Kirjahaku

Davis demonstrates how decisions and ambitions in the social community fed into the economic community

Forced in the 1980s to develop new sources of funding, municipalities are now creating new strategies for producing housing citizens can afford. One of the most promising of those schemes is third sector housing, a private non market alternative to publicly owned projects. The ten essays comprising "The Affordable City" provide case studies of political struggles to move toward this model in such cities as Burlington, Boston, and San Diego. John Emmeus Davis has directed housing policy in Burlington, Vermont, for over a decade. He has also taught at Tufts, New Hampshire College, and MIT.

Why, Diane Davis asks, has Mexico City, once known as the city of palaces, turned into a sea of people, poverty, and pollution? Through historical analysis of Mexico City, Davis identifies political actors responsible for the uncontrolled industrialization of Mexico's economic and social center, its capital city. This narrative biography takes a perspective rarely found in studies of third-world urban development: Davis demonstrates how and why local politics can run counter to rational politics, yet become enmeshed, spawning ineffective policies that are detrimental to the city and the nation. The competing social and economic demand of the working poor and middle classes and the desires of Mexico's ruling Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI) have led to gravely diminished services, exorbitant infrastructural expenditures, and counter-productive use of geographic space. Though Mexico City's urban transport system has evolved over the past seven decades from trolley to bus to METRO (subway), it fails to meet the needs of the population, despite its costliness, and is indicative of the city's disastrous and ill-directed overdevelopment. Examining the political forces behind the thwarted attempts to provide transportation in the downtown and sprawling outer residential areas, Davis analyzes the maneuverings of local and national politicians, foreign investors, middle classes, agency bureaucrats, and various factions of the PRI. Looking to Mexico's future, Davis concludes that growing popular dissatisfaction and frequent urban protests demanding both democratic reform and administrative autonomy in the capital city suggest an unstable future for corporatist politics and the PRI's centralized one-party government. Diane E. Davis, Associate Professor of Sociology and Historical Studies at the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for Social Research, has written numerous articles on politics and economics in Mexico.

Man has been on earth for millions of years. Recorded history has covered only a few thousands of these years. Archeologists can account for a few thousand more. If you think about it, that leaves time for numerous rises and falls of advanced cultures, sufficient time that no sign of their existence would be recognizable today. Some of these near extinctions were probably triggered by worldwide events. These events in a few hundred years, if remembered at all, were only myths and legends. I think the pressure of these events are probably responsible for the subtle unexplained changes in man's development over the eons.In Angel Stones, time has come for another step in man's never-ending development. The problem is governments, some organized religions, and technology stand in the way and must be dealt with. The story centers around Bill, a spiritually disillusioned engineer; David, freelance reporter with a cat named Satan; a woman with an unknown past; and a widowed American Indian. Their lives are profoundly changed, directly and indirectly, by a spiritual individual only known as Adam who, at various times, gives them small pure white stones that radiate energy and feel warm to the touch. All are being watched by two separate shadowy government operatives. Also watching is an unforeseen outside entity that steps in to alleviate all problems.Angel Stones can be read and enjoyed be almost any age. After reading it, you may find yourself looking at the world and life in a slightly different way. Read at your own risk.