UC Press Blog

In "Building the Black City," Joe William Trotter, Jr., traces the growth of Black cities and political power from the preindustrial era to the present.

By Stacy Torres, author of At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban AmericaI never planned to study older adults. Old places that survived waves of gentrification initially fascinated me, as a lifelong New Yorker who had struggled to make ends meet and mourned the loss of beloved neighborho

By Kristian Karlo Saguin, author of Urban Ecologies on the Edge: Making Manila's Resource FrontierCities around the world are learning to live with the challenges of increasing urban ecological precarity. In watery Manila, the metropolitan population of around 25 million is constantly expose

“A must-read for those interested in understanding how anti-Black policy decisions drive mass incarceration, gentrification, and dire racial inequality in Washington, DC, and throughout our nation."—Derek Hyra, author of Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino CityBefore Gentrification s

By Dan Immergluck, author of Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century AtlantaRising home prices and rents are on everyone’s mind these days. In the wake of COVID-19, housing costs rose rapidly in most cities. Yet the U.S. housing crisis is not new, and has been worsenin

For World Wildlife Day, Peter Alagona discusses his new book, The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities. Peter AlagonaThe Accidental Ecosystem tells the story of how cities across the United States went from having little wildlife to filling, dramatically and unexpecte

Welcome to the virtual tour of A People’s Guide to New York City! Unlike traditional guidebooks that highlight the glitz, glamor, consumption, and spectacle of cities, often at the expense of people of color, immigrants, the working class, and LGBTQ communities, A People’s Guide to NYC offers an alt

By Stephen Wheeler, co-author of Reimagining Sustainable Cities: Strategies for Designing Greener, Healthier, More Equitable CommunitiesAs one of the landmark publications of the last year in the social sciences, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and Mark Wengro

By Mitchell Schwarzer, author of Hella Town: Oakland's History of Development and DisruptionIt was the spring of 1964 and the sea air caressed my face as my father drove us along the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. He pulled off to a rest stop. We got out of the car and raced to the shoreline. “You s

By Colin McFarlane, author of Fragments of the City: Making and Remaking Urban WorldsI was standing in front of two side-by-side pictures, both black and white images of houses on an ordinary street. When I stood back, I realised that the photos were in fact of the same house. One image of t