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How Bill de Blasio’s mayoral victory triggered a seismic shift in the nation’s urban political landscape—and what it portends for our cities in the future In November 2013, a little-known progressive stunned the elite of New York City by capturing the mayoralty by a landslide. Bill de Blasio's promise to end the "Tale of Two Cities" had struck a chord among ordinary residents still struggling to recover from the Great Recession. De Blasio's election heralded the advent of the most progressive New York City government in generations. Not since the legendary Fiorello La Guardia in the 1930s had so many populist candidates captured government office at the same time. Gotham, in other words, had been suddenly reclaimed in the name of its people. How did this happen? De Blasio's victory, journalist legend Juan González argues, was not just a routine change of government but a popular rebellion against corporate-friendly policies that had dominated New York for decades. Reflecting that broader change, liberal Democrats Bill Peduto in Pittsburgh, Betsy Hodges in Minneapolis, and Martin Walsh of Boston also won mayoral elections that same year, as did insurgent Ras Baraka in Newark the following year. This new generation of municipal leaders offers valuable lessons for those seeking grassroots reform.
Majora Carter shows how brain drain cripples low-status communities and maps out a development strategy focused on talent retention to help them break out of economic stagnation. "My musical, In the Heights, explores issues of community, gentrification, identity and home, and the question: Are happy endings only ones that involve getting out of your neighborhood to achieve your dreams? In her refreshing new book, Majora Carter writes about these issues with great insight and clarity, asking us to re-examine our notions of what community development is and how we invest in the futures of our hometowns. This is an exciting conversation worth joining.” —Lin-Manuel Miranda How can we solve the problem of persistent poverty in low-status communities? Majora Carter argues that these areas need a talent-retention strategy, just like the ones companies have. Retaining homegrown talent is a critical part of creating a strong local economy that can resist gentrification. But too many people born in low-status communities measure their success by how far away from them they can get. Carter, who could have been one of them, returned to the South Bronx and devised a development strategy rooted in the conviction that these communities have the resources within themselves to succeed. She advocates measures such as • Building mixed-income instead of exclusively low-income housing to create a diverse and robust economic ecosystem • Showing homeowners how to maximize the long-term value of their property so they won't succumb to quick-cash offers from speculators • Keeping people and dollars in the community by developing vibrant “third spaces”—restaurants, bookstores, and places like Carter's own Boogie Down Grind Cafe This is a profoundly personal book. Carter writes about her brother's murder, how turning a local dumping ground into an award-winning park opened her eyes to the hidden potential in her community, her struggles as a woman of color confronting the “male and pale” real estate and nonprofit establishments, and much more. It is a powerful rethinking of poverty, economic development, and the meaning of success.
Nora Ephron and Allie Brosh fans take note: Alisa Jones' memoir Gotham Girl Interrupted is a smart stand-up comedy about the power of falling down. "Get to your safe spaces, people. Here comes the shimmer..." From irreverent NYC blogger Alisa Kennedy Jones comes an account of her "misadventures in motherhood, love, and epilepsy" that James Patterson calls "smart, harrowing, heart-warming, and very funny." What do Da Vinci, Agatha Christie, and blogger Alisa Kennedy Jones have in common? If you said "timeless artistic genius", stop sucking up--the answer is ecstatic epilepsy. In this hilarious and moving dispatch from the frontlines of neurodiversity, Jones chronicles life with these terrifying-yet-beautiful grand mal seizures. Characteristic of Jones's condition are attacks which leave her with what Zen Buddhists sometimes refer to as a "beginner's mind": a vast, open expanse of headspace, coupled with a creative euphoria. With bracing candor and humility, Jones describes living with chronic illness, single motherhood, and her day-to-day life as a hapless writer in NYC. Above all, Jones reminds us to fight the battle for becoming who we are supposed to be--no matter how much flopping around on the ground and wetting ourselves we have to do to get there.
Winner of the 2015 PROSE Award for US History A “fascinating, encyclopedic history…of greater New York City through an ecological lens” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)—the sweeping story of one of the most man-made spots on earth. Gotham Unbound recounts the four-century history of how hundreds of square miles of open marshlands became home to six percent of the nation’s population. Ted Steinberg brings a vanished New York back to vivid, rich life. You will see the metropolitan area anew, not just as a dense urban goliath but as an estuary once home to miles of oyster reefs, wolves, whales, and blueberry bogs. That world gave way to an onslaught managed by thousands, from Governor John Montgomerie, who turned water into land, and John Randel, who imposed a grid on Manhattan, to Robert Moses, Charles Urstadt, Donald Trump, and Michael Bloomberg. “Weighty and wonderful…Resting on a sturdy foundation of research and imagination, Steinberg’s volume begins with Henry Hudson’s arrival aboard the Half Moon in 1609 and ends with another transformative event—Hurricane Sandy in 2012” (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland). This book is a powerful account of the relentless development that New Yorkers wrought as they plunged headfirst into the floodplain and transformed untold amounts of salt marsh and shellfish beds into a land jam-packed with people, asphalt, and steel, and the reeds and gulls that thrive among them. With metropolitan areas across the globe on a collision course with rising seas, Gotham Unbound helps explain how one of the most important cities in the world has ended up in such a perilous situation. “Steinberg challenges the conventional arguments that geography is destiny….And he makes the strong case that for all the ecological advantages of urban living, hyperdensity by itself is not necessarily a sound environmental strategy” (The New York Times).
