Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy

The Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series, edited by David Stradling, Larry Bennett, Davarian Baldwin, and Yue Zhang, was founded by the late Zane L. Miller to publish books that examine past and contemporary cities. While preserving the series’ foundational focus on the policy, planning, and environmental issues so central to metropolitan life, we also join scholarly efforts to push the boundaries of urban studies. We are committed to publishing work at the shifting intersections of cultural production, community formation, and political economy that shape cities at all scales, from the neighborhood to the transnational. Proposals may be submitted to Temple University Press Editor-in-Chief Aaron Javsicas or the series editors at the email addresses linked above. 

In honor of Zane Miller, the late founding editor of our series, Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy, we invite first-time authors to apply for a grant of up to $2,500 to help advance the careers of scholars from underrepresented communities with limited financial resources.  For more information, Zane L. Miller Book Development Award

Architectures of Revolt

The Cinematic City circa 1968

Edited by Mark Shiel

A groundbreaking exploration of how filmmaking, architecture, and urban planning shaped and were shaped by mass protest movements in and around 1968

262 pages | 6 x 9 | 34 halftones

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Atlanta Unbound

Enabling Sprawl through Policy and Planning

Carlton Wade Basmajian

How metropolitan Atlanta’s regional planning groups accelerated the sprawl they were trying to control

288 pages | 7 x 10 | 32 color photos

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Believing in Cleveland

Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation”

J. Mark Souther

Explores how civic and business leaders used image-making in an effort to reimagine and revive Cleveland in the decades after World War II​

284 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 figures, 12 halftones, 2 maps

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Beyond Preservation

Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities

Andrew Hurley

A framework for stabilizing and strengthening inner-city neighborhoods through the public interpretation of historic landscapes

248 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 maps 14 halftones

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Bringing the Civic Back In

Zane L. Miller and American Urban History

Edited by Larry Bennett, John D. Fairfield, and Patricia Mooney-Melvin

A critical appraisal of the career of Zane L. Miller, one of the founders of the new urban history

226 pages | 5.5 x 8.25

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Building a Social Contract

Modern Workers’ Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit

Michael McCulloch

Forthcoming Fall 2023 — Pre-order your copy now

240 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 table, 9 figures, 61 halftones

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"Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind"

Contemporary Planning in New York City

Scott Larson

How Bloomberg's urban development relies on a blending of Moses and Jacobs

198 pages | 6 x 9

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Building the Urban Environment

Visions of the Organic City in the United States, Europe, and Latin America

Harold L. Platt

An international comparative study that considers how competing agents of change have interacted to build the urban environment

312 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 figure, 14 maps

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Church and State in the City

Catholics and Politics in Twentieth-Century San Francisco

William Issel

How Catholic religious activism shaped the language and outcome of San Francisco's debates about over the common good and the public interest.

336 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 halftones

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Communities and Crime

An Enduring American Challenge

Pamela Wilcox, Francis T. Cullen, and Ben Feldmeyer

A systematic exploration of how criminology has accounted for the role of community over the past century

274 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 line drawings

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Constructing the Patriarchal City

Gender and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Toronto, and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s

Maureen A. Flanagan

An original, comparative examination of how ideas about gender resulted in the consolidation of the patriarchal city in the Anglo-Atlantic urban world

342 pages | 6 x 9 | 14 halftones, 6 maps

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The Death and Life of the Single-Family House

Lessons from Vancouver on Building a Livable City

Nathanael Lauster

A detailed study of how Vancouver moved away from the single-family house and the effects of this transformation, detailed by interviews with residents

262 pages | 6 x 9 | 7 tables, 11 figures, 4 halftones, 6 maps

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Democratizing Urban Development

Community Organizations for Housing across the United States and Brazil

Maureen M. Donaghy

Examining how community organizations fight to prevent displacement and secure affordable housing across cities in the U.S. and Brazil

234 pages | 5.5 x 8.25 | 2 tables

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Environmental Activism and the Urban Crisis

Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago

Robert R. Gioielli

How the postwar decay of America's industrial city's helped to give rise to environmental movement

224 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 halftones

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Ethnic Renewal in Philadelphia's Chinatown

Space, Place, and Struggle

Kathryn E. Wilson

How Philadelphia’s Chinatown resisted and engaged with urban renewal processes in the late twentieth century

270 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 tables, 2 figures, 15 halftones, 3 maps

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