Further Reading
Books Related to the Cool Cities Concept
Just a little extra reading on subjects related to Cool Cities, the Creative Class, urban/city renewal and revival, quality-of-life issues, etc. - click here to review this list at amazon.com .
- The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life
Richard Florida
- The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas
John Howkins
- Bobos in Paradise : The New Upper Class and How They Got There
David Brooks
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs (Author)
- How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken
by Alex Marshall (Author)
- Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival
by Paul S. Grogan, Tony Proscio
- Celebrating the Third Place : Inspiring Stories About the "Great Good Places" at the Heart of Our Communities
by Ray Oldenburg (Editor)
- Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place
by Thomas Michael Power
- Edge City : Life on the New Frontier
by Joel Garreau (Author)
Books Related to the Cool Cities Concept
The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life
Richard Florida
Richard Florida says we've chosen to alter our values, work, and lifestyle, and for good economic reasons. Why have we done this? Florida finds the answer in the rise of a new social class. Like other classes, its basis is economic. Just as the feudal aristocracy derived its identity and values from its hereditary control of land and people, and the bourgeoisie derived its identity and values from its role as merchants of goods, the Creative Class derives its identity and values from its role as purveyors of creativity. When we see ourselves as "creative," our self-image affects the choices we make in every area of our lives.
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The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas
John Howkins
What is creativity? How does it work? How do we manage it and how do we profit from it? In 1996, U.S. copyrights were worth $60.18 billion of export sales, surpassing for the first time every other export sector, including automobiles, agriculture and aircraft. Meanwhile, the British music business is already larger than its steel industry. Any economy hoping to prosper in a global entertainment and design culture must seize the opportunities presented by creativity quickly: this text explores how this can be done in the real world.
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Bobos in Paradise : The New Upper Class and How They Got There
David Brooks
Bobos in Paradise is an American-focused, but brilliant, breezy, and often hilarious study of the "cultural consequences of the information age". Large and influential (especially in terms of their buying power), the Bobos have reformed society through culture rather than politics, and Brooks clearly outlines this passing of the high-class torch by analyzing nearly all aspects of life: consumption habits, business and lifestyle choices, entertainment, spirituality, politics, and education. It used to be easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture, but now the "bos" are all mixed up and it is impossible to tell an espresso-sipping artist from a cappucino-gulping banker. In attitudes towards sex, morality, leisure and work, it is hard to separate the renegade from the company man. There is a new establishment which has combined the counterculture of the sixties and the achieving eighties into one ethos.
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs (Author)
Just to prove that these concepts are not totally new, the author writes about the need for revitalizing American cities raising many of the same issues reviewed today in the more current literature. This 1961 book by Jane Jacobs, a one-time writer for architectural magazines in New York City , turned the world of city planning on its head. The author, who possessed no formal training in architecture or city planning, relied on personal observations of her surroundings in Greenwich Village in New York City to supply ammunition for her charges against the grand muftis of the architectural profession. "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" consists mostly of common sense observations, but there is also a good amount of statistical information, economics, sociology, and some philosophy at the base of the author's arguments. The 1993 Modern Library reprint seeks to bring Jacobs's work to a whole new generation of readers, a necessity when one realizes that a majority of the problems plaguing cities in 1961 continue to be a problem today.
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How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken
by Alex Marshall (Author)
"This is an outstanding book that I hope and expect will make a major contribution to the current debate on cities and suburbs." --Robert Fishman, author of American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy and Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia Do cities work anymore? How did they get to be such sprawling conglomerations of lookalike subdivisions, megafreeways, and "big box" superstores surrounded by acres of parking lots? And why, most of all, don't they feel like real communities? These are the questions that Alex Marshall tackles in this hard-hitting, highly readable look at what makes cities work.
Marshall argues that urban life has broken down because of our basic ignorance of the real forces that shape cities-transportation systems, industry and business, and political decision making. He explores how these forces have built four very different urban environments-the decentralized sprawl of
California 's Silicon Valley, the crowded streets of
New York City 's
Jackson Heights neighborhood, the controlled growth of
Portland ,
Oregon , and the stage-set facades of Disney's planned community, Celebration,
Florida . To build better cities,
Marshall asserts, we must understand and intelligently direct the forces that shape them. Without prescribing any one solution, he defines the key issues facing all concerned citizens who are trying to control urban sprawl and build real communities. His timely book will be important reading for a wide public and professional audience.
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Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival
by Paul S. Grogan, Tony Proscio
How and why America's inner cities have begun recovering from the pervasive crime and social disorder that plagued them only a decade ago. Comeback Cities shows how innovative, pragmatic tactics for ameliorating the nation's urban ills have produced results beyond anyone's expectations, reawakening
America 's toughest neighborhoods. In the past, big government and business working separately were unable to solve the inner city crisis. Rather, a blend of public-private partnerships, grassroots nonprofit organizations, and a willingness to experiment characterize what is best among the new approaches to urban problem solving. Pragmatism, not dogma, has produced the charter school movement and the police's new focus on "quality-of-life" issues. The new breed of big city mayors has welcomed business back into the city, stressed performance and results at city agencies, downplayed divisive racial politics, and cracked down on symptoms of social disorder. As a consequence,
America 's inner cities are becoming vital communities once again.
