Recherche

Titre:
Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism : Evil Paradises

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$27.95
(disponible sur commande)

Résumé:
Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel BertrandrnMonk, is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places—alternaternrealities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfetteredrnby unions and state regulation. These developments—in cities, deserts,rnand in the middle of the sea—are worlds where consumption andrninequality surpass our worst nightmares.

Titre:
Dead cities and other tales

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$38.95
(disponible en magasin)

Résumé:
For the late great Mike Davis, the ravaging of the climate by capital—and his prescient analysis of its consequences for those of us left to deal with the resulting crises—was always a central part of his urban geography. In these wide ranging, incisive, and hauntingly relevant essays, Davis asks us to consider what we would find if we put a microscope to the ruins of Metropolis, and provides a riveting account of the disasters—natural, man-made, and those (as in the case of climate calamity) where the distinction is impossible to make—that he finds on the other end. He begins his examination by sifting through the rubble of the twin towers in the wake of 9/11, presciently identifying the seeds of war already germinating in the scorched soil of ground zero, and closes by considering how little prepared our hollowed out urban infrastructure is to deal with shocks of any kind, be they from car bombs or ice storms. In between we are treated to tours of blasted wastelands where American generals built and destroyed replicas of Berlin, glimpses of Las Vegas’s penchant for annihilating its own best-known landmarks, and other riveting tales of the dialectic between nature and the city.

Titre:
Au-delà de Blade Runner

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$14.95
(disponible en magasin)

Résumé:
Véritable laboratoire social et urbanistique, Los Angeles préfigure le modèle à venir des mégapoles modernes : destruction de toute mixité sociale par le cloisonnement strict des populations dans des quartiers réservés, laissés, pour certains, à l’abandon et à la domination des gangs, tandis que les couches les plus aisées se « bunkerisent » grâce à la généralisation de la vidéo-surveillance et des milices de sécurité privées. La ville vit désormais dans un état perpétuel de « guerre sociale de faible intensité », susceptible à tout moment d’éclater. À la fois sociologique, urbanistique et politique, l’essai de Mike Davis offre, au-delà du cas de Los Angeles, un portrait poignant de l’Amérique contemporaine et présage de l’évolution qui menace les sociétés occidentales.

Titre:
Magical urbanism: Latinos reinvent the US city

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$33.95
(disponible en magasin)

Résumé:
Is the capital of Latin America a small island at the mouth of the Hudson River? Will California soon hold the balance of power in Mexican national politics? Will Latinos reinvigorate the US labor movement? These are some of the provocative questions that Mike Davis explores in this fascinating account of the Latinization of the US urban landscape. As he forefully shows, this is a demographic and cultural revolution with extraordinary implications. With Spanish surnames increasing five times faster than the general population, salsa is becoming the predominant ethnic rhythm (and flavor) of contemporary city life. In Los Angeles, Houston, San Antonio, and (shortly) Dallas, Latinos outnumber non-Hispanic whites; in New York, San Diego and Phoenix they outnumber Blacks. According to the Bureau of the Census, Latinos will supply fully two-thirds of the nation’s population growth between now and the middle of the 21st century when nearly 100 millions Americans will boast Latin American ancestry.

Titre:
Au-delà de Blade Runner : Los Angeles et l'imagination du desastre

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$11.95
(disponible sur commande)

Résumé:
Cet essai sociologique, urbanistique et politique montre, à travers l'exemple de Los Angeles, ce que sera le visage futur de la ville, moins spectaculaire et plus effrayant que la vision futuriste offerte par Blade Runner. Los Angeles porte déjà en elle le modèle vers lequel vont tendre toutes les mégapoles : destruction de la mixité sociale par cloisonnement strict des couches de populations.

Titre:
Amy Franceschini: victory gardens 2007: a plan for subsidized urban gardens

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$30.00
(disponible sur commande)

Résumé:
Introduction by Lucy Lippard, essay by Mike Davis. Between October 2006 and April 2007, three gardens were given away. Each garden was planted in one of the three microclimates in San Francisco: sunbelt, transition belt and fog belt. The households were selected based on an ad posted on Craiglist. It was posted on October 10th ad midnight. By 9:30am October 11th, we had received over 800 responses. Each garden was delivered on the Victory Garden Trike and included a planting party, a Starter Kit, and two lessons. The lessons included how to build a raised bed, install a drip system, planting instructions, seasonal planting, seed saving, harvesting methods, composting, and canning. 1 Artist 1 Concept is a series of books by individual artists, produced by The Expanding Color System.

Titre:
Dead cities and other tales

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$44.95
(disponible sur commande)

Résumé:
In his most syncretic writing yet, radical urban theorist Mike Davis explores the combat zone that is contemporary urban America, a ceaseless battle waged both within cities and against nature. Using environmental science as his frame of understanding, Davis examines themes of urban life today—white flight, deindustrialization, housing and job segregation and discrimination, and federal policy—and looks at areas he calls "national sacrifice zones," military landscapes that simulated warfare and arms production have rendered uninhabitable. Davis begins our apocalyptically inflected tour with a trip to New York’s Ground Zero. He then takes us to "German Village," a Utah wasteland that was once a test site for Allied science advisors to rehearse the perfect plan for destroying Berlin, and to the diabolic miracle of Las Vegas, where environmental terrorism is practiced in the name of urban development. Davis also hits Los Angeles, the frontline of the "Second Civil War" sparked by American apartheid, and which lies waiting to be ignited in cities across the country.

Titre:
Magical urbanism : Latinos reinvent the U.S. big city

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$28.95
(disponible sur commande)

Résumé:
Davis focuses on the great drama of how Latinos are attempting to translate their urban demographic ascendancy into effective social power. Pundits are now unanimous that Spanish-surname voters are the sleeping giant of US politics. Though the overall vote in the 1996 elections declined significantly, the Latino share rose by a spectacular 16%. Yet electoral mobilization alone is unlikely to redress the increasing income and opportunity gaps between urban Latinos and suburban non-Hispanic whites. Thus in Los Angeles and elsewhere, the militant struggles of Latino workers and students are reinventing the American left. "Magical Urbanism" is fascinating reading for anyone who wants to grasp the future of urban America.

Titre:
Planet of slums

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$34.00
(disponible sur commande)

Résumé:
From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neo-liberal theory

Titre:
Planet of slums

Actions:

• Acheter ce livre

Prix:
$25.00
(disponible sur commande)

Résumé:
Urban theorist Davis takes a global approach to documenting the astonishing depth of squalid poverty that dominates the lives of the planet's increasingly urban population, detailing poor urban communities from Cape Town and Caracas to Casablanca and Khartoum. Davis argues health, justice and social issues associated with gargantuan slums (the largest, in Mexico City, has an estimated population of 4 million) get overlooked in world politics: "The demonizing rhetorics of the various international 'wars' on terrorism, drugs, and crime are so much semantic apartheid: they construct epistemological walls around gecekondus, favelas, and chawls that disable any honest debate about the daily violence of economic exclusion." Though Davis focuses on individual communities, he presents statistics showing the skyrocketing population and number of "megaslums" (informally, "stinking mountains of shit" or, formally, "when shanty-towns and squatter communities merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty, usually on the urban periphery") since the 1960s. Layered over the hard numbers are a fascinating grid of specific area studies and sub-topics ranging from how the Olympics has spurred the forceful relocation of thousands (and, sometimes, hundreds of thousands) of the urban poor, to the conversion of formerly second world countries to third world status. Davis paints a bleak picture of the upward trend in urbanization and maintains a stark outlook for slum-dwellers' futures