New Books in Urban Studies

Over the last two decades in Beirut, graffiti makers have engaged in a fierce “war of colors,” seeking to disrupt and transform the city’s physical and social spaces. In A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut (University of Texas Press, 2024), Dr. Nadine Sinno examines how graffiti and street art have been used in postwar Beirut to comment on the rapidly changing social dynamics of the country and region.Analysing how graffiti makers can reclaim and transform cityscapes that were damaged or monopolised by militias during the war, Dr. Sinno explores graffiti’s other roles, including forging civic engagement, commemorating cultural icons, protesting political corruption and environmental violence, and animating resistance. In addition, she argues that graffiti making can offer voices to those who are often marginalised, especially women and LGBTQ people. Copiously illustrated with images of graffiti and street art, A War of Colors is a visually captivating and thought-provoking journey through Beirut, where local and global discourses intersect on both scarred and polished walls in the city.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and—because many have never been recorded—when they’re gone, it will be forever. Dr. Ross Perlin, a linguist and co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history: contemporary New York. In Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024), Dr. Perlin recounts the unique history of immigration that shaped the city, and follows six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against overwhelming odds. Dr. Perlin also dives deep into their languages, taking us on a fascinating tour of unusual grammars, rare sounds, and powerful cultural histories from all around the world.Seke is spoken by 700 people from five ancestral villages in Nepal, a hundred of whom have lived in a single Brooklyn apartment building. N’ko is a radical new West African writing system now going global in Harlem and the Bronx. After centuries of colonization and displacement, Lenape, the city’s original Indigenous language and the source of the name Manhattan (“the place where we get bows”), has just one fluent native speaker, bolstered by a small band of revivalists. Also profiled in the book are speakers of the Indigenous Mexican language Nahuatl, the Central Asian minority language Wakhi, and the former lingua franca of the Lower East Side, Yiddish.A century after the anti-immigration Johnson-Reed Act closed America’s doors for decades and on the 400th anniversary of New York’s colonial founding, Dr. Perlin raises the alarm about growing political threats and the onslaught of “killer languages” like English and Spanish. Both remarkable social history and testament to the importance of linguistic diversity, Language City is a joyful and illuminating exploration of a city and the world that made it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Kings of the Garden: The New York Knicks and Their City (Three Hills, 2024), Adam J. Criblez traces the fall and rise of the New York Knicks between the 1973, the year they won their last NBA championship, and 1985, when the organization drafted Patrick Ewing and gave their fans hope after a decade of frustrations.During these years, the teams led by Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe, Bob McAdoo, Spencer Haywood, and Bernard King never achieved tremendous on-court success, and their struggles mirrored those facing New York City over the same span. In the mid-seventies, as the Knicks lost more games than they won and played before smaller and smaller crowds, the city they represented was on the brink of bankruptcy, while urban disinvestment, growing income inequality, and street gangs created a feeling of urban despair.Kings of the Garden details how the Knicks' fortunes and those of New York City were inextricably linked. As the team's Black superstars enjoyed national fame, Black musicians, DJs, and B-boys in the South Bronx were creating a new culture expression―hip-hop―that like the NBA would become a global phenomenon. Criblez's fascinating account of the era shows that even though the team's efforts to build a dynasty ultimately failed, the Knicks, like the city they played in, scrappily and spectacularly symbolized all that was right―and wrong―with the NBA and the nation during this turbulent, creative, and momentous time.Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is everywhere in the New York metropolitan area. Founded in 1921, its portfolio includes airports, marine terminals, bus stations, bridges, tunnels, and real estate. But its history is not widely known and its inner workings are little understood by people who traverse its domain when they fly into John F. Kennedy International Airport, ride the PATH trains from New York to New Jersey, or drive across the George Washington Bridge.Mobilizing the Metropolis: How the Port Authority Built New York (U Michigan Press, 2023), by Philip Mark Plotch and Jen Nelles, aims to fill this gap in public knowledge with a history of the Port Authority. Spanning 100 years, Mobilizing the Metropolis closely charts the evolution of the Port Authority as it went from improving rail freight around New York Harbor to building bridges and managing real estate. At the same time, the book explores the evolution of the authority’s internal culture in the face of actions by elected officials in New York and New Jersey that have reduced the agency’s autonomy and affected its operations. Mobilizing the Metropolis also extracts from the history of the Port Authority useful lessons about how organizations charged with solving governmental problems can win support and engage opposition.Robert W. Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University. He is completing an oral history of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City for Cornell University Press. He can be reached at rwsnyder@rutgers.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City (U Michigan Press, 2024), Philipp Demgenski examines the complexities and changing sociopolitical dynamics of urban renewal in contemporary China. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the northeastern Chinese city of Qingdao, the book tells the story of the slow, fragmented, and contentious transformation of Dabaodao - an area in the city’s former colonial center - from a place of common homes occupied by the urban poor into a showcase of architectural heritage and site for tourism and consumption.The ethnography provides a nuanced account of the diverse experiences and views of a range of groups involved in shaping, and being shaped, by the urban renewal process - local residents, migrant workers, preservationists, planners, and government officials - foregrounding the voices and experiences of marginal groups, such as migrants in the city. Unpacking structural reasons for urban developmental impasses, it paints a nuanced local picture of urban governance and political practice in contemporary urban China. The book also weighs the positives and negatives of heritage preservation and scrutinizes the meanings and effects of “preservation” on diverse social actors. By zeroing in on the seemingly contradictory yet coexisting processes of urban stagnation and urban destruction, Seeking a Future for the Past reveals the multifaceted challenges that China faces in reforming its urbanization practices and, ultimately, in managing its urban future.Philipp Demgenski is Assistant Professor in Anthropology within the Department of Sociology at Zhejiang University, China, and a Senior Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. His research interests include intangible cultural heritage, the politics of space and place, memory, and urban redevelopment.Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chinatown has a long history in Boston. Though little documented, it represents the city's most sustained neighborhood effort to survive during eras of hostility and urban transformation. It has been wounded and transformed, slowly ceding ground; at the same time, its residents and organizations have gained a more prominent voice over their community's fate.In Forever Struggle: Activism, Identity, and Survival in Boston's Chinatown, 1880-2018 (U Massachusetts Press, 2020), Michael Liu, a lifelong activist and scholar of the community, charts its journey and efforts for survival--from its emergence during a time of immigration and deep xenophobia to the highway construction and urban renewal projects that threatened the neighborhood after World War II to its more recent efforts to keep commercial developers at bay. At the ground level, Liu depicts its people, organizations, internal battles, and varied and complex strategies against land-taking by outside institutions and public authorities. The documented courage, resilience, and ingenuity of this low-income immigrant neighborhood of color have earned it a place amongst our urban narratives. Chinatown has much to teach us about neighborhood agency, the power of organizing, and the prospects of such neighborhoods in rapidly growing and changing cities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Julie Peakman investigates the sex lives of women from 1680 to 1830, the period known as the long eighteenth century. It uncovers the various experiences of women, whether mistresses, adulteresses or those involved in the sex trade. From renowned courtesans to downtrodden streetwalkers, Julie Peakman examines the multifaceted lives of these women within brothels, on stage and even behind bars.Based on new research into court transcripts, asylum records, magazines, pamphlets, satires, songs, theatre plays and erotica, we learn of the gruesome treatment of women who were sexually active outside of marriage. Dr. Peakman looks at sex from women’s points of view, undercutting the traditional image of the bawdy eighteenth century to expose a more sordid side, of women left distressed, ostracised and vilified for their sexual behaviour.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Susan Partovi first experienced poverty medicine volunteering at a dump site in Tijuana during high school. There, she recognized the need for all people to have access to quality medical care. Over the years, she has worked in various facilities around Los Angeles County, incorporating her renegade method of going the extra mile for her patients. As Medical Director of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, she works to provide a safety net of care for the underserved skid row community and surrounding neighborhoods.Recognized internationally as a leader in street medicine, Dr. Partovi started documenting her patients' stories so that others could hear their voices. By addressing the practical and moral considerations when treating each patient, Dr. Partovi developed her philosophies about what it means to be a "good doctor." Along the way, she began to understand how her personal ethics evolved--from a challenging childhood and complicated relationships with her parents, through professional hurdles--often, she had to push against a system that doesn't always put the patient first.Renegade M.D.: A Doctor's Stories from the Streets (Bookbaby, 2024) is a powerful and inspiring memoir by Dr. Susan Partovi, a renowned street doctor who has dedicated her life to treating the impoverished around the world and people experiencing homelessness on LA's skid row. Through her stories, Dr. Partovi takes us on a journey to the heart of the challenges faced by those living on the streets, and shines a light on her unwavering commitment to advocate for social justice and to provide compassionate care to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once described as "that metropolis of dress and debauchery" by the Scottish poet David Mallet, Paris has always had a reputation for a peculiar joie de vivre, from art to architecture, cookery to couture, captivating minds and imaginations across the Continent and beyond. In Paris: A Short History, historian Jeremy Black examines the unique cultural circumstances that made Paris the vibrant capital it is today.Black explores how Paris has been shaped throughout time, starting in the first century BCE, when the city was founded by the Parisii. From a small Gallic capital conquered by the Romans, Paris transformed into a flourishing medieval city full of spectacular palaces and cathedrals, including Sainte-Chapelle and Notre-Dame de Paris. During the illustrious reigns of Louis XIV and XV, Paris became one of the most beautiful and cosmopolitan capitals in the world, before the Revolution tore French society apart, changing the city forever. The Belle Époque brought new ideas and architecture to the city, including the iconic Eiffel Tower, before the destruction of World War I and II launched a massive regeneration project. Black completes his history by exploring present-day Paris and its role as the seat of a leading power on the world stage, and its future as the host of the 2024 Olympic Games.Paris: A Short History (Thames & Hudson, 2024) deftly demonstrates that the history of Paris is about more than just a city: it is the history of a culture, a society, and a state that has impacted the rest of the world through centuries of changing fortunes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Has any American mayor ever made a greater stamp on the public consciousness than the Little Flower, Fiorello La Guardia, mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945? La Guardia is brought to life in historian Terry Golway’s “I Never Did Like Politics”: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America’s Mayor, and Why He Still Matters (St. Martin’s Press, 2024). The podcast tracks with Golway’s thematic approach to his book, which features chapters on “In Defense of Democracy,” “The Immigrant’s Friend,” and “The Anti-Politician Politician.” Golway recognizes and celebrates the Little Flower as a champion of enduring American political and cultural values that, once again today, as in his times, are under severe and seemingly unremitting stress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices