A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem.

Inside, you'll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles--and why it just doesn't work. New development and high-risk investing don't generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens' quality of life.

• Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the traditional search for never-ending urban growth
• Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus
• Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns
• Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity

Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.

Harvard Square isn't what it used to be. Spend any time there, and you're bound to hear that lament. Yet people have been saying the very same thing for well over a century. So what does it really mean that Harvard Square--or any other beloved Main Street or downtown--isn't what it used to be? Catherine J. Turco, an economic sociologist and longtime denizen of Harvard Square, set out to answer this question after she started to wonder about her own complicated feelings concerning the changing Square.

Diving into Harvard Square's past and present, Turco explores why we love our local marketplaces and why we so often struggle with changes in them. Along the way, she introduces readers to a compelling set of characters, including the early twentieth-century businessmen who bonded over scotch and cigars to found the Harvard Square Business Association; a feisty, frugal landlady who became one of the Square's most powerful property owners in the mid-1900s; a neighborhood group calling itself the Harvard Square Defense Fund that fought real estate developers throughout the 1980s and '90s; and a local businesswoman who, in recent years, strove to keep her shop afloat amid personal tragedy, the rise of Amazon, and a globalizing property market that sent her rent soaring.

Harvard Square tells the crazy, complicated love story of one quirky little marketplace and in the process, reveals the hidden love story Americans everywhere have long had with their own Main Streets and downtowns. Offering a new and powerful lens that exposes the stability and instability, the security and insecurity, markets provide, Turco transforms how we think about our cherished local marketplaces and markets in general. We come to see that our relationship with the markets in our lives is, and has always been, about our relationship with ourselves and one another, how we come together and how we come apart.

An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure.

Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground--the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative--sustainable, livable, resilient--often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens.

Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities' development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this urban planners' dream created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities' productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.

Harvard Square isn't what it used to be. Spend any time there, and you're bound to hear that lament. Yet people have been saying the very same thing for well over a century. So what does it really mean that Harvard Square--or any other beloved Main Street or downtown--isn't what it used to be? Catherine J. Turco, an economic sociologist and longtime denizen of Harvard Square, set out to answer this question after she started to wonder about her own complicated feelings concerning the changing Square.

Diving into Harvard Square's past and present, Turco explores why we love our local marketplaces and why we so often struggle with changes in them. Along the way, she introduces readers to a compelling set of characters, including the early twentieth-century businessmen who bonded over scotch and cigars to found the Harvard Square Business Association; a feisty, frugal landlady who became one of the Square's most powerful property owners in the mid-1900s; a neighborhood group calling itself the Harvard Square Defense Fund that fought real estate developers throughout the 1980s and '90s; and a local businesswoman who, in recent years, strove to keep her shop afloat amid personal tragedy, the rise of Amazon, and a globalizing property market that sent her rent soaring.

Harvard Square tells the crazy, complicated love story of one quirky little marketplace and in the process, reveals the hidden love story Americans everywhere have long had with their own Main Streets and downtowns. Offering a new and powerful lens that exposes the stability and instability, the security and insecurity, markets provide, Turco transforms how we think about our cherished local marketplaces and markets in general. We come to see that our relationship with the markets in our lives is, and has always been, about our relationship with ourselves and one another, how we come together and how we come apart.

A study of Vancouver's local businesses and the city's opportunities for growth.

Aligned with global trends in post-industrialization, the economy of metro Vancouver is changing, but along its own trajectory. The focus is shifting away from resource-based activities to local entrepreneurial initiatives across a remarkable range of industries, from software to craft beer, biopharmaceuticals, and mountain bikes. This evolution is being shaped by local business and the city's location on the national and global periphery.

The Thin Edge of Innovation focuses on the performance of signature businesses in these entrepreneurial sectors to grow and foster industrial clusters and integrate with the global economy. The contributors give a mixed report card to this economic transition. Within metro Vancouver, innovation has stimulated economic diversification and promises to deliver high-income jobs. But this diversification has also been thinly spread and lacks deep local roots or dominant anchor companies.

