Who owns the street? Interwar Berliners faced this question with great hope yet devastating consequences. In Germany, the First World War and 1918 Revolution transformed the city streets into the most important media for politics and commerce. There, partisans and entrepreneurs fought for the attention of crowds with posters, illuminated advertisements, parades, traffic jams, and violence. The Nazi Party relied on how people already experienced the city to stage aggressive political theater, including the April Boycott and Kristallnacht. Observers in Germany and abroad looked to Berlin's streets to predict the future. They saw dazzling window displays that radiated optimism. They also witnessed crime waves, antisemitic rioting, and failed policing that pointed toward societal collapse. Recognizing the power of urban space, officials pursued increasingly radical policies to 'revitalize' the city, culminating in Albert Speer's plan to eradicate the heart of Berlin and build Germania.

Party in the Street explores the interaction between political parties and social movements in the United States. Examining the collapse of the post-9/11 antiwar movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book focuses on activism and protest in the United States. It argues that the electoral success of the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama, as well as antipathy toward President George W. Bush, played a greater role in this collapse than did changes in foreign policy. It shows that how people identify with social movements and political parties matters a great deal, and it considers the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street as comparison cases.

In the early 1900s, the Mafia controls much of Sicily, the government is corrupt, and taxes are exorbitant. As a result of the terrible conditions and the limits of their crops, Tomas and Katerina Tomaso are forced to send their three grown sons and their grandchildren to live in America. It is a heart-breaking split: grandparents forced to say goodbye to grandchildren knowing they will likely never see them again. Parents and sons splitting from each other. Paolo and Gianna, their two young children and the two younger brothers endure a painful farewell to the people, the farm and the life they love. They arrive in Chicago on Christmas Day at the dawning of the Roaring Twenties. The sprawling, dirty, smelly city is not like anything they could have imagined or dreamed. The family moves into a fourth floor apartment in a run-down tenement building in the Little Italy section of town. The streets are run by mobsters, politicians and crooked cops, not much different from their homeland. The family soon learns that they are now in the lower class. The two-century family history of hard work and honesty in the Old Country does not matter here. They endure prejudice in the workplace, in the lack of social services and in the absence of police protection. Jobs were hard to find, especially for Italians and even worse for Sicilians. Poverty and discrimination humble them all. Life was tough, but they learned to be tougher. Slowly, the family overcomes obstacles and adjusts to their new homeland. TThe children grow and become Americans. The family was finally settled and content when a terrible and unforgiveable act of violence - committed against them by their Italian countrymen - struck the family, hard. Paolo and Gianna's dreams and hopes for their future and for their children hang in the balance as they decide on the course of action that will define them as people and determine their futures. Plots and tensions simmer and boil over in a shocking conclusion early one morning on Cambridge Street.

About youth crime and homelessness in Canada.

This book lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children.

In this book, Jeremy Hartnett explores the role of the ancient Roman street as the primary venue for social performance and political negotiations.

How local, specific, and personal understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. In Owning the Street, Amelia Thorpe examines everyday experiences of and feelings about property and belonging in contemporary cities. She grounds her account in an empirical study of PARK(ing) Day, an annual event that reclaims street space from cars. A popular and highly recognizable example of DIY Urbanism, PARK(ing) Day has attracted considerable media attention, but has not yet been the subject of close scholarly examination. Focusing on the event's trajectories in San Francisco, Sydney, and Montreal, Thorpe addresses this gap, making use of extensive interview data, field work, and careful reflection to explore these tiny, temporary, and often transformative interventions. PARK(ing) Day is based on a creative interpretation of the property producible by paying a parking meter. Paying a meter, the event’s organizers explained, amounts to taking out a lease on the space; while most “lessees” use that property to store a car, the space could be put to other uses—engaging politics (a free health clinic for migrant workers, a same sex wedding, a protest against fossil fuels) and play (a dance floor, giant Jenga, a pocket park). Through this novel rereading of everyday regulation, PARK(ing) Day provides an example of the connection between belief and action—a connection at the heart of Thorpe’s argument. Thorpe examines ways in which local, personal, and materially grounded understandings about belonging, ownership, and agency intersect with law to shape the city. Her analysis offers insights into the ways in which citizens can shape the governance of urban space, particularly in contested environments. The book's foreword is by Davina Cooper, Research Professor in Law at King’s College London.

This book examines 'informal' politics, such as gossip and political theatrics, and how they related to more 'formal' politics of assembly and courts.

The contributors present various opinions about the causes of violence in American cities.

Examining public discussion in urban Kenya, both in-person and online, this book sheds light on the role public discussion plays in politics and how social media affects political movements, providing timely insights into everyday politics in Africa's digital age.