Suburbs
A Very Short Introduction
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Narrated by:
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Mike Lenz
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By:
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Carl Abbott
About this listen
We live in the suburban era. Well over half of all Americans and two-thirds of Canadians live in suburbs. Tracts of suburban bungalows ring Sydney and Melbourne. Suburban apartments rise on the outskirts of Paris, Prague, Singapore, and Beijing. Nearly everyone has a strong opinion about suburbs. Folks who love dense cities scorn "suburbia," while people who like big yards dislike bustling sidewalks and subways. Social scientists argue whether suburbs are losing their luster or if a supposed back-to-the-city trend is a mirage—a debate that has been exacerbated by uncertainty over the effects of COVID-19.
This Very Short Introduction tackles two central questions: What is the history behind a suburbanizing world? What does the suburban trend mean for society, politics, and culture? Two chapters describe the ways that the new technologies of streetcars, trains, automobiles, and internet have allowed the compact cities of Britain and the United States to grow into sprawling metropolitan regions. The following chapters explore the vertical suburbs of Europe and East Asia, improvised or do-it-yourself suburbs in both North America and Latin America, and suburbs as places of employment. The book concludes by exploring criticism and praise of suburbs in popular sociology, fiction, film, and the Americanization of twenty-first-century suburbs around the globe.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
Las Vegas is gambling's mecca - Sin City the Entertainment Capital of the World with 40 million visitors a year. But that's just part of the story. This carefully documented history tracks the rise of Las Vegas from its vital role in World War II, of the Rat Pack era of the 50s, the explosive growth of the 90s, and it's colossal collapse in the post 2008 real-estate crash. It offers a history of the iconic Strip, but also profiles the neighborhoods where over 2 million people live.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good History of Vegas - old, modern and mundane
- By Amazon Customer on 06-13-14
By: Geoff Schumacher
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Triumph of the City
- How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
- By: Edward Glaeser
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 426
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 353
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 348
America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the three percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly. Or are they? As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Urbanophile Brain Candy
- By Clay Downing on 12-18-15
By: Edward Glaeser
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Americans Against the City
- Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century
- By: Steven Conn
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
An aversion to urban density and all that it contributes to urban life, and a perception that the city was the place where "big government" first took root in America fostered what historian Steven Conn terms the "anti-urban impulse." In this provocative and sweeping audiobook, Conn explores the anti-urban impulse across the 20th century, examining how the ideas born of it have shaped both the places in which Americans live and work, and the anti-government politics so strong today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent book
- By M. M. Conroy on 09-19-20
By: Steven Conn
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Metropolis
- A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention
- By: Ben Wilson
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
In a captivating tour of cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious, millennia-spanning story how urban living sparked humankind's greatest innovations.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Sorry that I can’t rate it higher
- By BCM on 12-28-20
By: Ben Wilson
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The 99% Invisible City
- A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design
- By: Kurt Kohlstedt, Roman Mars
- Narrated by: Roman Mars
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 601
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 497
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 497
99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The 99% Invisible City
- By Louise Schraa on 01-09-21
By: Kurt Kohlstedt, and others
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Green Metropolis
- What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability
- By: David Owen
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York City.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A stupid and dangerously short sighted view
- By Gare&Sophia on 11-13-12
By: David Owen
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A History of Future Cities
- By: Daniel Brook
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Engaging and Memorable
- By Marcus Vorwaller on 04-15-14
By: Daniel Brook
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The Great Reset
- How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity
- By: Richard Florida
- Narrated by: Eric Conger
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 130
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4 out of 5 stars 78
We tend to view prolonged economic downturns, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Long Depression of the late 19th century, in terms of the crisis and pain they cause. But history teaches us that these great crises also represent opportunities to remake our economy and society and to generate whole new eras of economic growth and prosperity.
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1 out of 5 stars
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glorification of City Life
- By Ryan Riggs on 11-25-20
By: Richard Florida
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Behemoth
- A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Joshua B. Freeman
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 246
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 209
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 207
We live in a factory-made world: modern life is built on three centuries of advances in factory production, efficiency, and technology. But giant factories have also fueled our fears about the future since their beginnings, when William Blake called them "dark Satanic mills". Many factories that operated over the last two centuries - such as Homestead, River Rouge, and Foxconn - were known for the labor exploitation and class warfare they engendered, not to mention the environmental devastation caused by factory production.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Get rid of the fake accents
- By J. R. Valery on 03-13-18
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Fulfillment
- Winning and Losing in One-Click America
- By: Alec MacGillis
- Narrated by: Danny Gavigan
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Story4 out of 5 stars 172
Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Missing some important angles
- By D. Zimmerle on 08-19-21
By: Alec MacGillis
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City of the Century
- The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America
- By: Donald L. Miller
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 24 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
Here, witness Chicago's growth from a desolate fur-trading post in the 1830s to one of the world's most explosively alive cities by 1900. Donald Miller's powerful narrative embraces it all: Chicago's wild beginnings, its reckless growth, its natural calamities (especially the Great Fire of 1871), its raucous politics, its empire-building businessmen, its world-transforming architecture, its rich mix of cultures, its community of young writers and journalists, and its staggering engineering projects.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A STORY THAT TRIES TOO HARD....AND FAILS
- By The Louligan on 02-01-15
By: Donald L. Miller
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Happy City
- Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
- By: Charles Montgomery
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 380
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 340
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 340
After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and tower dwelling improvements on the car dependence of sprawl?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great book-terrible narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 02-04-19
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City
- A Guidebook for the Urban Age
- By: P. D. Smith
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4 out of 5 stars 65
For the first time in the history of our planet, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - is now living in cities. City is the ultimate guidebook to our urban centers - the signature unit of human civilization. With erudite prose, this unique work of metatourism explores what cities are and how they work. It covers history, customs and language, districts, transport, money, work, shops and markets, and tourist sites, creating a fantastically detailed portrait of the city through history and into the future.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Commuters companion
- By Anna on 05-19-13
By: P. D. Smith
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China, Inc.
- By: Ted C. Fishman
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 315
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4 out of 5 stars 78
China today is visible everywhere: In the news, in the economic pressures battering America, in the workplace, and in every trip to the store. Provocative, timely, and essential, this dramatic account of China's growing dominance as an industrial super-power by journalist Ted C. Fishman explains how the profound shift in the global economic order has occurred, and why it already affects us all.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Just read the Amazon reviews befor buying it ...
- By Dan on 08-10-05
By: Ted C. Fishman
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Jane Jacobs, Jason Epstein - introduction
- Narrated by: Donna Rawlins
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 690
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 573
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 565
Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic text, dull on audio
- By Meghan on 02-13-15
By: Jane Jacobs, and others
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A Brief History of Motion
- From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
Tom Standage's fleet-footed and surprising global histories have delighted fans and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Now, he returns with a provocative account of an overlooked form of technology - personal transportation - and explores how it has shaped societies and cultures over millennia. Beginning around 3,500 BCE with the wheel - a device that didn't catch on until a couple thousand years after its invention - Standage zips through the eras of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how each successive mode of transit embedded itself in the world we live in.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great listen
- By CKerb on 11-09-21
By: Tom Standage