This constructive study examines the distinctive opportunities facing metro Vancouver. Despite challenges, it reveals a region with undoubted potential for sustained, broadly beneficial local development.

In this eye-opening work of economic theory, Jane Jacobs argues that it is cities--not nations--that are the drivers of wealth. Challenging centuries of economic orthodoxy, in Cities and the Wealth of Nations the beloved author contends that healthy cities are constantly evolving to replace imported goods with locally-produced alternatives, spurring a cycle of vibrant economic growth. Intelligently argued and drawing on examples from around the world and across the ages, here Jacobs radically changes the way we view our cities--and our entire economy.

Poverty is the common enemy of mankind. It is also a challenge facing each and every nation, as well as international community. To promote economic development, eliminate poverty and achieve common prosperity are ideals that mankind constantly pursues. To date, China's poverty reduction program has to a large extent been limited to addressing the poverty problem in rural areas. The Chinese government's efforts to lift people out of poverty and to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line in its own country are part of a greater contribution to mankind's wider struggle. This book will help readers to gain a better understanding of the efforts that the Chinese people have made in combating poverty, and to get to know those people who have made the greatest contributions to the fight against poverty.

Across the US, cities and metropolitan areas are facing huge economic and competitive challenges that Washington won't, or can't, solve. The good news is that networks of metropolitan leaders - mayors, business and labor leaders, educators, and philanthropists - are stepping up and powering the nation forward. These state and local leaders are doing the hard work to grow more jobs and make their communities more prosperous, and they're investing in infrastructure, making manufacturing a priority, and equipping workers with the skills they need.

In The Metropolitan Revolution, Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley highlight success stories and the people behind them.

- New York City: Efforts are under way to diversify the city's vast economy

- Portland: Is selling the sustainability solutions it has perfected to other cities around the world

- Northeast Ohio: Groups are using industrial-age skills to invent new twenty-first-century materials, tools, and processes

- Houston: Modern settlement house helps immigrants climb the employment ladder

- Miami: Innovators are forging strong ties with Brazil and other nations

- Denver and Los Angeles: Leaders are breaking political barriers and building world-class metropolises

- Boston and Detroit: Innovation districts are hatching ideas to power these economies for the next century

The lessons in this book can help other cities meet their challenges. Change is happening, and every community in the country can benefit. Change happens where we live, and if leaders won't do it, citizens should demand it.

The Metropolitan Revolution was the 2013 Foreword Reviews Bronze winner for Political Science.

Analyzing how the role of ASEAN economies in global value chains has helped spur their recovery and cut poverty, this publication shows the need to future-proof these critical networks to ensure inclusive, sustainable, and greener growth.

It explains how the expansion of cross-border trade networks has helped Southeast Asian economies bolster manufacturing and spark a wave of job creation and innovation. On the flipside, it considers the associated environmental impact and social inequality. Highlighting systemic shocks to global trade, it explains how economic momentum, stronger institutions, and more inclusive growth can help mitigate risks and build resilient economies.

A study of Vancouver's local businesses and the city's opportunities for growth.

Aligned with global trends in post-industrialization, the economy of metro Vancouver is changing, but along its own trajectory. The focus is shifting away from resource-based activities to local entrepreneurial initiatives across a remarkable range of industries, from software to craft beer, biopharmaceuticals, and mountain bikes. This evolution is being shaped by local business and the city's location on the national and global periphery.

The Thin Edge of Innovation focuses on the performance of signature businesses in these entrepreneurial sectors to grow and foster industrial clusters and integrate with the global economy. The contributors give a mixed report card to this economic transition. Within metro Vancouver, innovation has stimulated economic diversification and promises to deliver high-income jobs. But this diversification has also been thinly spread and lacks deep local roots or dominant anchor companies.

This constructive study examines the distinctive opportunities facing metro Vancouver. Despite challenges, it reveals a region with undoubted potential for sustained, broadly beneficial local development.

