Book Description

One of the hottest trends in real estate is the development of town centers and urban villages that include a mix of uses in a pedestrian friendly setting. This new book will help you navigate the unique development issues and options and show you how to make all of the elements work together. You will learn about the economic and social forces driving this trend; how these projects are being developed in master planned communities, infill, and redevelopment areas; special regulatory, market and finance issues; and how suburban planners and developers are pursuing town center concepts to create attractive gathering places for their communities. Illustrat-ed in full color, the book includes case studies and examples that describe how leading professionals met the challenges and developed innovative and successful projects. ... Read more

Book Description

PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America is a five-year plan to make Black America a prosperous and empowered race that is self-sufficient and competitive as a group by the year 2005.In this book, Dr. Anderson obliterates the myths and illusions of black progress and brings together data and information from many different sources to construct a framework for solutions to the dilemma of Black America. In PowerNomics: The National Plan, Dr. Anderson proposes new principles, strategies and concepts that show blacks a new way to see, think, and behave in race matters. The new mind set prepares blacks to take strategic steps to create a new reality for their race. It offers guidance to others who support blacks self-sufficiency.In this book, Dr. Anderson offers insightful analysis and action steps blacks can take to redesign core areas of life - Education, Economics, Politics and Religion - to better benefit their race. The action steps in each area require new empowerment tools that Dr. Anderson presents - a new group vision and a new culture of empowerment - tools designed to counter, if not break many of the racial monopolies in society. Vertical integration and Industrializing black communities are other major concepts and strategies that he presents in the book. He places a great deal of importance on building industries in black communities that are constructed upon group competitive advantages. A the same time he announced the release of PowerNomics: The National Plan, he also announced that he has established several models of the strategies he proposes in the book.PowerNomics: The Plan, is infused with Dr. Anderson's trademark creative thinking and answers questions such as:- Why are blacks the only group that equates success with working in a White corporation, government or the entertainment industry?- How did power and wealth - businesses, resources, privileges, income and control of all levels of government get so disproportionately distributed into the hands of White society?

- Industrialization brings many economic benefits to the geographic locations where it occurs. Why has Black America never been industrialized and how can it be done?- Why do visible blacks and black leaders avoid blackness, identifying the focus of their work instead for people of color, minorities, women, gays , the poor, Hispanics, and other immigrant groups?- What enables a constant stream of immigrant groups to politically, economically and socially dominate blacks?- In politics, how is it that blacks can be monolithic and loyal political supporters yet their group receives no quid pro quo benefits?- In his first book, Black Labor, White Wealth, Dr. Anderson examined history and showed how racism has locked and boxed blacks into a near permanent underclass. Picking up where Black Labor, White Wealth left off, PowerNomics: The National Plan is the missing link between the historical analysis of problems facing blacks and the strategies needed to correct those problems.Dr. Anderson's books are a phenomenon in the publishing industry. His work is distinguished because he has turned books that are serious, non-fiction, and heavy on black history, into best-sellers. PowerNomics: The National Plan continues that pattern. It is an astounding work. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Good read
I thought this book was very informative. Although it does bring to light the work needed to be done on the Black pysche to turn around our economic situation.

Bravo! The Time Has Come
This is an extremely powerful idea. Nevertheless, what the author has in mind, to say the least, is a most daunting task. Which, of course, begs the question: has the author successfully employed the aims of his book?

Inasmuch as Dr. Anderson's concepts require extraordinary organizational skills, superb fund-raising ability, a working economic model that one can study and follow, and a profound understanding of the behavioral sciences, Powernomics comes up measurably short regarding the aforementioned disciplines.

Finally, a book you have to read "Diary Of An Investment Banker", is far better, ..., Powernomics is worthy of some consideration.

James Rothschild,
Economist

Very Realistic Plan
This book offers a VERY realistic plan for Black America. The reviewer that said it was unrealistic, truly must have little to no confidence in the Black Man and Woman. I differ strongly, if we built this country we can rebuild our own communities. And I truly believe we not only have the man power, but the creative capabilities.

This book should be studied and implemented into practice AT EVERY level within EVERY ORGANIZATION that is for the empowerment of our people.

Once again Dr. Claud Anderson has taken a revolutionary step in resolving issues. Blacks are victims of a traumatic experience Slavery, and continue to be victims of an overwhelming disease- White supremacy. We need all the solutions that we can get, and these solutions have proven to me, to be a necessary guide that I will implement within my own community.

