Common Ground in a Liquid City by Matt Hern

Common Ground in a Liquid City by Matt Hern

If we want to preserve what's still left of the natural world, we need to stop using so much of it. And, says veteran environmental activist Matt Hern, cities are the best chance we have left for a truly ecological future . . . but what does it take to make a truly sustainable city?

Common Ground in a Liquid City is a fun and engaging look at the future of urban life. Hern takes us on a journey through over a dozen urban centers, from Vancouver to Istanbul, Las Vegas, and beyond, exploring the history and current composition of cities around the globe and highlighting the elements of each that make it livable.

Each of Hern's ten chapters focuses on a central theme of city life: diversity, street life, crime, population density, water and natural life, gentrification, and globalism. What emerges in the end is an appealing portrait of what the urban future might look like--environmentally friendly, locally focused, and governed from below.

Matt Hern is an inveterate city dweller and an environmental and education activist. The editor of Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader and the author of Deschooling Our Lives and Field Day, he founded Vancouver's Car-Free Day and is the director of the Purple Thistle Center for alternative education. These days, he lives in Vancouver with his partner and daughters and lectures widely around the globe.

Matt Hern lives and works in East Vancouver with his partner and daughters. He founded, and for nine years has directed the Purple Thistle Centre, an all-ages youth-run community center for arts and activism. Among his other projects is a youth exchange program with an isolated town in northern Canada designed to bring native and non-native kids together to live, work, and travel.

His books and writing have been published on all six continents and translated into ten languages. He writes features and articles for a wide variety of publications, and continues to lecture globally.

He is the author of Field Day (New Star, 2003), Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn't Always Better (New Star, 2007), and Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future, and is the editor of Deschooling Our Lives (New Society, 1996), and Everywhere, All the Time (AK Press, 2008).

Matt holds a PhD in Urban Studies and lectures at SFU and UBC in Urban Studies and Education departments and is on faculty at the Institute for Social Ecology and Prescott College in Arizona. He remains active in a number of movements in Vancouver, is a food security activist, avid gardener and unrepentant sports fan. For more info, be sure to visit his website: www.mightymatthern.com.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781849350105
ISBN 10	1849350108
Title	Common Ground in a Liquid City
Author	Matt Hern
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	AK Press
Year published	2010-07-08
Number of pages	230
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.