City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in a Global Society Book

Fully updated for the 1990's and skillfully blending perspectives from the social sciences with insights from the visual arts and humanities, this lively, imaginative text provides a comprehensive introduction to cities and how they work. Focusing on issues facing cities in an ever-shrinking global society, it covers urbanization and suburbanization, community, spatial and social structure, the urban economy and landscape. Incorporating over 160 illustrations plus literary excerpts and suggestions for further reading, this updated edition also examines such specialized topics as the AIDS epidemic, homelessness, the effect of recent technological advances in communications and architecture, and the state of race relations and various multi-cultural issues. The author looks at classical theories and integrates modern urban theory into discussions of topics like the world urban systems, metropolitan space and local power structures, and offering numerous case studies and first-hand accounts of important and timely subjects.Read More