Outstanding!
Very seldom do I come across a book that serves as a real solution to one of societies real problems. Black America, take notice to Dr. Anderson's work! He clearly dissects many of the social and economic issues that have held Black America back. By the same token, he has brilliantly demonstrated how Black America can realistically overcome these problems. This book is a masterpiece and I highly recommend to all!

I wanted to like this book
I wanted to like this book but the suggestions are so unrealistic and in some cases so wrong that I can't reccomend it. ... Read more

Book Description

Hardbound. This first volume of the Handbook serves as a definitive reference source and teaching supplement for the field of regional economics, and for related fields such as geography, transportation economics, regional science and physical planning. It provides an advanced state-of-the-art survey for professional teachers, researchers and advanced (post-) graduate students in these disciplines. In addition to a representative survey of past developments, it also points to new directions and trends within the field. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Age Does Not Wither the Provocative Appeal
Some of your other reviewers have said that they believe this book is outdated.

That is, I can't help but think, the reaction of internet babies, who are spoiled by the 24 hour round-the-clock updating of bloggers.

This is a printed book that gives evidence of having been written at a certain moment in history, and in a certain portion of the planet. So what? That is true of all great books, and the question for us is whether we can (a) appreciate that context while (b) taking from them something lasting.

The answer, for this book, is decidedly afirmative.

The Sky Is Falling, the Sky Is Falling
It's probably not a good sign when you find yourself laughing at what is supposed to be a serious, scholarly, economic work, which is exactly what I found myself doing at Jane Jacob's "Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life."

This book is definitely a product of its time. It was originally issued in 1984; a time when the United States, and most other industrialized economies, were finally emerging from what had been an almost 15 year economic malaise known as "stagflation". Stagflation was a new reality in the Western world. The West had not experienced a time in its recent economic history when inflation and unemployment levels were rising in tandem. There were many pundits at the time trying to figure out why exactly that was happening. "Cities and the Wealth of Nations" is Jacobs' crack at an explanation.

Her foundation is good: cities, in so far as they are the largest accumulations of human talent and intelligence, are the economic engines of nations. However, Jacobs goes astray by forgetting what it is that makes cities important, human ingenuity, and by treating cities as organic, almost sentient beings. Cities are important because they are the largest reservoirs of human skills and for no more.

Jacobs believes that cities should be given precedence over national economies to the point where individual cities would almost certainly function better as independent city-states. In a perfect world, this may be so; but, as we all know, we hardly live in a perfect world. There is a reason why city-states either voluntarily joined to form larger nation-states or were forcibly joined by more powerful neighbors: security.

Nation-states offer security from foreign coercion to otherwise unprotected cities. It's unlikely that the thriving cities of Europe like Paris, London, or Milan would have acceded to their current heights had they remained as independent cities. They would have been constantly exposed to raids and attacks by more powerful and jealous neighbors bent on taking their wealth. A people need to feel secure in their persons in order to concentrate their efforts on the business of business. That security is best provided by the nation-state.

Also, her premise that each city would be better off with its own currency is beyond funny. Reality has shown us that any time a business is forced to deal with many different currencies to provide for most of its revenues it will be restrained by transaction costs across those currencies. The largest multinational corporations derive most of their revenues from only a few currencies. They may deal in a large number of them but only a few supply most of their revenues. This arrangement reduces transaction costs and allows businesses to use their funds in a more productive fashion.

With "Cities and the Wealth of Nations", Jacobs was sounding the death knell of Western progress. According to her, New York, London, Boston, Frankfurt, etc. should be rotting corpses of their former selves by now. Instead, the past 17 years since this book was published has seen one of the most remarkable economic expansions in the history of the world, not to mention Western civilization. Western cities are thriving despite many serious problems that need to be dealt with.

Along with these thriving cities goes thriving nations. Western nations still reign supreme when it comes to economic and military might. That last one is important because Jacobs believes that a standing military is by nature a presage of decline. It's funny though how many of our current everyday economic tranactions involve items that were spurred by defense purposes: commercial airlines, microwave ovens, communications satellites, the interstate highway system, the internet, etc. Far from being a drain on economic wealth, defense spending, within reason, is a spur to economic development of the most important kind: high-tech, cutting-edge production.

"Cities and the Wealth of Nations" is good reading for getting a glimpse into the end-of-the-world paranoia that plagues us at the end of any long economic backslide. We didn't get too much of it in 1992 because that slide was so short-lived. Although I'm sure that many "chicken little" books like this one were starting through the pipeline when we started our recovery.

