New Books in Environmental Studies
Science:Natural Sciences
The first city to fight back against Uber, Washington, D.C., was also the first city where such resistance was defeated. It was here that the company created a playbook for how to deal with intransigent regulators and to win in the realm of local politics. The city already serves as the nation’s capital. Now, D.C. is also the blueprint for how Uber conquered cities around the world—and explains why so many embraced the company with open arms.
Drawing on interviews with gig workers, policymakers, Uber lobbyists, and community organizers, Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of a City (Princeton University Press, 2023) demonstrates that many share the blame for lowering the nation’s hopes and dreams for what its cities could be. In a sea of broken transit, underemployment, and racial polarization, Uber offered a lifeline. But at what cost?
This is not the story of one company and one city. Instead, Disrupting D.C. offers a 360-degree view of an urban America in crisis. Uber arrived promising a new future for workers, residents, policymakers, and others. Ultimately, Uber’s success and growth was never a sign of urban strength or innovation but a sign of urban weakness and low expectations about what city politics can achieve. Understanding why Uber rose reveals just how far the rest of us have fallen.
Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
The ‘Domino Effect’: Global and Regional Climate Change Impacts on Food Supply Chains
Finis Dunaway. "Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice" (UNC Press, 2021)
Brenden W. Rensink, "The North American West in the Twenty-First Century" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
Munira Khayyat, "A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon" (U California Press, 2022)
Michael Weeks, "Cattle Beet Capital: Making Industrial Agriculture in Northern Colorado" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
Off-Shore Aesthetics
Cynthia Radding, "Bountiful Deserts: Sustaining Indigenous Worlds in Northern New Spain" (U Arizona Press, 2022)
Joanne Yao, "The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order" (Manchester UP, 2022)
Scott Moore, "China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Sarah Milne, "Corporate Nature: An Insider's Ethnography of Global Conservation" (U Arizona Press, 2022)
What Went Wrong in the 1970s in the USA?: A Discussion with Bill McKibben
Matthew Thaler, "No Other Planet: Utopian Visions for a Climate-changed World" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Prakash Kashwan, "Climate Justice in India" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Max Haiven, "Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire" (Pluto Press, 2022)
Char Miller, "West Side Rising: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement" (Maverick Books, 2022)
Stephanie LeMenager and Teresa Shewry, "Literature and the Environment: Critical and Primary Sources" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Sally Weintrobe et al., "Climate Psychology: A Matter of Life and Death" (Phoenix Publishing House, 2022)
Michael Bess, "Planet in Peril: Humanity's Four Greatest Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Kasia Paprocki, "Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh" (Cornell UP, 2021)
Public Participation and Contested Hydropower Development in the Mekong River Basin
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
New Books in Philosophy
New Books in Sociology
New Books in Psychoanalysis
New Books in Anthropology
New Books in African American Studies