Democracy In Suburbia

Author : J. Eric Oliver
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2021-01-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780691223360

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Democracy in Suburbia by J. Eric Oliver Pdf

Suburbanization is often blamed for a loss of civic engagement in contemporary America. How justified is this claim? Just what is a suburb? How do social environments shape civic life? Looking beyond popular stereotypes, Democracy in Suburbia answers these questions by examining how suburbs influence citizen participation in community and public affairs. Eric Oliver offers a rich, engaging account of what suburbia means for American democracy and, in doing so, speaks to the heart of widespread debate on the health of our civil society. Applying an innovative, unusually rigorous mode of statistical analysis to a wealth of unique survey and census data, Oliver argues that suburbs, by institutionalizing class and racial differences with municipal boundaries, transform social conflicts between citizens into ones between political institutions. In reducing the incentives for individual political participation, suburbanization has negated the benefits of ''small town'' government and deprived metropolitan areas of valuable civic capacity. This ultimately increases prospects of serious social conflict. Oliver concludes that we must reconfigure suburban governments to allow seemingly intractable issues of common metropolitan concern to surface in local politics rather than be ignored as cross-jurisdictional. And he believes this is possible without sacrifice of local government's advantages. Scholars and students of political science, sociology, and urban affairs will prize this book for its striking findings, its revealing scrutiny of the commonplace, and its insights into how the pursuit of the American dream may be imperiling American democracy.

Author : Robert Coldwell Wood
Publisher : New York : Arno Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : Political Science
ISBN : UVA:X001456538

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Suburbia by Robert Coldwell Wood Pdf

Author : Robert Coldwell Wood
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 1958
Category : Suburban life
ISBN : STANFORD:36105002511744

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Suburbia by Robert Coldwell Wood Pdf

Author : Ursula Scheidegger
Publisher : African Books Collective
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2015-08-06
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783905758719

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Transformation from Below? White Suburbia in the Transformation of Apartheid South Africa to Democracy by Ursula Scheidegger Pdf

South Africa is an example of a relatively successful political transition. Nevertheless, the first democratic elections in 1994 did not change the systemic and structural inequalities, the socioeconomic legacies of discrimination or the alienation of the different population groups. At the centre of this study is the transformation potential of two formerly white neighbourhoods in Johannesburg Norwood and Orange Grove. Both neighbourhoods have experienced considerable demographic changes and the various population groups differ in terms of their expectations and their willingness to adjust to the changes provoked by the transition. At the local level, patterns of discrimination and oppression continue. Spaces, opportunities and leverage of social networks engaged in the community are influenced by the resources people are able to access. Moreover, cooperation is contested in a context of pervasive inequality because there is no incentive for privileged groups to change arrangements that benefit them. In this context of conflicting interests and unequal access to power and resources, decentralisation and the promotion of participatory structures in local communities are a problem and the reliance on local networks as agents of development is questionable.

Author : Paul W. Kahn
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2023-01-31
Category : Civil society
ISBN : 9780300257427

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Democracy in Our America by Paul W. Kahn Pdf

One of America's most distinguished political theorists examines what happens when national politics enters a small New England town After the election of 2016 and, even more urgently, after the election of 2020, many citizens looked at the economic and cultural divisions that were causing deep disruptions in American politics and asked, "What is happening to us?" Paul W. Kahn explores these fundamental changes as they show themselves in a small New England town--his home of twenty-five years, Killingworth, Connecticut. His inquiry grounds a democratic theory that puts volunteering, not voting, at its center. Absent active participation, citizens lose the capacity for judgment that comes from working with others to solve real problems. Volunteering, however, is under existential threat today. Changes in civil society, commerce, employment, and public opinion formation have isolated families from each other and from their communities. Even middle-class families live under financial stress, uncertain of their children's future, and without the support of civil society. Local media has disappeared. Residents do not have the time, information, or interest to volunteer. Under these conditions, national polarization enters local politics, which becomes yet another site for national conflict. To save our democracy, Kahn concludes, we need to find ways of matching opportunities for participation to the ways we live our lives today.