Wealth Creation
"Any settlement that becomes import-replacing becomes a city." Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs

Written by an economist, this is a very unusual book. Ms. Jacobs is not hampered by orthodox preconceived notions, misleading postulated theoretical myths like utility optimization, rationality, or efficient markets. These standard phrases of neo-classical economic theory cannot be found in her book. Instead, and although her discussion is entirely nonmathematical, she uses a crude qualtitative idea of excess demand dynamics, of growth vs. decline. Her expectation is never of equilibrium. The notion of equilibrium never appears in this book. Jacobs instead describes qualitatively the reality of nonequilibrium in the economic life of cities, regions, and nations. She concentrates on the surprises of economic reality.

Jacobs argues fairly convincingly that significant, distributed wealth is created by cities that are inventive enough to replace imports by their own local production, that this is the only reliable source of wealth for cities in the long run, and that these cities need other like-minded cities to trade with in order to survive and prosper. Her expectation is of growth or decline, not of equilibrium. If she is right then the Euro and the European Union are a bad mistake, going entirely in the wrong direction. As examples in support of her argument she points to independent cites like Singapore and Hong Kong with their own local currencies. Other interesting case histories are TVA, small villages in France and Japan, other cases in Italy, Columbia, Ethiopia, US, Iran, ... .

The book begins in the chapter "Fool's Paradise' with discussions of Keynsian economics and Phillips curves (the Philips curve idea is demolished convincingly by Ormerod in "The Death of Economics"), I. Fisher and monetarism, and Marxism. These were all ideas requiring equilibria of one sort or another. Also interesting: her description why, in the long run, imperialism is bound to fail, written in 1984, well before the fall of the USSR. Her prediction for the fate of the West is not better. Jacobs is aware of the idea of feedback and relies on it well and heavily. She is a sharp observor of economic behavior and is well versed in economic history. This book will likely be found interesting by a scientifically-minded reader who is curious about how economies work, and why all older theoretical ideas (Keynes, monetarism, ... ) have failed to describe economies as they evolve.

I'm grateful to Yi-Ching Zhang of the Econophysics Forum for recommending this book.

An exciting, observant, and enduring work
Wow. Jacobs is so adept at explaining the complex currents of global, national and local economies that even the casual reader will be spellbound. The book is simultaneously radical (she essentially repudiates all modern macro-economic theory) and reasonable. This book is a great asset to anyone who wishes to comprehend the world around them.

One of the Best
I read this in 1984. It is one of the five best non-fiction books I have read. Really. It forced me to reconsider some long-held notions about the economic role of individuals, and their environments, in society. ... Read more

Book Description

Urban Economics is the market-leading text for this course. Throughout the book, the author uses simple economic analysis to explain why cities exist, where they develop, how they grow, and how different activities are arranged within cities. The author has updated the tables and charts thoroughly, and has reorganized sections of the book.The material on poverty and public policy has been extensively rewritten. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A very comprehensive overview
I had "Urban Economics" for one of my urban planning courses at graduate school.It was a pleasure to study the principles and processes of city building, growth and dynamics, through this book.Every chapter inthe book can be a title for a separate volume.So this is a verycomprehensive overall general view of economics as a determinant of urbandevelopment and form.

I particularly liked the chapters on UrbanPoverty and Housing.The chapter on poverty explains issues like incometransfers, food stamps and their effect on consumer behavior, problems ofinner cities and development policies needed to change that.

Housing hasa great chapter devoted to the peculiarities of housing as a commodity andthe effect of race and discrimination on housing patterns.The mostinteresting part concerns the "filtering" of housing from theupper income to lower income populations.

Also explained is the autooriented transportation vs mass transit and their specific roles in shapingcities.

Highly recommended.Easy to read and understand. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

For British businesses ONLY
I was very disappointed with this book.

The writing is unclear, and the focus of the book is for British tourism businesses only. It should've said something like that on the title of the book before I plunked my money down for it. Not a cheap paperback, either.

What can I say? Sometimes in life you get burned... ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Comprehensive, but way to basic
Although this book does cover numerous topics, the information provided is common sense "fluff" and not detailed at all. If you have never consulted before, this might be a good source of information; however, if you are currently a consultant considering the leap to independence, this book will be of little value to you. I don't feel it was worth the [$].

