Urban City

Ditchtown. A city of skyscrapers, built atop the drowned bones of old Miami. A prison of steel, filled with unbelievers. A dumping ground for strays, runaways, and malcontents. Within these towering monoliths, Ashley Akachi is a young woman trying her best to cope with a brother who's slipping away, a mother who's already gone, and angry young men who want her put in her place. Ditchtown, however, is not the only world Ash inhabits. Within Infinite Game, a virtual world requiring physical perfection, Ash is Ashura the Terrible, leader of the Sunjewel Warriors.

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?

Modello is an inspirational true story from beginning to end of how Dr. Roger Mills and staff accomplished the "miracle" in the Modello and Homestead Gardens Housing Projects, applying the Three Principles/Health Realization approach based on an innovative spiritual psychology. Through extensive interviews with residents as well as Dr. Mills, his staff, and other professionals, a compelling and moving portrait is painted.

Karachi. Pakistan’s largest city is a sprawling metropolis of 20 million people, twice the size of New York City. It is a place of political turbulence in which those who have power wield it with brutal and partisan force. It takes an insider to know where is safe, whom to trust, and what makes Karachi tick. In this powerful debut, Samira Shackle explores the city of her mother’s birth in the company of a handful of Karachiites.

Zinzi December has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job: missing persons.

This is the story of New York City, told through the prism of one block, bordered by 23rd Street to the south, 24th Street to the north, Fifth Avenue and Broadway to the east and Sixth Avenue to the west. It’s a story of forest and cement, bird cries and taxi horns, theatres and factories, gambling dens and gourmet foods. It’s also the story of high life and low life, immigrants and tourists, farmers and aristocrats, crooked cops and moral reformers, toy stores and social climbers

New York Times best-selling investigative journalist Ron Suskind based this book on his Pulitzer Prize winning articles about Cedric Jennings, a Black youth struggling to survive one of D.C.'s toughest school districts. A moving portrait of inner city life, A Hope in the Unseen offers a view of life through the eyes of someone trying desperately to make his way up from the bottom.

Karen has packed up her life and is making the Move. She’s on her way to the idyllic country cottage which her husband has painstakingly renovated for her. But something is awry. The landscape, breathtaking by day, is eerie by night. The longed-for peace and solitude is stifling. And the house, so artfully put together by her husband, has a strange vibe. Now that Karen is cut off from her old friends and family, she can’t help wondering if her husband has plans of his own, and that history might be repeating itself.

Every morning, seventeen-year-old Maria Anís Rosario takes the subway an hour from her boisterous and close-knit family in Queens to her private high school on the Upper East Side, where she struggles to fit in as one of the only Latina students - until Rocky welcomes her into this new life. White, rebellious, and ignored by her wealthy parents, Rocky uses her money toward one goal: to get away with anything. To Maria, it’s a dazzling privilege.

M is a magician of modest wit, dim ability, and few scruples, who would prefer to spend his easy immortality drinking artisanal beer and making eyes at smiling women. Alas, in the infinite nexus of the universe that is New York City, equilibrium is no easy thing to maintain. Canal pirates, drug-induced divinities, pocket steam-punk universes, hipster zombies, ex-girlfriends, and the devil are all taken in easy stride.

Jeevan Vasagar, former Singapore correspondent for the Financial Times, masterfully takes us through the intricate history, present and future of this unique diamond-shaped island one degree north of the equator, where new and old have remained connected. Lion City is a personal, insightful and essential guide to the city and how its remarkable rise is shaping East Asia and the rest of the world.

With wit and sharp insight, former Traffic Commissioner of New York City, Sam Schwartz a.k.a. "Gridlock Sam", one of the most respected transportation engineers in the world and consummate insider in NYC political circles, uncovers how American cities became so beholden to cars and why the current shift away from that trend will forever alter America's urban landscapes, marking nothing short of a revolution in how we get from place to place.

Still coming to terms with their unexpected partnership, Augustine and Harlow have a tentative truce. Although with Harlow slowly working to accept being fae, Augustine still learning how to be Guardian, and feelings growing on both sides, they do not have an easy road ahead. But when a young girl is stolen from the Mardi Gras Exemplar Ball - the biggest fae event of the year - Harlow and Augustine must put all their issues aside to bring her home alive.

Fifteen years ago, Lęina’s mother, Yuliana, went searching for a mythical place called the Garden and never returned. Determined to learn the truth about what happened, Lęina travels to Brazil to search for the hidden realm, with Yuliana’s journal and a local tour guide leading the way. But Lęina soon begins to wonder if she’s looking for answers—or if what she truly wants to find is herself.

America's most storied urban underdog, Brooklyn has become an internationally recognized brand in recent decades - celebrated and scorned as one of the hippest destinations in the world. In Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas J. Campanella unearths long-lost threads of the urban past, telling the rich history of the rise, fall, and reinvention of one of the world’s most resurgent cities.

The kingpins of Oklahoma City, one from the north side and one from the south side, push pounds of weed, gallons of PCP, and kilos of cocaine through the corridors of the OKC, using very different methods to keep their people in line. King is the leader of the north side crew. Along with his protégé, Tippi, he runs his crew with deadly force. Each member knows there is no room for error when it comes to getting money on the north side. Flamboyant, the leader of the south side crew, is the opposite.

The year 2000. As Britain celebrates the new millennium, something fluorescent and futuristic is stirring in the crumbling council estates of inner city London. Making beats on stolen software, spitting lyrics on tower block rooftops and beaming out signals from pirate radio aerials, a group of teenagers raised on UK garage, American hip-hop and Jamaican reggae stumble upon a dazzling new genre. Against all odds, these young MCs will grow up to become some of the UK’s most famous musicians, scoring number one records and dominating British pop culture for years to come.

After serving a 10-year bid in prison, Taye "City" Savage was finally freed. However, once he was released, there was no time to chill and enjoy the riches that his brothers had acquired at his left and right hand at the king’s throne of the Savage empire. No sooner than City was released, complete mayhem ensued. His brother, Shon, and his greed causes the Savage empire to be in debt with the Columbian cartel of over a million dollars.

If you’re looking for a solution to all your food supply problems—cost, accessibility, health, and safety—it’s time to do what struggling families did in World War II—grow your own food. And you can do it in your very own organic garden. Organic gardening is most commonly associated with large spaces in the beautiful countryside. But even if you live in a tiny space in the city with no backyard, you can still create a beautiful organic garden at home.

In Anna Clark's full account of this American tragedy, The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail - and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.