Changing Urban Trends: Cultures Of Decency And Well-Being From The Premodern To The Postmodern - 9781138049338

Our contemporary public sector is deeply steeped in its history. Examining the historic patterns of urban settlements, for example, can teach us much about the development of our public sector interests: zoning (separate the slaughterhouse from the residences), the creation of public police and fire departments (protection of industrial assets), building of roads, canals and highways (suburbanization), and public school systems (the need for an educated knowledge workforce). In this unique new book, the reader is guided through premodern conditions in order to identify the paradigmatic changes that differentiate the premodern age from the modern age. The well-known contours of that transformation are then used to highlight trends that signal movements toward postmodernity in the public sector and beyond. While many urban politics books cover economic, government, and housing issues throughout history, this book digs deeper, to investigate changes in urban settlements, political systems, work organizations, educational policies, views of human nature, and religious practices. Those paradigmatic changes are then examined to ask important questions such as: What can local governments learn from premodernity in order to promote desirable developments and progressive trends? Exploring progressive and regressive strategies as well as mainstream and critical social theory in order to find possible answers to these important questions, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of urban politics and policy, as well as those interested in the ways in which our history shapes our contemporary public sector.

• | Author: Siegrun F. Freyss
• | Publisher: Routledge
• | Publication Date: Oct 14, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 198 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1138049336
• | ISBN-13: 9781138049338