HOW DO WE KEEP AMERICA GREAT? Rick Baker, former mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, provides a compelling—and challenging—answer: by making American cities great. And great cities are built first of all through strong leadership. During his two terms in office, Rick Baker worked toward a clear, uncompromising goal: to make St. Petersburg the best city in America. He led a downtown renaissance, rebuilt the most economically depressed area of the city, attracted businesses, worked to reduce violent crime, and made public schools a city priority—all with measurable results. The Seamless City offers practical advice, based on his nine years of experience in City Hall, to show how every mayor and city council can make their city dramatically better. In The Seamless City you’ll step behind the scenes of city government to learn: How maintaining basic amenities, like running water, requires constant vigilance—and sometimes tough decisions on the part of city leadership Why a vibrant downtown is essential to attract businesses and create jobs Why the most effective leadership is servant leadership How to find and implement the most effective solutions to a city’s most challenging problems Why city government needs to regard the city as a seamless whole, with no section under-served or overlooked

HOW DO WE KEEP AMERICA GREAT? Rick Baker, former mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, provides a compelling—and challenging—answer: by making American cities great. And great cities are built first of all through strong leadership. During his two terms in office, Rick Baker worked toward a clear, uncompromising goal: to make St. Petersburg the best city in America. He led a downtown renaissance, rebuilt the most economically depressed area of the city, attracted businesses, worked to reduce violent crime, and made public schools a city priority—all with measurable results. The Seamless City offers practical advice, based on his nine years of experience in City Hall, to show how every mayor and city council can make their city dramatically better. In The Seamless City you’ll step behind the scenes of city government to learn: How maintaining basic amenities, like running water, requires constant vigilance—and sometimes tough decisions on the part of city leadership Why a vibrant downtown is essential to attract businesses and create jobs Why the most effective leadership is servant leadership How to find and implement the most effective solutions to a city’s most challenging problems Why city government needs to regard the city as a seamless whole, with no section under-served or overlooked

Introduced in the acclaimed "Big City, Bad Blood," P.I. Ray Dudgeon is back in a dangerous investigation where the search for truth can lead to his own death.

Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Best Book of the Year Award in 2011 “A masterpiece.” —Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics “Bursting with insights.” —The New York Times Book Review A pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or are they? In this revelatory book, Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist, declares that cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in both cultural and economic terms) places to live. He travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and cogent argument, Glaeser makes an urgent, eloquent case for the city's importance and splendor, offering inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest creation and our best hope for the future.

What we can learn from Atlanta's struggle to reinvent itself in the 21st Century Atlanta is on the verge of tremendous rebirth-or inexorable decline. A kind of Petri dish for cities struggling to reinvent themselves, Atlanta has the highest income inequality in the country, gridlocked highways, suburban sprawl, and a history of racial injustice. Yet it is also an energetic, brash young city that prides itself on pragmatic solutions. Today, the most promising catalyst for the city's rebirth is the BeltLine, which the New York Times described as "a staggeringly ambitious engine of urban revitalization." A long-term project that is cutting through forty-five neighborhoods ranging from affluent to impoverished, the BeltLine will complete a twenty-two-mile loop encircling downtown, transforming a massive ring of mostly defunct railways into a series of stunning parks connected by trails and streetcars. Acclaimed author Mark Pendergrast presents a deeply researched, multi-faceted, up-to-the-minute history of the biggest city in America's Southeast, using the BeltLine saga to explore issues of race, education, public health, transportation, business, philanthropy, urban planning, religion, politics, and community. An inspiring narrative of ordinary Americans taking charge of their local communities, City of the Verge provides a model for how cities across the country can reinvent themselves.

Cities are a big deal. More people now live in them than don't, and with a growing world population, the urban jungle is only going to get busier in the coming decades. But how often do we stop to think about what makes our cities work? Cities are built using some of the most creative and revolutionary science and engineering ideas – from steel structures that scrape the sky to glass cables that help us communicate at the speed of light – but most of us are too busy to notice. Science and the City is your guidebook to that hidden world, helping you to uncover some of the remarkable technologies that keep the world's great metropolises moving. Laurie Winkless takes us around cities in six continents to find out how they're dealing with the challenges of feeding, housing, powering and connecting more people than ever before. In this book, you'll meet urban pioneers from history, along with today's experts in everything from roads to time, and you will uncover the vital role science has played in shaping the city around you. But more than that, by exploring cutting-edge research from labs across the world, you'll build your own vision of the megacity of tomorrow, based on science fact rather than science fiction. Science and the City is the perfect read for anyone curious about the world they live in.

Complete opposites in style and approach to life, impetuous Londoner Suze Wilding and Lloyd Rockwell, a cautious and thoughtful New Yorker ready to settle down, are drawn to each other through their long-distance communication when their advertising firm sponsors a job swap in which they will trade apartments and jobs for a month. Original.