Author : Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0815754043

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Democracy at Risk by Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh Pdf

"Documents how recent trends in civic engagement have been shaped by political institutions and public policies and recommends ways to increase the amount, quality, and distribution of civic engagement, focusing on elections, the metropolis, and the nonpr

Author : Becky Nicolaides,Andrew Wiese
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 554 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2013-10-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781135396398

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The Suburb Reader by Becky Nicolaides,Andrew Wiese Pdf

Since the 1920s, the United States has seen a dramatic reversal in living patterns, with a majority of Americans now residing in suburbs. This mass emigration from cities is one of the most fundamental social and geographical transformations in recent US history. Suburbanization has not only produced a distinct physical environment—it has become a major defining force in the construction of twentieth-century American culture. Employing over 200 primary sources, illustrations, and critical essays, The Suburb Reader documents the rise of North American suburbanization from the 1700s through the present day. Through thematically organized chapters it explores multiple facets of suburbia’s creation and addresses its indelible impact on the shaping of gender and family ideologies, politics, race relations, technology, design, and public policy. Becky Nicolaides’ and Andrew Wiese’s concise commentaries introduce the selections and contextualize the major themes of each chapter. Distinctive in its integration of multiple perspectives on the evolution of the suburban landscape, The Suburb Reader pays particular attention to the long, complex experiences of African Americans, immigrants, and working people in suburbia. Encompassing an impressive breadth of chronology and themes, The Suburb Reader is a landmark collection of the best works on the rise of this modern social phenomenon.

Author : Marc L. Silver,Martin Melkonian
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1995-07-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : UOM:39015034875693

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Contested Terrain by Marc L. Silver,Martin Melkonian Pdf

Politics, by its nature, is a contentious arena. Suburbia, on the other hand, has long presented the image of a relatively serene, harmonious, and homogenous social context. Until recently little attention has been paid to whatever might be the distinctive qualities of the suburban political scene. Yet, as this collection of essays makes apparent, suburbia is as volatile a political environment as any other. The suburban political sphere is truly a contested terrain, and this volume effectively shows the links between suburban political realities and our collective economic and social well-being. The suburban political sphere is truly a contested terrain. As the authors make clear, the political conflicts that have haunted the United States from its inception—class inequalities, racial frictions, constraints on the democratic impulse—loom large in the suburbia of today. The haven from social turmoil and strife that suburbia represented at mid-century increasingly appears to have been short-lived and, perhaps, even illusory. Political scientists, sociologists, and other researchers as well as concerned citizens are challenged to examine seriously the suburban political landscape. In this volume all will come away with a better understanding of the distinctive practical facets of the suburban political context, and all will have a better appreciation of the connections to our collective economic and social well-being.

Author : Jay P. Childers
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2015-06-29
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780271060002

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The Evolving Citizen by Jay P. Childers Pdf

It has become a common complaint among academics and community leaders that citizens today are not what they used to be. Nowhere is this decline seen to be more troubling than when the focus is on young Americans. Compared to the youth of past generations, today’s young adults, so the story goes, spend too much time watching television, playing video games, and surfing the Internet. As a result, American democracy is in trouble. The Evolving Citizen challenges this decline thesis and argues instead that democratic engagement has not gotten worse—it has simply changed. Through an analysis of seven high school newspapers from 1965 to 2010, this book shows that young people today, according to what they have to say for themselves, are just as enmeshed in civic and political life as the adolescents who came before them. American youth remain good citizens concerned about their communities and hopeful that they can help make a difference. But as The Evolving Citizen demonstrates, today’s youth understand and perform their roles as citizens differently because the world they live in has changed remarkably over the last half century.

Author : Kevin M. Kruse,Thomas J. Sugrue
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2006-07-15
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780226456638

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The New Suburban History by Kevin M. Kruse,Thomas J. Sugrue Pdf

Introduction: The new suburban history / Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue -- Marketing the free market : state intervention and the politics of prosperity in metropolitan America / David M.P. Freund -- Less than plessy : the inner city, suburbs, and state-sanctioned residential segregation in the age of Brown / Arnold R. Hirsch -- Uncovering the city in the suburb : Cold War politics, scientific elites, and high-tech spaces / Margaret Pugh O'Mara -- How hell moved from the city to the suburbs : urban scholars and changing perceptions of authentic community / Becky Nicolaides -- "The house I live in" : race, class, and African American suburban dreams in the postwar United States / Andrew Wiese -- "Socioeconomic integration" in the suburbs : from reactionary populism to class fairness in metropolitan Charlotte / Matthew D. Lassiter -- Prelude to the tax revolt : the politics of the "tax dollar" in postwar California / Robert O. Self -- Suburban growth and its discontents : the logic and limits of reform on the postwar Northeast corridor / Peter Siskind -- Reshaping the American dream : immigrants, ethnic minorities, and the politics of the new suburbs / Michael Jones-Correa -- The legal technology of exclusion in metropolitan America / Gerald Frug.