First published in 2007 with the title: I thought it was just me: women reclaiming power and courage in a culture of shame.
Throughout American history, cities have been a powerful source of inspiration and energy, nourishing the spirit of invention and the world of intellect, and fueling movements for innovation and reform. In The Unfinished City, nationally renowned urban scholar Thomas Bender examines the source of Manhattan’s influence over American life. The Unfinished City traces the history of New York from its humble regional beginnings to its present global eminence. Bender contends that the city took shape not only according to the grand designs of urban planners and business tycoons, but also in response to a welter of artistic visions, intellectual projects, and everyday demands of the millions of people who made the city home. Bender’s story of urban development ranges from the streets of Times Square to the workshops of Thomas Edison, from the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. In a tour that spans neighborhoods and centuries, The Unfinished City makes a powerful case for the enduring importance of cities in American life. For anyone who loves New York or values the limitless possibilities intrinsic in all cities, this book is an unparalleled guide to Manhattan’s past and present.
Ten years ago, the massacre known as Fools’ Night claimed the lives of Batman, The Joker, Nightwing, and Commissioner Gordon…and sent Selina Kyle, the Catwoman, to prison. A decade later, Gotham has grown up-it’s put away costumed heroism and villainy as childish things. The new Gotham is cleaner, safer…and a lot less free, under the watchful eye of Mayor Harvey Dent and his Batcops. It’s into this new city that Selina Kyle returns, a changed woman…with her mind on that one last big score: the secrets hidden inside the Batcave! She doesn’t need the money-she just needs to know…who is “Orpheus”? Visionary creator Cliff Chiang (Wonder Woman, Paper Girls) writes, draws, colors, and letters the story of a world without Batman, where one woman’s wounds threaten to tear apart an entire city! It’s an unmissable artistic statement that will change the way you see Gotham’s heroes and villains forever!
The television series Gotham gave viewers a unique perspective on the fascinating world of Batman, the legendary comic book character. More than a simple "origin story," the series introduces viewers to a pre-Batman Gotham City, where young hero-cop James Gordon fights a one-man war on crime. In a city where crime is evolving from traditional organized crime to a city plagued by flamboyant and psychotic "super villains," there is a desperate need for a Batman. All of this is witnessed by Bruce Wayne, who was orphaned after his parents were murdered. This book details how characters and story lines throughout the series touch on modern America: our ethics and flaws, our fears and aspirations. Chapters also explore the show's unique twists to classic depictions of the franchise's characters, who have been adored by millions of fans across the decades. Throughout the text, the authors examine Gotham for its insight into 21st-century America, concluding in the exhilarating and frightening conclusion that "We ARE Gotham."
An expanded edition of the only comprehensive illustrated history of New York—with more than 600 ravishing photographs and illustrations—that tells the remarkable 400-year-long story of the city from its beginning in 1624 up to the current moment. The companion volume to the acclaimed PBS series. This landmark book traces the spectacular growth of New York from its initial settlement on the tip of Manhattan through the destruction wrought by the Revolutionary War to its rise as the nation’s premier commercial capital and industrial center and as a magnet for immigrant hopes and dreams in the 19th century to its standing as a beacon of modern culture in the 20th century and as a worldwide symbol of resilience in the 21st century. The story continues here with new chapters delivering a sweeping portrait of New York at the dawn of the 21st century, when it emerged after decades of decline to assert its place at the very center of a new globalized culture. Here is a city challenged—indeed, sometimes shaken to its core—by a series of profound crises: the aftermath of 9/11, the continual struggle with racial injustice, the financial crisis of 2008, the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, the still unfolding cataclysm of the COVID-19 pandemic—whose earliest and deadliest urban epicenter was New York itself. Here too is a lively portrait of the city’s vibrant street life and culture: the birth of hip-hop in the South Bronx, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates in Central Park, the musicals of Broadway, the explosion in location filmmaking in every borough, the pivotal rise of the tech industry, and so much more. The history of this city—especially in the tumultuous and transformative two decades detailed in the new chapters—is an epic story of rebirth and growth, an astonishing transfiguration, still in progress, of the world’s first modern city into a model and prototype for the global city of the future.
For seven days in April 1968, students occupied five buildings on the campus of Columbia University to protest a planned gymnasium in a nearby Harlem park, links between the university and the Vietnam War, and what they saw as the university’s unresponsive attitude toward their concerns. Exhilarating to some and deeply troubling to others, the student protests paralyzed the university, grabbed the world’s attention, and inspired other uprisings. Fifty years after the events, A Time to Stir captures the reflections of those who participated in and witnessed the Columbia rebellion. With more than sixty essays from members of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the Students’ Afro-American Society, faculty, undergraduates who opposed the protests, “outside agitators,” and members of the New York Police Department, A Time to Stir sheds light on the politics, passions, and ideals of the 1960s. Moving beyond accounts from the student movement’s white leadership, this book presents the perspectives of black students, who were grappling with their uneasy integration into a supposedly liberal campus, as well as the views of women, who began to question their second-class status within the protest movement and society at large. A Time to Stir also speaks to the complicated legacy of the uprising. For many, the events at Columbia inspired a lifelong dedication to social causes, while for others they signaled the beginning of the chaos that would soon engulf the left. Taken together, these reflections present a nuanced and moving portrait that reflects the sense of possibility and excess that characterized the 1960s.