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There is a wealth of research and literature explaining suburban sprawl and the urgent need to retrofit suburbia. However, until now there has been no single guide that directly explains how to repair typical sprawl elements. Sprawl Repair Manual demonstrates a step-by-step design process for the re-balancing and re-urbanization of suburbia into more sustainable, economical, energy- and resource-efficient patterns, from the region and the community to the block and the individual building. (Even more information can be found at the Sprawl Repair Manual website).
Author Galina Tachieva asserts in this exceptionally useful (and exceptionaly handsome) book that sprawl repair will require a proactive and aggressive approach, focused on design, regulation and incentives.
The work provides much-needed, single-volume reference for fixing sprawl, incorporating changes into the regulatory system, and implementing repairs through incentives and permitting strategies. It draws on more than two decades of practical experience in the field of repairing and building communities to analyze the current pattern of sprawl development, disassemble it into its elemental components, and present a process for transforming them into human-scale, sustainable elements.
The techniques are illustrated both two- and three-dimensionally, providing users with clear methodologies for the sprawl repair interventions, some of which are radical, but all of which will produce positive results.
Rising gas prices, sprawl and congestion, global warming, even obesity—driving is a factor in many of the most contentious issues of our time. So how did we get here? How did automobile use become so vital to the identity of Americans?
Republic Of Drivers: A Cultural History Of Automobility In America looks back at the period between 1895 and 1961—from the founding of the first automobile factory in America to the creation of the Interstate Highway System—to find out how driving evolved into a crucial symbol of freedom and agency.
Author Cotten Seiler combs through a vast number of historical, social scientific, philosophical, and literary sources to illustrate the importance of driving to modern American conceptions of the self and the social and political order.
He finds that as the figure of the driver blurred into the figure of the citizen, automobility became a powerful resource for women, African Americans, and others seeking entry into the public sphere.
And yet, he argues, the individualistic but anonymous act of driving has also monopolized our thinking about freedom and democracy, discouraging the crafting of a more sustainable way of life.
As our fantasies of the open road turn into fears of a looming energy crisis, Seiler shows us just how we ended up a republic of drivers—and where we might be headed.
In Urban Mass Transit: The Life Story Of A Technology, the history of mass transit is vividly illustrated as the technological and social struggles that have accompanied urbanization and the need for an efficient and cost-effective means of transportation in cities.
From the omnibus and horsecar in the 1830s to the renaissance of urban mass transit at the turn of the 21st century, author Robert C. Post depicts mass transit as a technological system that provided an essential complement to industrialization, urbanization and, ultimately, to the rise of consumer culture.
At the heart of the story is the streetcar, a conveyance that played a central role in the development of U.S. cities and towns. Once dominating the urban landscape, the streetcar has all but disappeared. Post traces its evolution and demise, debunking the urban myth that the downfall of the electric streetcar was directly attributable to the corporate malfeasance of General Motors and others from the automotive world.
Post concludes with a meditation on the prospects for mass transit in a postmodern society that must face up to the contradictions of privatized mobility and the reality of dwindling natural resources.