Author : Becky M. Nicolaides
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 577 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2024-01-05
Category : Los Angeles (Calif.)
ISBN : 9780197578308

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The New Suburbia by Becky M. Nicolaides Pdf

"The New Suburbia explores how the suburbs transitioned from bastions of segregation into spaces of multiracial living. They are the second generation of suburbs after 1945, moving from starkly segregated whiteness into a more varied, uneven social landscape. The suburbs came to hold a broad cross-section of people - rich, poor, Black American, Latino, Asian, immigrant, the unhoused, and the lavishly housed, and everyone in between. In the new suburbia, white advantage persisted, but it existed alongside rising inequality, ethnic and racial diversity, and new family configurations. Through it all, the common denominators of suburbia remained - low-slung landscapes of single-family homes and yards and families seeking the good life. On this familiar landscape, the American dream endured even as the dreamers changed"--

Author : Lorrie Frasure-Yokley
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2015-12-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107084957

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Racial and Ethnic Politics in American Suburbs by Lorrie Frasure-Yokley Pdf

This book examines racial and ethnic politics outside of the traditional context and questions the models used to understand mobility and government responsiveness.

Author : Alexander Lenger,Florian Schumacher
Publisher : Springer
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2014-12-03
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783662447666

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Understanding the Dynamics of Global Inequality by Alexander Lenger,Florian Schumacher Pdf

Despite the fact that the globalization process tends to reinforce existing inequality structures and generate new areas of inequality on multiple levels, systematic analyses on this very important field remain scarce. Hence, this book approaches the complex question of inequality not only from different regional perspectives, covering Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin and Northern America, but also from different disciplinary perspectives, namely cultural anthropology, economics, ethnology, geography, international relations, sociology, and political sciences. The contributions are subdivided into three essential fields of research: Part I analyzes the socio-economic dimension of global exclusion, highlighting in particular the impacts of internationalization and globalization processes on national social structures against the background of theoretical concepts of social inequality. Part II addresses the political dimension of global inequalities. Since the decline of the Soviet Union new regional powers like Brazil, China, India and South Africa have emerged, creating power shifts in international relations that are the primary focus of the second part. Lastly, Part III examines the structural and transnational dimension of inequality patterns, which can be concretized in the rise of globalized national elites and the emergence of multinational networks that transcend the geographical and imaginative borders of nation states.

Author : Terry Christensen,Tom Hogen-Esch
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2014-12-18
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781317465836

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Local Politics: A Practical Guide to Governing at the Grassroots by Terry Christensen,Tom Hogen-Esch Pdf

Unlike most competing texts that are densely written and heavily theoretical, with little flavor of political life, this book is a readable, jargon-free introduction to real-life local politics for today's students. While it encompasses local government and politics in cities and towns across America, "Local Politics: A Practical Guide to Governing at the Grassroots" gives special attention to the politics of suburbia, where many students live, and encourages them to become engaged in their own communities. The book is also distinguished by its strong emphasis on nuts-and-bolts practical politics. It provides focused discussion of institutions, roles, and personalities as well as the dynamic environment of local politics (demographics, immigration, globalization, etc.) and major policy issues (budgets, land use, transportation, education, etc.). Other texts treat communities as abstractions and readers as passive observers. "Local Politics: A Practical Guide to Governing at the Grassroots" is designed to inspire civic engagement as well as understanding. It features "In Your Community" research projects for students in every chapter along with informative tables, clear charts, essential terms, and guides to useful websites.

Author : David Fleming
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2008-11-20
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0791476499

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City of Rhetoric by David Fleming Pdf

Examines the relationship of civic discourse to built environments through a case study of the Cabrini Green urban revitalization project in Chicago.