Background Sources
- Global Urban Growth: A Reference Handbook Global Urban Growth: A Reference Handbook examines urbanization and the challenges associated with rapid urban growth and urban sprawl from a truly global perspective, rather than presenting only a limited exploration of the subject by addressing a single city, country, or region. Investigating urbanization and related policy challenges as both a general phenomenon of all modern societies and one that varies greatly in different regions of the world, the book charts different growth trajectories in these societies and varying policy responses.
- Handbook of Gentrification Studies It is now over 50 years since the term ‘gentrification’ was first coined by the British urbanist Ruth Glass in 1964, in which time gentrification studies has become a subject in its own right. This Handbook, the first ever in gentrification studies, is a critical and authoritative assessment of the field. Although the Handbook does not seek to rehearse the classic literature on gentrification from the 1970s to the 1990s in detail, it is referred to in the new assessments of the field gathered in this volume. The original chapters offer an important dialogue between existing theory and new conceptualisations of gentrification for new times and new places, in many cases offering novel empirical evidence.
- Encyclopedia of the City The Encyclopedia of the City focuses on the key topics encountered by undergraduates and scholars in urban studies and allied fields. Contributors include major theoreticians and practitioners, and on other individuals, groups, and organizations which study the city or practice in a field that directly or indirectly affects the city, the Encyclopedia necessarily adopts an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspective. A solid but also provocative starting point for wider exploration of the city, this is a first-class work of reference that will be an essential resource for independent study as well as a useful aid in teaching.
- Atlas of Urban Expansion The Atlas of Urban Expansion collects and analyzes data on the quantity and quality of urban expansion in a stratified global sample of 200 cities.
- Handbook of Emerging 21st Century Cities The Handbook of Emerging 21st-Century Cities explores the changes that are occurring in cities, and the impacts that they are having, at the local, national and global scale. Bringing together voices from around the world, this Handbook provides an interdisciplinary view of the changes that are happening in emerging cities, examining a range of topics from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.
- Urban Sprawl : a Comprehensive Reference Guide Top scholars offer historical, legal, political, and socio-economic insights into the causes, effects, and solutions to urban sprawl in this even-handed account of the spreading suburbanization of America.
- Handbook of Cities and the Environment With an ever-growing majority of the world's human population living in city spaces, the relationship between cities and nature will be one of the key environmental issues of the 21st Century. This book brings together a diverse set of authors to explore the various aspects of this relationship both theoretically and empirically. Rather than considering cities as wholly separate from nature, a running theme throughout the book is that cities, and city dwellers, should be characterized as intrinsic in the creation of specifically urban-generated ‘socio-natures’.
- The Urban Masterplanning Handbook A highly illustrated reference tool, this handbook provides comparative visual analysis of major urban extensions and masterplans around the world. It places an important new emphasis on the processes and structures that influence urban form, highlighting the significant impact that public or private landownership, management and funding might have on shaping a particular project.
- The Boston Chinatown Atlas "The Boston Chinatown Atlas, a 15-year effort by Prof Tunney Lee, documents the origins of the Chinese in Boston and how they built Chinatown"
Popular culture and urban life
Don't it always seem to go 
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
"Big Yellow Taxi" has become an environmental anthem: at least 456 artists have recorded the song, and since 1990 a musician has recorded it virtually every year. Joni Mitchell has recorded it three times, the second, live version in 1974 proving a bigger hit than the original.
