Not long ago, neighborhoods such as the South Bronx, South Central Los Angeles, and Boston's Roxbury were crime-ridden wastelands of vacant lots and burned-out buildings, notorious symbols of urban decay. In House by House, Block by Block, Alexander von Hoffman tells the remarkable stories of how local activists and community groups helped turn these areas around.
For sixty years, federal policy has attempted with little success to solve the problems of housing and poverty in America's inner cities. Yet increasingly, local organizations are picking up where Washington has left off. In a...

Assembled in honor of Eduard F. Sekler, Professor Emeritus of the History of Architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, Form, Modernism, and History is a fitting tribute to a man who as architect, historian, and preservationist has been instrumental in restoring history to a prominent place in contemporary architectural theory and practice. In twenty-two probing and original essays, distinguished scholars and designers--including architects Henry Cobb and Rafael Moneo--combine the insights of history, theory, and practice in order to reveal the evolution of design thought...