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Celebrating the Third Place : Inspiring Stories About the "Great Good Places" at the Heart of Our Communities
by Ray Oldenburg (Editor)
After a long day at work or a lazy afternoon at home, many of us seek solace and distraction in a place where the magical combination of comfort, familiarity, and good company transform an ordinary hangout into our special "third place." In his landmark work,
The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg identified, portrayed, and promoted those third places. Now the time has come to celebrate the many third places that dot the American landscape and foster civic life.
Celebrating the Third Place brings together nineteen firsthand accounts by proprietors of third places, as well as appreciations by fans who have made spending time at these establishments a regular part of their lives. The scope of places profiled—from an historic tavern in Washington, D.C., and a garden shop in Massachusetts to a coffeehouse in North Carolina and a bookstore in Michigan—make
Celebrating the Third Place a must-read for everyone who has or wants a third place they can call their own.
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Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place
by Thomas Michael Power
In Lost Landscapes and Failed Economics, economist Thomas Michael Power argues that the quality of the natural landscape is an essential part of a community's permanent economic base and need not be sacrificed in short-term efforts to maintain employment levels in industries that are ultimately not sustainable. He provides numerous case studies of the ranching, mining, and timber industries in a critical analysis of the role played by extractive industry in our communities. In addition, he looks at areas where environmental protection measures have been enacted and examines the impact of protected landscapes on local economies.
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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell (Author)
In The Tipping Point, Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children's television, direct mail and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech company, and one of the world's greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an intellectual adventure story written with an infectious enthusiasm for the power and joy of new ideas. Most of all, it is a road map to change, with a profoundly hopeful message--that one imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world."
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Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtowns
Roberta Brandes Gratz, Norman Mintz
In Cities Back from the Edge, Gratz and Mintz offer a love song for the city...their volume, attractively packaged and richly illustrated, is really a cookbook for downtown revitalization. It turns out the most valuable contribution to urban understanding of the year isn't only a book, it's also a bumper sticker: Think globally, act locally."--The Wall Street Journal. Cities Back from the Edge was also featured in The New York Times. Frank Rich writes, "In their new book persuasively arguing for less grandiose, more indigenous urban renewal, Roberta Brandes Gratz and Norman Mintz write that a 'collection of visitor attractions does not add up to a city' whether those attractions are cultural centers, convention centers, aquariums, stadiums or enclosed malls."--The New York Times.
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Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community
by Robert D. Putnam
Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures -- whether they be PTA, church, or political parties -- have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.
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Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment
by Ethan Watters (Author)
Driven by his personal desire to understand why his single life stretched far into his thirties, Ethan Watters explores the cultural and social forces that have steered his generation away from the altar-and discovers many reasons to be optimistic about the course his generation has chosen. Central to his thinking is the idea of Urban Tribes: the closely knit communities of friends that spring up during the ever-increasing period of time between college and married life. Tribes are revealed to be the key to understanding this generation, explaining not only why its members are putting off marriage, but also why singles often live outside of families so happily. In the end, Watters makes the case that the tribe years engender the self-respect critical to successful partnerships.
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The Cultural Creatives : How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
by Sherry Ruth Anderson (Author), Ph.D. Paul H. Ray (Author)
In this landmark book, sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson draw upon thirteen years of survey research studies on more than 100,000 Americans. They reveal who the Cultural Creatives are and the fascinating story of their emergence over the last generation, using vivid examples and engaging personal stories to describe their distinctive values and lifestyles. The Cultural Creatives offers a more hopeful future and prepares us all for a transition to a new, saner, and wiser culture.
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The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy
by Jon Berry (Author), Ed Keller (Author)
Although
America 's Influentials have always been powerful, they've never been more important than now. Today, a fragmented market has made it possible for Influentials to opt out of mass-message advertising, which means that a different route must be taken to capture their hearts and minds.
The Influentials is a map for that route, a map that explains who these people are, how they exercise influence, and how they can be targeted.
The Influentials features a series of rules and guidelines for marketing to Influentials; case studies of products that have prospered because of Influential marketing (and products that have failed because they lacked it); a history of the phenomenon...and why Influentials are more influential today than ever; and profiles of twelve real-life Influentials.
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Edge City : Life on the New Frontier
by Joel Garreau (Author)
Garreau describes the phenomenon of Edge Cities that have sprung up in various areas of the nation, usually in close proximity to intersecting highways and urban areas. These entities are found in former rural or residential areas and contain office and retail space, a population that increases at 9 a.m. on working days, and a local perception of the
Edge City as the final destination for mixed-use shopping, jobs, and entertainment.
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