First there was downtown. Then there were suburbs. Then there were malls. Then Americans launched the most sweeping change in 100 years in how they live, work, and play. The Edge City.

A timely study of Hong Kong's politics and society since the 1997 handover that explores the city's long history of resistance.

Why do people stay in a struggling city? City on the Edge explores this question through the lives of five people in Syracuse, New York, a quintessential rust-belt metropolis. Once a booming industrial center with a dynamic civic life and prominence on the world stage, Syracuse has endured decades of crime, drugs, economic depression, absent-minded political leadership, and population decline. Michael Streissguth spent more than three years interviewing a young survivor of the streets, a refugee from Cuba, an urban farmer, a community activist, and a city elder, who shared their stories as they found ways to make life work against sometimes formidable odds. He also contextualizes their extended commentary and storytelling with secondary characters and various episodes, such as a tragic Father's Day riot and the trial that followed. The result is an eye-opening look at life in America in the twenty-first century, where people strive to turn their ideas, frustrations, and disadvantages into new hope for themselves and the city where they live.

Winner, 1995 American Sociological Association Robert E. Park Award? Projecting fantasies of wealth and excess, Miami, "America's Riviera," occupies a unique place in our national imagination. Uncovering the hidden story of this dreamlike place, Portes and Stepick explore the transformations of Miami from a light-hearted tourist resort to a troubled, complex city.

An American teen living abroad discovers the truth about himself and his family in this thrilling novel from "one of the best dialogue hounds in the business" (New York Times Book Review). 1972, Beirut, Lebanon. Young American Matthew lives with his father, a rising foreign service attache, and mother, in an exclusive community of ex-patriots. It is the summer Matthew becomes a teenager, falls in love, nearly dies, and watches his family, and the city, fall apart. It is in this world of Western schemers and local merchants, of hoodlums and politicians, that Matthew begins to solve the mystery of who his father really is, and what role he is really playing in the upheaval that is shaking the city loose of its old, civilized and way and ushering in a new and frightening radicalism. This is the story of a boy and a family, besieged. Intimate in scope and wrenching in its vision of lost innocence, City on the Edge is a mystery and spy story from the past, and a coming of age story for our time.

An engaging account of the uniquely creative spirit and bustling cultural ecology of contemporary Los Angeles How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? In City at the Edge of Forever, Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences. In its pages, modernist architecture and lifestyle capitalism come together via a surfer girl named Gidget; Joan Didion's yellow Corvette is the brainchild of a car-crazy Japanese-American kid interned at Manzanar; and the music of the Manson Family segues into the birth of sci-fi fandom. One of the book's innovations is to brand Los Angeles as the alchemical city. Earth became real estate when the Yankees took control in the nineteenth century. Fire fueled the city's early explosive growth as the Southland's oil fields supplied the inexhaustible demands of drivers and their cars. Air defined the area from WWII to the end of the Cold War, with aeronautics and aerospace dominating the region's industries. Water is now the key element, and Southern California's ports are the largest in the western hemisphere. What alchemists identify as the ethereal fifth element, or quintessence, this book positions as the glamour of Hollywood, a spell that sustains the city but also needs to be broken in order to understand Los Angeles now. Lunenfeld weaves together the city's art, architecture, and design, juxtaposes its entertainment and literary histories, and moves from restaurant kitchens to recording studios to ultra-secret research and development labs. In the process, he reimagines Los Angeles as simultaneously an exemplar and cautionary tale for the 21st century.

"A love song for the city . . . [this] volume, attractivelypackaged and richly illustrated, is really a cookbook for downtownrevitalization." --Wall Street Journal In this pioneering book on successful urban recovery, two urbanexperts draw on their firsthand observations of downtown changeacross the country to identify a flexible, effective approach tourban rejuvenation. From transportation planning and sprawlcontainment to the threat of superstore retailers, they address ahost of key issues facing our cities today. Roberta Brandes Gratz (New York, NY), an award-winning journalistand urban critic, is author of the urban design classic The LivingCity. A former staff reporter for the New York Post, Gratz haswritten for the New York Times Magazine and other publications.Norman Mintz (New York, NY) has played a leading role in the fieldof downtown revitalization for more than twenty-five years. He isDesign Director at the 34th Street Partnership in New York City anda consultant on downtown revitalization across the country.