This book offers a sociological analysis as well as a theological discussion of China's internal migration since the marketization reform in 1978. It documents the social and political processes that encompass the experiences of internal migrants from the countryside to the city during China's integration into the global economy. Informed by sociological analysis and narratives of the urban poor, this volume reconstructs the political, economic, social and spiritual dimensions of this urban underclass in China who made up the economic backbone of the Asian superpower.

Lewis Mumford's massive historical study brings together a wide array of evidence--from the earliest group habitats to medieval towns to the modern centers of commerce (as well as dozens of black-and-white illustrations)--to show how the urban form has changed throughout human civilization. His tone is ultimately somewhat pessimistic: Mumford was deeply concerned with what he viewed as the dehumanizing aspects of the metropolitan trend, which he deemed "a world of professional illusionists and their credulous victims." (In another typically unrestrained criticism, he dubbed the Pentagon a Bronze Age monument to humanity's basest impulses, as well as an "effete and worthless baroque conceit.") Mumford hoped for a rediscovery of urban principles that emphasized humanity's organic relationship to its environment. The City in History remains a powerfully influential work, one that has shaped the agendas of urban planners, sociologists, and social critics since its publication in the 1960s.

In 1980, William H. Whyte published the findings from his revolutionary Street Life Project in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Both the book and the accompanying film were instantly labeled classics, and launched a mini-revolution in the planning and study of public spaces. They have since become standard texts, and appear on syllabi and reading lists in urban planning, sociology, environmental design, and architecture departments around the world.
Project for Public Spaces, which grew out of Holly’s Street Life Project and continues his work around the world, has acquired the reprint rights to Social Life, with the intent of making it available to the widest possible audience and ensuring that the Whyte family receive their fair share of Holly’s legacy.
Summary: This book is great
Rating: 5
I read this book for school... but I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter. (Reading it, I was always wandering around talking to friends and family about it). The book is short, but there is a lot to think about. :)
Summary: How urban areas work
Rating: 5
Years ago I watched an episode of NOVA on PBS on William H. Whyte that explained the background and purpose and accomplishments of his project to study what makes urban spaces in cities work. I sat there riveted, as he methodically and carefully unveiled a vast range of urban phenomena of which I had hitherto been unaware.
The background to his study was this: following the enormous success of the plaza of Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York in the mid-1950s, the city began to give tax breaks to new buildings that included plazas as part of their design. At the Seagram, people found in the heart of the city a marvelous space in which to congregate, to eat lunch, to sit and talk, and just enjoy a few minutes away from the office. While the idea of providing an incentive to new plaza development was unquestionably a great aim, a small problem developed: many of the new plazas were, unlike that of the Seagram, just dreadful. Cold, austere, people unfriendly, unwelcoming, many of them seemed designed more to keep people away than give them a place to enjoy themselves. This is where Whyte comes in. New York City was concerned with codifying what made a successful plaza, and giving tax breaks based more on the kind of plaza being built, rather than any kind of plaza at all. So, Whyte was charged with discovering precisely what goes into a successful urban space. The results of his exhaustive study are summed up in this brilliant monograph.
Whyte took cameras and began filming all kinds of urban spots in plazas and parks, and on regular sidewalks. As a result of this study, he was able first to analyze how urban spaces work, and secondly on the basis of this make, to make suggestions as to how to make successful spaces. He discusses the enormous value and utility of using fountains or falling water both to provide aesthetic benefits and to create a barrier of white noise between an urban space and the street. He shows the value of having a variety of steps and levels in providing fun places to sit. He allays the fears of those who are afraid that a plaza will attract undesirables by showing that the homeless tend to go where other people are not. He displays the patterns of traffic on sidewalks and the function that street food can play. Whyte comes across not merely as a sophisticated urban planner and social scientist: he is revealed as a visionary.
I think that this ought to be a must-read for anyone with any curiosity about cities and the potential they possess for a vibrant and exciting social life. Here in my own city of Chicago, I constantly lament that Whyte's lessons go unheeded and unlearned. We Chicagoans take pride in how clean our downtown area is, but we possess very, very few plazas, instead having virtually all of our buildings coming all the way to the edge of the sidewalk. I lament that there are so few places in the Loop and the near North to sit at lunch, that so very, very little has been done along the river to make it people friendly, and that there are so few places to congregate. We have a gorgeous, inpirational skyline, but on the sidewalk level, things are different. I wish our city planners had more of Whyte's view of things.
Summary: A classic case study for urban design professionals
Rating: 5
Although the photographs are dated, the material is classic. This book is a must for anyone who is involved with design or review of open spaces. It shows how people use open space and identifies the common elements of successful spaces. While the elements all seem logical, the book shows how we often fly in the face of logic when using these spaces. The book focuses primarily on plazas and small parks in New York City, but includes a section for smaller cities with low rise buildings. The information can also be applied to parks in any size town. This book is a facinating case study in social ecology.

Originally published in 1970, The Urban Revolution marked Henri Lefebvre's first sustained critique of urban society, a work in which he pioneered the use of semiotic, structuralist, and poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing the development of the urban environment. Although it is widely considered a foundational book in contemporary thinking about the city, The Urban Revolution has never been translated into English-until now. This first English edition, deftly translated by Robert Bononno, makes available to a broad audience Lefebvre's sophisticated insights into the urban dimensions of ???.

Review
“David Harvey provoked a revolution in his field and has inspired a generation of radical intellectuals.” (Naomi Klein )
“Harvey is a scholarly radical; his writing is free of journalistic clichés, full of facts and carefully thought-through ideas.” (Richard Sennett )
“Whose streets? Our streets! In Rebel Cities David Harvey shows us how we might turn this slogan into a reality. That task—and this book—could hardly be more important.” (Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision and a founding editor of N+1 )

《摩登上海的象征:沙逊大厦建筑实录与研究》以这次的测绘为基础，结合新的材料和观点，对沙逊大厦的由来、变迁和所属风格进行了深入的研究，具有较高的学术水平、鉴赏意义和研究借鉴价值。上海锦绣文章出版社将这本书作为重点图书出版，我认为是颇具文化眼光的，将为上海近代建筑史的研究做出显著的贡献。

本书覆盖了相关学科全部领域，例如交通规划、生物区域划分、暴雨处理、停车、总体设计、城市声学和平面造型。它是城市设计和包括社会、环境和经济数据的城市自然规划的重要参考文献的惟一来源。

本书是系统阐述南京城市发展历程的专著。作者从解读文献和实地踏勘入手，梳理出南京城市生长的脉络和城市建设的若干重要经验。