legions of community and environmental activists influence debates and controversies within the field. This Very Short Introduction is organized around eight key aspects of city planning: street layout; congestion and decentralization; the response to suburbanization; the conservation and regeneration of older districts; cities as natural systems; cities and regions; social class and ethnicity; and disasters and resilience. The underlying assumption throughout is that decisions that we make today about cities and metropolitan regions are best understood as the continuation of past efforts to solve fundamental problems that have shifted and evolved over multiple generations. At its best, city planning utilizes technical tools to achieve goals set by community action and political debate. Carl Abbott's addition to Oxford's long-running Very Short Introduction series is a brief but concentrated look at past decisions about the management of urban growth and their effects on the creation of the twenty-first century city. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

In this introduction, Kenneth Minogue discusses the development of politics from the ancient world to the twentieth century. He considers the evolution of different systems, ideological aspects and the future of political science.

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. He treats communities in every section of the U.S. and compares American residential patterns with those of Japan and Europe. In conclusion, Jackson offers a controversial prediction: that the future of residential deconcentration will be very different from its past in both the U.S. and Europe.

"This book explores two centuries of suburban growth as integral to global urbanism. It argues that the future of an urbanizing world will be a suburban world and presents suburbs as places that are interesting and viable on their own terms rather than simply poor cousins of big cities. Examples come from every peopled continent, offering glimpses of suburbs from London to Lima, Sao Paolo to Singapore, Cairo to Chicago, and Dublin to Delhi. The approach is both historical and thematic. The book first traces the history of suburban development in England and North America to 1940 and then examines three different trajectories of suburbanization in more recent decades. The United States and other nations drawing on British planning traditions have built low density suburbia characterized by owner-occupied housing, dependence on automobiles, planned new towns, and a legacy of racial residential segregations. High-rise housing built by national governments dominated suburban rings in Eastern Europe and parts of Western Europe and East Asia. Where neither government nor private market has been able to meet demand, residents have acted themselves to create informal communities with self-built housing on cheap peripheral land, sometimes misleadingly called shantytowns. After this world tour, a chapter explores suburban rings as places of work, from early dispersed manufacturing and industrial suburbs to research and development suburbs in developed economies about the world. Another thematic chapter examines the negative and even dystopian reputation of suburbs and sprawl in literature, popular media, and science fiction"--

The aim of this volume is to explain the differences between research-level mathematics and the maths taught at school. Most differences are philosophical and the first few chapters are about general aspects of mathematical thought.

In this Very Short Introduction, Kenneth Morgan provides a wide-ranging and thematic introduction to modern Australia; examining the main features of its history, geography, and culture and drawing attention to the distinctive features of Australian life and its indigenous population and culture.

Thoughts and feelings about home traditionally provided people of all cultures with a firm sense of where they belonged, and why. But with the world rapidly changing, many of our basic notions are becoming problematic. Both internationally and within countries, populations are constantly on the move, seeking better opportunities and living conditions, or an escape from violence and war. In spite of, or perhaps even because of these trends, ideas about home continue to shape the way people everywhere frame an understanding of their lives. In this Very Short Introduction Michael Allen Fox considers the complex meaning of home and the essential importance of place to human psychology. Drawing on a wide array of international examples he discusses what dwelling is and the variety of dwellings. Fox also looks at the politics of the concept of 'home', homelessness, refugeeism and migration, and the future of home, and argues that home remains a central organizing concept in human life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

America’s suburbs are not the homogenous places we sometimes take them for. Today’s suburbs are racially, ethnically, and economically diverse, with as many Democratic as Republican voters, a growing population of renters, and rising poverty. The cliche of white picket fences is well past its expiration date. The history of suburbia is equally surprising: American suburbs were once fertile ground for utopian planning, communal living, socially-conscious design, and integrated housing. We have forgotten that we built suburbs like these, such as the co-housing commune of Old Economy, Pennsylvania; a tiny-house anarchist community in Piscataway, New Jersey; a government-planned garden city in Greenbelt, Maryland; a racially integrated subdivision (before the Fair Housing Act) in Trevose, Pennsylvania; experimental Modernist enclaves in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the mixed-use, architecturally daring Reston, Virginia. Inside Radical Suburbs you will find blueprints for affordable, walkable, and integrated communities, filled with a range of environmentally sound residential options. Radical Suburbs is a history that will help us remake the future and rethink our assumptions of suburbia.

The iconic images of Uncle Sam and Marilyn Monroe, or the "fireside chats" of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr.: these are the words, images, and sounds that populate American cultural history. From the Boston Tea Party to the Dodgers, from the blues to Andy Warhol, dime novels to Disneyland, the history of American culture tells us how previous generations of Americans have imagined themselves, their nation, and their relationship to the world and its peoples. This Very Short Introduction recounts the history of American culture and its creation by diverse social and ethnic groups. In doing so, it emphasizes the historic role of culture in relation to broader social, political, and economic developments. Across the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as language, region, and religion, diverse Americans have forged a national culture with a global reach, inventing stories that have shaped a national identity and an American way of life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.