Free Digital Access to C21 Books During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In response to the large-scale shift to distance learning at colleges and universities around the world, the University of Pennsylvania Press has announced that all content available through its digital publishing partners will be upgraded to unlimited usage for all users at participating libraries and institutions at no cost through June 30, 2020. To help promote this special opportunity for Urban Link subscribers, Penn IUR has curated a list of freely accessible chapters from titles in the City in the Twenty-First Century (C21) series, edited by Penn IUR Co-Directors Eugénie Birch and Susan Wachter. As cities around the world plan their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope this selection will help inform the discussion by presenting examples of urban responses to similar challenges from the recent past.

From: Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina (Penn Press, 2006)

"Restarting the Economy," by Mark Zandi, Steven Cochrane, Fillip Ksiazkiewicz, and Ryan Sweet

This essay provides a policy-makers’ roadmap for restarting a regional economy in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster. The roadmap has six main instructions: (1) supplying short-term income and other financial assistance to distressed households; (2) reviving the regional economy’s disrupted export-oriented businesses; (3) providing financial, legal, and regulatory forbearance; (4) reconstructing public infrastructure and institutions; (5) implementing tax incentives for housing and business development; and (6) facilitating a well-functioning insurance market. Read Chapter »

From: Miami Transformed: Rebuilding America One Neighborhood, One City at a Time (Penn Press, 2012)

"Expanding Economic Opportunity," by Manny Diaz

The lack of growth and investment in Miami led the city toward a decline where opportunities for prosperity and advancement were few. Miami, the headlines declared, was the poorest large city in America. The joke went that “moving on up” meant from fifth poorest to number one. Read Chapter »

From: Women's Health and the World's Cities (Penn Press, 2011)

“Women’s Health and the City: A Comprehensive Approach for the Developing World,” by Julio Frenk and Octavio Gómez-Dantés

Women living in cities in the developing world face an increasingly complex set of health challenges that can be met only through innovative and comprehensive strategies. This chapter discusses the nature of these challenges and some strategies to address them. Read Chapter »

“Design of Healthy Cities for Women,” by Eugénie L. Birch

Cities are places where women can live healthy or unhealthy lives. By definition, cities are large, are densely settled, and support heterogeneous populations. When properly designed, they provide clean water, efficient transportation, universal education, health services, personal and property protection, and solid and sanitary waste disposal. Read Chapter »

From: The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (Penn Press, 2012)

"The Devil's Privilege," by Scott Gabriel Knowles

Disasters threatened and destroyed industrializing American cities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a ferocity that challenged the notion of modernity itself as a sustainable urban condition. Chicago’s infamous 1871 fire leveled whole neighborhoods as well as the entire business district in a three-day blaze. Read Chapter »

From: Growing Greener Cities: Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century (Penn Press, 2008)

"Greening Cities: A Public Realm Approach," by Alexander Garvin

During my senior year in college, my roommate gave me a book that changed my life: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, published in 1961. The following year, a second book appeared that changed the lives of many others: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Read Chapter »

"The Role of Citizen Activists in Urban Infrastructure Development," by Paul R. Brown

Integrated programs for water management and environmental services that combine large-scale infrastructure with demand-side management are gaining wide acceptance throughout the United States. These programs, whether in the areas of water supply, wastewater, stormwater, or solid waste, alter relationships between utilities and their customers. Read Chapter »

From: Slums: How Informal Real Estate Markets Work (Penn Press, 2016)

“Urban Governance and Development of Informality in China and India,” by Arthur Acolin, Shahana Chattaraj, and Susan M. Wachter

Urban informality characterizes many settlements at the center and periphery of cities in rapidly urbanizing countries. In these nations, residents lack adequate access to drinking water, sanitation, sewage treatment, health, and education, among other public goods. Read Chapter »

“Making a Difference in the Predominantly Informal City,” by David Gouverneur

Historical perspective on urban informality illuminates the limitations of certain brands of urban planning, design, and management in developing countries. Such perspective calls attention to the need for creative approaches to help steer the future of new informal settlements. Read Chapter »

From: Neighborhood and Life Chances: How Place Matters in Modern America (Penn Press, 2013)

