The first comprehensive architectural and cultural history of condominium and cooperative housing in twentieth-century America. Today, one in five homeowners in American cities and suburbs lives in a multifamily home rather than a single-family house. As the American dream evolves, precipitated by rising real estate prices and a renewed interest in urban living, many predict that condos will become the predominant form of housing in the twenty-first century. In this unprecedented study, Matthew Gordon Lasner explores the history of co-owned multifamily housing in the United States, from New York City's first co-op, in 1881, to contemporary condominium and townhouse complexes coast to coast. Lasner explains the complicated social, economic, and political factors that have increased demand for this way of living, situating the trend within the larger housing market and broad shifts in residential architecture and family life. He contrasts the prevalence and popularity of condos, townhouses, and other privately governed communities with their ambiguous economic, legal, and social standing, as well as their striking absence from urban and architectural history.

"Youngtown, Arizona, opened in 1954 and was the first development community to have a minimum age requirement (then 65) and to ban underage children as permanent residents. The developer Del Webb unveiled Sun City six years later. Adjacent to Yountown, it offered modest homes abutting a golf course. In the ensuing decades, active adult communities have proliferated, including Harold Schwartz's The Villages in central Florida, today [America's] largest retirement community. For nearly sixty years, the success of these and similar communities has changed the image of retirees from frail, impoverished old people to energetic, well-off adults enjoying a resort-like lifestyle. While some experts predicted these communities would fail or undermine the obligations between generations, they are now firmly embedded as one possible extension of the American Dream. Judith Ann Trolander's study of the "active adult" lifestyle focuses specifically on how the development of age-restricted communities has redefined the sense of self-identity among the elderly; changed the popular image of retirees; called attention to attitudes of the elderly toward children; popularized golf-course, gated, and amenity-rich developments; and made this new, age-restricted lifestyle affordable or accessible to large numbers of retirees - some of whom may actually continue working. Examining the origins, development, failures, and challenges facing these communities as the baby boomer population continues to age, Trolander offers a truly original defense of a sometimes controversial aspect of American life."--Book cover.

Güneş, Gök, Doğa, Su and Ay, a group of five young graduates fresh out of university, who have reunited in their out-of-the-way Anatolian village high in the Caucuses, set out on an adventure that will change not only their lives but that of their rural community, for ever. On a journey that takes them into the remote forests and mountains above their quiet Anatolian home, they confront many challenges and quite a few scary moments before finally arriving at the Mysterious Garden of the Sun. While there, they meet some extraordinary characters who teach them about all about a lost civilisation that enables people to live in harmony with nature and the ancient Anatolian philosophy of the sun… a way of life that their country has virtually forgotten…

2000 Census of Population and Housing. On cover: United States Census 2000. Contains statistical tables.