Excellent guide for Independent Consultants
David Kintler and Bob Adams have laid out a great plan to becoming an independent consultant, no matter what field you are in. It is a guided step through the beginning stages to a finished corporation with samples of legal paperwork, business letters, etc. Extremely comprehensive. ... Read more

Book Description

The revised edition of this classic text contains discussions of the latest theoretical developments in regional economics and reviews recent changes in regional policy and institutions in the European Union. New case study material based on extensive academic research in Europe and the USA has been added throughout the book.This book is organized in two free-standing parts examining firstly the economic analysis of regions and then regional policy issues. Topics covered include multiplier and impact analysis, input-output models, growth theory, migration, regional labor markets, regional policy in the EU, regional devolution, small firms policy, foreign direct investment and a detailed explanation of the methods used to evaluate regional policy. Chapters can be read independently in cases where focused information is required, and the organization of the book makes this a very flexible and effective resource for course use. ... Read more

Book Description

Hardbound. The Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare presents, in two volumes, essays on past and on-going work in social choice theory and welfare economics.The first volume consists of four parts.In Part 1 (Arrovian Impossibility Theorems), various aspects of Arrovian general impossibility theorems, illustrated by the simple majority cycle first identified by Condorcet, are expounded and evaluated.It also provides a critical survey of the work on different escape routes from impossibility results of this kind.In Part 2 (Voting Schemes and Mechanisms), the operation and performance of voting schemes and cost-sharing mechanisms are examined axiomatically, and some aspects of the modern theory of incentives and mechanism design are expounded and surveyed. In Part 3 (structure of social choice rules), the positional rules of collective decision-making (the origin of which can be traced back to a seminal proposal by Borda), the game-theoretic aspec ... Read more

Book Description

Urban and Regional Economics is the first textbook to provide an integrated framework for the study of urban and regional economics, emphasizing the importance of spatial and geographical factors. Offering a concise, accessible, and up-to-date introduction to the main foundational models, principles, and theories--including Classical, Neo-classical, and Keynesian approaches--the book uses a range of international examples to illustrate the ideas it explains. It is ideal for courses in economics, urban economics, regional economics, economic geography, land management, and urban and regional planning. ... Read more

Book Description

Low-income housing programs and lesser-known initiatives have harmed those they were meant to help while causing grave collateral damage, Mr. Husock argues.He emphasizes the deep but unappreciated importance to American society of economically diverse urban neighborhoods, and he demonstrates the historic and continuing importance of privately built "affordable" housing. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Sowell recommends
Haven't read it yet, but on Thomas Sowell's recommendation, I will. ... Read more

Book Description

Cities in a World Economy presents sociologists with a new perspective on the study of urban sociology. The decentralization and privatization of the world’s economies has radically altered such things as the organization of labor, the structure of consumption, and the distribution of earnings in ways that have yet to be fully realized.In a world economy that is truly more global than it has ever been, Sassen addresses the need to account for the global economies increasing influence on the social structures of cities. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Good for general information on a new economic order
I've read the book due to an examination about "the new city structure - contemporary geography" and it's quite good, she has a global wiew of the new city-status and its new users, the less and less importance the homless has for the city governament and the new power of the corporation, all in all a good compendium if you need to improve your knoledge about the matter. ... Read more

Book Description

Readings in Urban Economics: Issues and Public Policy gathers popular press articles, reviews of applied economics literature, and regression-based empirical studies to examine pressing public policy issues in urban areas. The readings extend beyond textbook economic theory and allow for a more in-depth and real-world analysis of a multitude of twenty-first-century urban concerns. Urban growth and urban sprawl.Housing.Economic development incentives.Crime.Race, employment, and poverty.Transportation.Public primary and secondary education.Local government.Advanced undergraduates and graduates studying urban and/or regional economics, policy, studies, affairs, and planning - as well as urban academics, practitioners, policymakers, and planners - will appreciate the editorial framework of introduction, discussion questions, samples from selected further readings, and an appendix that conveniently lists pertinent journals in applied and policy-oriented urban economics and their web sites. ... Read more

Book Description

Designed to reach a wide audience of scholars and policymakers, the Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs is an annual series that serves as a forum for cutting-edge, accessible research on urban policy. The editors seek to integrate broader research into the urban policy discussion by bringing urban studies scholars together with economists and researchers studying subjects with important urban implications.

The six papers in this issue address a variety of topics in urban economics including The Labor Market Effects of the 1960s Riots; The Rise of the Skilled City; School Funding Equalization and Residential Location for the Young and the Elderly; The Anatomy of Rent Burdens: Immigration, Growth, and Rental Housing; The Effect of Prison Releases on Regional Crime Rates; and Who Benefits Whom in Local Television Markets. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Amazingly Insightful
This is truly an amazing book. Gale and the other editor (Janet Rothenberg Pack) have assembled an outstanding bunch of essays dealing with various problems in urban affairs, including "Tax Incentives and the City" and "Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?" You will learn SO much from reading these essays. Truly some of the best writing on urban affairs I've read- and I've been teaching the subject at a large midwestern university for 30 years. ... Read more