"Health and Residential Location," by Janet Currie

Residents of poor neighborhoods are in worse health, on average, than residents of richer neighborhoods. In order to know whether improving the physical environment in a neighborhood will make people better off, it is first necessary to know whether the relationship between place and outcomes is causal. Read Chapter »

From: Policy, Planning, and People: Promoting Justice in Urban Development (Penn Press, 2013)

"The City as Local Welfare System," by Alberta Andreotti and Enzo Mingione

Since the 1960s, economic, demographic, social, and political change has been reshaping individual and institutional life throughout the industrialized world. These changes have brought back to the fore the crucial role played by local context in both economic development and social welfare programs. Read Chapter »

From: Global Urbanization (Penn Press, 2011)

“Thinking About Urban Services Needs in Fast-Growing Cities: Housing in Sao Paulo, by Suzana Pasternak”

The prevalent forms of housing among low-income groups in Brazil vary according to the city and period considered. In each place and time, a specific form of housing has been prevalent in the urban landscape. Three basic types of housing stand out: slums (cortiços), squatter settlements (favelas), and peripheral land developments, with home ownership and self-construction. Read Chapter »

From: The City After Abandonment (Penn Press, 2012)

"Targeting Neighborhoods, Stimulating Markets: The Role of Political, Institutional, and Technical Factors in Three Cities," by Dale E. Thomson

Cities experiencing abandonment face complex community development demands with diminishing resources. This challenge requires city leaders to allocate resources strategically. Read Chapter »

From: My Storm: Managing the Recovery of New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (Penn Press, 2012)

"Reviving a Drowning Economy," by Edward Blakely

Knowledgeable policy scholars argued openly That perhaps New Orleans had little economic reason to live. Leading policy economist Ed Glaeser, in a piece he described as a “thought experiment,” which I learned about in my first visit to Harvard in 2007, said that with the federal government pledging billions of dollars in aid, most of which never materialized, people would be better off not thinking about a place-based strategy that emphasized cash payments to residents. Read Chapter »

From: Design After Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities (Penn Press, 2012)

"Toward Social Urbanism for Shrinking Cities," by Brent D. Ryan

Far away from the shrinking cities of the United States, the rapidly growing city of Medellín, Colombia, experienced a revolution between 2003 and 2010. This was a political revolution, but not the kind that one might expect given Latin America’s twentieth-century history. Read Chapter »

From: Revitalizing American Cities (Penn Press, 2012)

"The Historical Vitality of Cities," by Edward Glaeser

At the start of the nineteenth century, Americans left dense enclaves on the eastern seaboard to populate the empty spaces in the hinterland; at the start of the twenty-first century, Americans are moving back to cities. After a period of net losses in the second half of the twentieth century, many older cities are again experiencing population growth. Read Chapter »

"Revitalizing Small Cities: A Comparative Case Study of Two Southern Mill Towns," by Kimberly Zeuli

At the start of the twentieth century, the textile industry had started to shift its base from New England to the South; by the 1920s, North Carolina had become the center. At the peak of the industry in the United States, in the late 1940s, 9.3 percent of all textile jobs were located in North Carolina. Many of these jobs were in rural, small towns. Read Chapter »

From: Shared Prosperity in America's Communities (Penn Press, 2016)

"Socioeconomic Mobility in the United States: New Evidence and Policy Lessons," by Raj Chetty

Since the eighteenth century, the United States has been hailed as a “land of opportunity,” a society where all children can succeed, regardless of their family background. However, modern empirical  research reveals that the rate of upward income mobility in the United States is actually lower than in many other countries. Read Chapter »

"Equitable and Inclusive Growth Strategies for American Cities," by Victor Rubin, Angela Glover Blackwell, and Chris Schildt

America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity calls for an inclusive, equitable model for growth, not only in the name of justice and fairness, but as an economically smart strategy. Strategies which ensure that all Americans can have genuine opportunities to succeed and contribute will not only reduce in equality but will spur economic expansion and the revitalization of our cities. Read Chapter »

Note: If you are having trouble accessing the Press's digital content, please contact Kim Leichner at kleic@upenn.edu.