Celebrating Urban Community Life

Communal celebrations bring out the best in us, offering a place for people to come together and take a break from the routines of daily life. They are a vital aspect of city life and are increasingly popular as an urban development strategy. Celebrating Urban Community Life is a comprehensive guide to understanding and enhancing communal celebrations as a source of community capital. Drawing on case studies from New York, San Francisco, and Toronto, Melvin Delgado discusses the many ways in which fairs, festivals, and parades can enhance communal life. Providing a framework for social scientists, urban planners, and social workers to analyse and foster celebrations that benefit urban populations, the book is a valuable resource for those with an interest in this growing area of academic and practical interest.

Communal celebrations bring out the best in us, offering a place for people to come together and take a break from the routines of daily life. They are a vital aspect of city life and are increasingly popular as an urban development strategy. Celebrating Urban Community Life is a comprehensive guide to understanding and enhancing communal celebrations as a source of community capital. Drawing on case studies from New York, San Francisco, and Toronto, Melvin Delgado discusses the many ways in which fairs, festivals, and parades can enhance communal life. Providing a framework for social scientists, urban planners, and social workers to analyse and foster celebrations that benefit urban populations, the book is a valuable resource for those with an interest in this growing area of academic and practical interest.

A big city, or urban community, can be an exciting place to live, work, and play. Read to learn about life in the biggest type of community.

Festivals have always been part of city life, but their relationship with their host cities has continually changed. With the rise of industrialization, they were largely considered peripheral to the course of urban affairs. Now they have become central to new ways of thinking about the challenges of economic and social change, as well as repositioning cities within competitive global networks. In this timely and thought-provoking book, John and Margaret Gold provide a reflective and evidence-based historical survey of the processes and actors involved, charting the ways that regular festivals have now become embedded in urban life and city planning. Beginning with David Garrick’s rain-drenched Shakespearean Jubilee and ending with Sydney’s flamboyant Mardi Gras celebrations, it encompasses the emergence and consolidation of city festivals. After a contextual historical survey that stretches from Antiquity to the late nineteenth century, there are detailed case studies of pioneering European arts festivals in their urban context: Venice’s Biennale, the Salzburg Festival, the Cannes Film Festival and Edinburgh’s International Festival. Ensuing chapters deal with the worldwide proliferation of arts festivals after 1950 and with the ever-increasing diversifycation of carnival celebrations, particularly through the actions of groups seeking to assert their identity. The conclusion draws together the book’s key themes and sketches the future prospects for festival cities. Lavishly illustrated, and copiously researched, this book is essential reading not just for urban geographers, social historians and planners, but also for anyone interested in contemporary festival and events tourism, urban events strategy, urban regeneration regeneration, or simply building a fuller understanding of the relationship between culture, planning and the city.

Although there are thousands of community gardens all across North America, only a few cities, such as Seattle, include them in their urban planning process. This book reports on the making of Seattles community gardens and the multiple roles they play in the citys life. It touches on such issues as planning and design strategies; stewardship; community, professional, and government participation; and programs built around the gardens, especially those aimed at low-income and minority communities, immigrants, and seniors. It will appeal to a broad audience of professionals, educators, community organizers, citizens, and policy makers interested in improving the quality of life in their own communities.

Ecologically-focused interventions have taken center stage in addressing a range of social problems. This book synthesizes the latest research and theoretical advances of these approaches to offer multiple urban green revitalization strategies for combatting gun violence that is primarily impacting African-American/Black, Asian-American, and Latinx urban communities across the nation. Solutions include the introduction of greenspaces (greening), conversion of distressed buildings and vacant lots, and other structural changes to a community. This resource provides readers with a centralized place to draw upon research findings and includes illustrative case studies. Current and future social workers and other helping professionals will be able to work more effectively with the communities of color they serve to bolster interventions and advocate against gun violence.

"There are numerous preconceived notions about this topic, as well as profound concerns on how gun violence is altering the life course of residents, family members, neighborhoods, and the nation as a whole. Some of these notions will be widely embraced while others may enjoy limited acceptance. Regardless of stance, we can acknowledge that gun violence undermines a quest for a healthy and productive life. Further, making this book urban focused, has race and socio-economic class assume prominence bringing a social justice and equity lens (Zakrison, Williams, & Crandall, 2021)"--

This book is specifically focused on preparing social workers for practice and research focused on Latinos in the United States. It provides readers with a multi-faceted and updated perspective on this community, including dispersal patterns across the United States and tapping cultural assets for development of social interventions.

The term "sanctuary city" gained a new level of national recognition during the 2016 United States presidential election, and immigration policies and debates have remained a top issue since the election of Donald Trump. The battle over immigration and deportation will be waged on many fronts in the coming years, but sanctuary cities - municipalities that resist the national government's efforts to enforce immigration laws - are likely to be on the front lines for the immediate future, and social workers and others in the helping professions have vital roles to play. In this book, Melvin Delgado offers a compelling case for the centrality of sanctuary cities' cause to the very mission and professional identity of social workers and others in the human services and mental health professions. The text also presents a historical perspective on the rise of the sanctuary movements of the 1970s and 2000s, thereby giving context to the current environment and immigration debate. Sanctuary Cities, Communities, and Organizations serves as a helpful resource for human service practitioners, academics, and the general public alike.

This volume is a thorough re-examination of civil unrest and discontent in the United States, particularly the intersection of democracy and violence. The work argues that unrest and violence are embedded rituals of social and political "disconsent" and are constitutive features of citizen-based democracy. As such, they are part of how democratic life works: unrest is the eruptive, visible grammar of citizens in a democratic society. Democracy and citizen unrest and violence in the United States are set within a deeper history. The author traces the roots of American democracy – and the rituals of disconsent – to their sources in ancient Mediterranean political society, demonstrating that early democratic theory and practice understood unrest and revolt as morally grounded. Featuring case studies of recent episodes of political and social "disconsent" in the United States, the volume contextualizes the Black Lives Matter protests, unrest around police and institutional violence, and the Capitol insurrection on January 6. Through this, the book provides an important social theoretical lens through which to understand American discontent around racial injustice, political suppression, and citizen disillusionment.