If it's not working change it . . . one backyard at a time.

Visionary placemaker Steve Nygren chronicles the rise of Serenbe, a pioneering model in biophilic living outside Atlanta, and charts a path for others wishing to challenge the status quo, embrace optimism, and reinvent their communities--and themselves.

For many Americans, life is no longer working. We are increasingly sick, stressed, anxious, and unhappy. Many feel left behind by the economy, disillusioned by once-respected institutions, and helpless in the face of environmental decline. Steve Nygren argues that much of this can be traced to where--and how--we live. By rethinking and reinvesting in our own communities, we can rediscover the joy of connected, meaningful lives for ourselves and future generations.

Start in Your Own Backyard provides a blueprint for developing sustainable communities where citizens of all generations can thrive, and awe is found in everyday moments, which requires understanding:

The unintended consequences of sprawl, and why clustered development supports more green space, more housing, and lower costs Why being disconnected from nature and each other is at the root of many environmental, societal, and health-related woes Tactics to encourage a local food-based economy (and why that matters) How small yards, front porches, and blueberry bushes at crosswalks lead to strong, supportive neighborhoods The benefits of aging in place, and how to nurture connections between uncaged elders and free-range kids

Whether you're a placemaker, developer, civic leader, business owner, or parent or grandparent wishing to improve the things that complicate your life, this book is for you. It educates and inspires, demonstrates the impact of local action, and sparks hope that one person can change the world in amazing ways by starting in your own backyard. Why shouldn't that person be you?

This important new study examines the intricately linked phenomena of interwoven population growth, economic power, quality education, business leadership, and fiscal significance as exemplified in the Texas Triangle, a network of metropolitan complexes that are reshaping the destiny of Texas and adding a strong pinnacle in the global system of economic mega-centers.

The Texas Triangle consists of three metropolitan complexes: Dallas-Fort Worth at the northern tip, Houston-Galveston at the southeastern point, and Austin-San Antonio at the southwestern edge. It consists of four US Census-designated metropolitan statistical areas and includes 35 urban counties that comprise those areas. The Texas Triangle soon will include four of the ten most populous cities in the United States. Together these metro areas represent the fifteenth largest economy in the world.

The authors describe the trajectories of each of the Texas Triangle metros in which they live and work and integrate them into a larger dynamic of functioning cohesion and effective collaboration. The Texas Triangle offers community leaders, elected officials, policy makers, and others a more nuanced understanding of an important moment in America's continuing urban development. With broader perspectives for how community-building advances the public interest, this book lays important foundations for matching the path of economic prosperity to an informed sense of what is possible.

Which is more important to New York City's economy, the gleaming corporate office--or the grungy rock club that launches the best new bands? If you said office, think again. In The Warhol Economy, Elizabeth Currid argues that creative industries like fashion, art, and music drive the economy of New York as much as--if not more than--finance, real estate, and law. And these creative industries are fueled by the social life that whirls around the clubs, galleries, music venues, and fashion shows where creative people meet, network, exchange ideas, pass judgments, and set the trends that shape popular culture.

The implications of Currid's argument are far-reaching, and not just for New York. Urban policymakers, she suggests, have not only seriously underestimated the importance of the cultural economy, but they have failed to recognize that it depends on a vibrant creative social scene. They haven't understood, in other words, the social, cultural, and economic mix that Currid calls the Warhol economy.

With vivid first-person reporting about New York's creative scene, Currid takes the reader into the city spaces where the social and economic lives of creativity merge. The book has fascinating original interviews with many of New York's important creative figures, including fashion designers Zac Posen and Diane von Furstenberg, artists Ryan McGinness and Futura, and members of the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

The economics of art and culture in New York and other cities has been greatly misunderstood and underrated. The Warhol Economy explains how the cultural economy works-and why it is vital to all great cities.

