David Halle - Böcker

This book provides in-depth comparative studies of the two largest cities and metropolitan areas in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. The chapters, written by leading experts and based upon the most current information available from the Census and other sources, discuss and explicitly compare politics, economic prospects and the financial crisis, and a host of social issues. Reform movements in education, ethnic politics, budget stringency, strategies to deal with crime, the development and political context of infrastructure, rising inequality, immigration and immigrant communities, the segregation of the poor and minorities and the new segregation of the economic elite, environmental impacts and attempts to deal with them, the image of both cities and regions in the movies, architectural trends, and the differential impact and response to the financial crisis, including foreclosure patterns, are all examined in this volume.This comparative framework reveals that old paradigms such as urban "decline" or "resurgence" are inadequate for grasping the new challenges and complexities facing America's two major global cities. Each is responding in sometimes similar and different ways to the challenges brought on by two events that defined the last decade: the attack of 9/11 and its aftermath, and the continuing effects of the financial crisis. How all of these events, institutions, and trends play out in the New York and Los Angeles regions is important not only for the two cities, but also as a harbinger for other U.S. cities, the entire nation, and cities worldwide. New York and Los Angeles provides an essential guide for understanding the many forces that determine the future of our cities.

This book provides in-depth comparative studies of the two largest cities and metropolitan areas in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. The chapters, written by leading experts and based upon the most current information available from the Census and other sources, discuss and explicitly compare politics, economic prospects and the financial crisis, and a host of social issues. Reform movements in education, ethnic politics, budget stringency, strategies to deal with crime, the development and political context of infrastructure, rising inequality, immigration and immigrant communities, the segregation of the poor and minorities and the new segregation of the economic elite, environmental impacts and attempts to deal with them, the image of both cities and regions in the movies, architectural trends, and the differential impact and response to the financial crisis, including foreclosure patterns, are all examined in this volume.This comparative framework reveals that old paradigms such as urban "decline" or "resurgence" are inadequate for grasping the new challenges and complexities facing America's two major global cities. Each is responding in sometimes similar and different ways to the challenges brought on by two events that defined the last decade: the attack of 9/11 and its aftermath, and the continuing effects of the financial crisis. How all of these events, institutions, and trends play out in the New York and Los Angeles regions is important not only for the two cities, but also as a harbinger for other U.S. cities, the entire nation, and cities worldwide. New York and Los Angeles provides an essential guide for understanding the many forces that determine the future of our cities.

This is the story of New York's west side no longer stars the Sharks and the Jets. Instead it's a story of urban transformation, cultural shifts, and an expanding contemporary art scene. The Chelsea Gallery District has become New York's most dominant neighborhood for contemporary art, and the streets of the west side are filled with gallery owners, art collectors, and tourists. Developments like the High Line, historical preservation projects like the Gansevoort Market, the Chelsea galleries, and plans for megaprojects like the Hudson Yards Development have redefined what is now being called the "Far West Side" of Manhattan. David Halle and Elisabeth Tiso offer a deep analysis of the transforming district in New York's New Edge, and the result is a new understanding of how we perceive and interpret culture and the city in New York's gallery district. From individual interviews with gallery owners to the behind-the-scenes politics of preservation initiatives and megaprojects, the book provides an in-depth account of the developments, obstacles, successes, and failures of the area and the factors that have contributed to them.

Over a period of six years, at factory and warehouse, at the tavern across the road, in their homes and union meetings, on fishing trips and social outings, David Halle talked and listened to workers of an automated chemical plant in New Jersey's industrial heartland. He has emerged with an unusually comprehensive and convincingly realistic picture of blue-collar life in America. Throughout the book, Halle illustrates his analysis with excerpts of workers' views on everything from strikes, class consciousness, politics, job security, and toxic chemicals to marriage, betting on horses, God, home-ownership, drinking, adultery, the Super Bowl, and life after death. Halle challenges the stereotypes of the blue-collar mentality and argues that to understand American class consciousness we must shift our focus from the "working class" to be the "working man."

David Halle's idea was to connect culture to everyday life by showing how people actually use the artifacts of culture paintings, photographs, sculpture - in the most intimate of all settings: the home. Halle takes the reader on a tour of 160 homes in and around New York City. From affluent townhouses on Manhattan's Upper East Side and rowhouses in blue-collar Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island, Halle walked through living rooms and dens, inventoried the works on display, and talked to homeowners about the art around them. The result is a portrait of the uses of art and a look at the meanings of art for its primary audience - those who buy it and live with it. Are there differences in artistic preferences between social classes or races or between urban and suburban homes? Similarities? How do choices in art works - and the way we display them - speak to our dreams, desires, pleasures, and fears? And what do they say about the real cultural boundaries between elite and popular, high and low? Halle examines landscapes, both priceless heirlooms and mass-produced sunsets; abstract paintings and prints; "primitive" sculpture; and the vibrantly coloured portraits of religious art.He also discusses the gatherings of family photographs that fill every home. Why have saints vanished from religious art? How do liberal whites and middle-class blacks find different meanings in the African art they both proudly display? What accounts for the disappearance of the painted family portrait? Why are landscapes universally popular? What accounts for the popularity of abstract art in affluent homes, but nowhere else? These are just some of the fascinating questions Halle confronts. Refusing easy generalisations about culture and class, Halle shows that art has a different set of meanings outside museums and galleries; for its consumers, the experience of art isn't always what artists and critics say it is. With floor plans, drawings, and photographs, this book should be enjoyed on many levels. It describes the way a broad cross-section of people live with art. It records an astonishing variety of artistic experience. And it changes the ongoing conversation about what culture contains, what it controls, and what the products called "art" mean.

This volume takes the reader on a tour of 160 homes in and around New York City, from affluent townhouses on Manhattan's Upper East Side and rowhouses in blue-collar Brooklyn to the middle- and upper-class suburbs of Long Island. The result text gives a portrait of the use of cultural artifacts - fine art, photographs, religious art, in private lives.

No two cities are more symbolic of the modern American metropolis than New York and Los Angeles. But while New York boasts a recently revitalized urban centre, Los Angeles is the classic example of sprawl and decentralization, with multiple clusters of economic and social activity dispersed throughout its surrounding area. This volume presents advanced studies that consider this fundamental difference between New York and Los Angeles while comparing and contrasting politics and culture in each region. An esteemed group of contributors from a wide variety of disciplines considers issues that include immigration, the effects of race and class on residence, the efficacy of public schools, the value of welfare reform, the meaning of mayoral politics, the function of charter reform, and the respective roles of the cinema and art scenes in each city. Capturing much of what is new and vibrant in urban studies today, "New York and Los Angeles" should prove to be valuable reading for scholars in that field, as well as in sociology, political science and government.

No two cities are more symbolic of the modern American metropolis than New York and Los Angeles. But while New York boasts a recently revitalized urban centre, Los Angeles is the classic example of sprawl and decentralization, with multiple clusters of economic and social activity dispersed throughout its surrounding area. This volume presents advanced studies that consider this fundamental difference between New York and Los Angeles while comparing and contrasting politics and culture in each region. An esteemed group of contributors from a wide variety of disciplines considers issues that include immigration, the effects of race and class on residence, the efficacy of public schools, the value of welfare reform, the meaning of mayoral politics, the function of charter reform, and the respective roles of the cinema and art scenes in each city. Capturing much of what is new and vibrant in urban studies today, "New York and Los Angeles" should prove to be valuable reading for scholars in that field, as well as in sociology, political science and government.