Although philosophers debate the morality of open borders, few social scientists have explored what would happen if immigration were no longer limited. This book looks at three examples of temporarily unrestricted migration in Miami, Marseille, and Dublin and finds that the effects were much less catastrophic than opponents of immigration claim.

Relax and delve into a world of color by number made just for you If you don't want to think about which color to use to create beautiful art, this book is perfect for you This adult coloring book of relaxing mosaic train images - locomotives and electric trains - will put your mind at ease as you let your cares slip away and enjoy coloring these beautiful trains on the railroads and railways.

Our professional artists will leave you with breathtaking finished images that you can color, tear out and hang up if you like. You will feel your stress melting away as you follow the simple number scheme with the colors listed, or go ahead and fill the images with your own favorite colors

Each image is printed on high-quality paper and every drawing is followed by a blank sheet of paper so you never have to worry about tearing individual images out of the book.

You will get:

• 20 mosaic electric train and locomotive designs and illustrations
• Single sided pages that are great for framing
• Premium shiny finish cover design
• Large 8.5x11 pages that fit easily into a standard 8.5 x11 frame
• BONUS color by number pages at the end from other books
• Plenty of space to get wild and free

Enjoy the trains and let your stress melt away

Noe Valley is known as San Francisco's Village within the City. Originally part of Jose de Jesus Noe's old Spanish land grant, Noe Valley became a vibrant neighborhood that is considered to be one the city's most desirable residential areas.

Today, the Bay Area is home to the most successful knowledge economy in America, while Los Angeles has fallen progressively further behind its neighbor to the north and a number of other American metropolises. Yet, in 1970, experts would have predicted that L.A. would outpace San Francisco in population, income, economic power, and influence. The usual factors used to explain urban growth--luck, immigration, local economic policies, and the pool of skilled labor--do not account for the contrast between the two cities and their fates. So what does?

The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies challenges many of the conventional notions about economic development and sheds new light on its workings. The authors argue that it is essential to understand the interactions of three major components--economic specialization, human capital formation, and institutional factors--to determine how well a regional economy will cope with new opportunities and challenges. Drawing on economics, sociology, political science, and geography, they argue that the economic development of metropolitan regions hinges on previously underexplored capacities for organizational change in firms, networks of people, and networks of leaders. By studying San Francisco and Los Angeles in unprecedented levels of depth, this book extracts lessons for the field of economic development studies and urban regions around the world.

An authoritative assessment of the reform efforts in African economies during the 1980s and early 1990s. The focus is on the reform process in the socialist countries which began from a position of pervasive state intervention. The impact of the subsequent economic liberalization and the changing role of the state during the period of transition is the focus of this theoretical overview, with particular coverage of macroeconomic management and the privatization of state enterprises. A companion volume (0-333-71237-4) contains in-depth country studies. These books are the first in an important new series in association with the Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.

Around 1900, Buffalo was a happening place. It was America's eighth-largest city and the world's sixth largest port. Buffalo was the world's first city lit with electricity. Famous architects like Frederick Law Olmsted and Frank Lloyd Wright did some of their best work here. Buffalo hosted a World's Fair featuring buildings illuminated by Thomas Edison. And so much more. By 2000 the city's population was falling, the economy stagnant, the region's reputation stained by racism and poverty, and jokes about the area's weather became a frequent target of nightly talk shows. So what happened? Recently, it's been easy to find positive signs of a change: waterfront development, medical campus construction, new business expansion and startups, and an uptick in population and employment. But how well are we really doing? Buffalo Niagara could arguably have the biggest gap of any metropolis in America between what it could be and what it is today. Can the region ever be great again? Buffalo Niagara: Diagnosis & Prescription for Change starts by taking a look at the status of the region that goes beyond just new construction. It then examines in unvarnished detail the major causes and forces that caused the region's decline. And the book ends by offering a prescription for change that could once again make Buffalo one of the most progressive cities on the planet. Buffalo Niagara: Diagnosis & Prescription for Change is a tool and a road map for all those who love Western New York and are willing to help make a positive difference.