Shaping Places explains how towns and cities can turn real estate development to their advantage to create the kind of places where people want to live, work, relax and invest. It contends that the production of quality places which enhance economic prosperity, social cohesion and environmental sustainability require a transformation of market outcomes. The core of the book explores why this is essential, and how it can be delivered, by linking a clear vision for the future with the necessary means to achieve it. Crucially, the book argues that public authorities should seek to shape, regulate and stimulate real estate development so that developers, landowners and funders see real benefit in creating better places.

Key to this is seeing planners as market actors, whose potential to shape the built environment depends on their capacity to understand and transform the embedded attitudes and practices of other market actors. This requires planners to be skilled in understanding the political economy of real estate development and successful in changing its outcomes through smart intervention. Drawing on a strong theoretical framework, the book reveals how the future of places will come to be shaped through constant interaction between State and market power.

Filled with international examples, essential case studies, color diagrams and photographs, this is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students taking planning, property, real estate or urban design courses as well as for social science students more widely who wish to know how the shaping of place really occurs.

The urban world is an exciting terrain for investigating the central institutions, structures and problems of the social world and how they have transformed through the last 200 years. This Reader comprises sections on urban social theory, racial and social difference in the city, culture in everyday life, culture and the urban economy, globalization and transnational social relations and the regulation of urban space.

Drawing together seminal selections covering the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, this Reader includes forty-three significant writings from eminent names such as Simmel, Wirth, Park, Burgess, DuBois, Zukin, Sassen, and Harvey. The 2nd edition illuminates more recent urban issues such as sprawl, sustainability, immigration and urban protest. Selections are predominantly sociological, but some readings cross disciplinary boundaries.

Providing an essential resource for students of urban studies, this book brings together important but, till now, widely dispersed writings. Editorial commentaries precede each entry; introducing the text, demonstrating its significance, and outlining the issues surrounding its topic, whilst the associated bibliography enables deeper investigations.

In recent years it has become common-place to hear claims that public space in cities across the globe has become the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and privileged, at the expense of the needs of wider society. Whether it is the privatization of public space through commerical developments like shopping malls and business parks, the gentrification of existing spaces by campaigns against perceived anti-social behaviour or the increasing domination of public areas by private transport in the form of the car, the urban public space is seen as under threat. But are things really that bad? Has the market really become the sole factor that influences the treatment of public space? Have the financial and personal interests of the few really come to dominate those of the many? To answer these questions Matthew Carmona and Filipa Wunderlich have carried out a detailed investigation of the modern public spaces of London, that most global of cities. They have developed a new typology of public spaces applicable to all cities, a typology that demonstrates that to properly assess contemporary urban places means challenging the over-simplification of current critiques. Global cities are made up of many overlapping public spaces, good and bad; this book shows how to analyze this complexity, and to understand it.

In recent years it has become common-place to hear claims that public space in cities across the globe has become the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and privileged, at the expense of the needs of wider society. Whether it is the privatization of public space through commerical developments like shopping malls and business parks, the gentrification of existing spaces by campaigns against perceived anti-social behaviour or the increasing domination of public areas by private transport in the form of the car, the urban public space is seen as under threat. But are things really that bad? Has the market really become the sole factor that influences the treatment of public space? Have the financial and personal interests of the few really come to dominate those of the many? To answer these questions Matthew Carmona and Filipa Wunderlich have carried out a detailed investigation of the modern public spaces of London, that most global of cities. They have developed a new typology of public spaces applicable to all cities, a typology that demonstrates that to properly assess contemporary urban places means challenging the over-simplification of current critiques. Global cities are made up of many overlapping public spaces, good and bad; this book shows how to analyze this complexity, and to understand it.

Focusing on six leading contemporary architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Bernard Tschumi, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Steven Holl, this book puts forward a unique and insightful analysis of "neo-avant-garde" architecture. It discusses the spectacle and excess which permeates contemporary architecture in reference to the present aesthetic tendency for image making, but does so by applying the tectonic of theatricality discussed by the 19th-century German architect Gottfried Semper. In doing so, it breaks new ground by opening up a dialogue between the study of the past and the design of the present. The work of each discussed architect is seen as addressing a historiographical problem. To this end, and this is the second important aspect of this book, the chosen buildings are discussed in terms of the thematic of the culture of building (the tectonic of column and wall for example) rather the formal, and this through a discussion that is informed by the latest available theories. Having set the aesthetic implication of the processes of the digitalization of architecture, the book's conclusion highlights "strategies" by which architecture might postpone the full consequences of digitalization, and thus the becoming of architecture as ornament on its own right.

English Regional Planning 2000-2010 chronicles a vital feature of recent UK planning activity, during the period of the Blair and Brown Labour governments up to 2010. It deals particularly with the regional scale of planning during these years, whereby large steps forward were made, but where policy making often proved very controversial. One purpose of the book is to learn from the many areas of policy development, method and skills which evolved during the decade up to 2010. This will mean that a future return to strategic planning should not have to reinvent the wheel. This book also helps to inform such planning in the rest of the developed world where higher-level planning is more prevalent.

The book has eight chapters written by experts active in English regional planning during these years, alongside two chapters by the editors introducing and concluding on the experience as a whole. Thematic topics covered include the way in which housing and employment development was tackled in the varying English regional contexts, and the growing influence of transport and environmental factors on the spatial strategy. Process elements covered include how policy was made through public consultation and working with numerous stakeholders (economic, social, environmental), how the public examination of issues was organised, followed by final consideration by central government, and how monitoring informed the next policy review.

The authors do not gloss over the difficulties encountered in the highly contested world of English local and regional politics, or the ways in which central government management of the regional planning process made life on the ground difficult for those engaged in the process. Nevertheless the account as a whole shows how a wealth of innovative and forward looking practices were developed. This multi-faceted study contributes to the understanding of how strategic planning can provide the framework for guiding spatial change and allocating resources, looking to a long-term sustainable future.

The book tackles a number of challenging questions: How can we conceptualize architectural objects and practices without falling into the divides architecture/society, nature/culture, materiality/meaning? How can we prevent these abstractions from continuing to blind architectural theory? What is the alternative to critical architecture? Mapping controversies is a research method and teaching philosophy that allows divides to be crossed. It offers a new methodology for following debates surrounding contested urban knowledge. Engaging in explorations of on-going and recent controversies and re-visiting some well-known debates, the analysis foregrounds, traces and maps the changing sets of positions triggered by design: the 2012 Olympics stadium in London, the Welsh parliament in Cardiff, the Heathrow airport runway extension, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower. By mobilizing digital technologies and new computational design techniques we are able to visualize the variety of factors that impinge on design and track actors' trajectories, changing groupings, concerns and modalities of action. The book places architecture at the intersection of the human and the nonhuman, the particular and the general. It allows its networks to be re-established and to run between local and global, social and technical. Mapping controversies can be extrapolated to a wide range of complex phenomena of hybrid nature.

In "A Country of Cities," author Vishaan Chakrabarti argues that well-designed cities are the key to solving America's great national challenges: environmental degradation, unsustainable consumption, economic stagnation, rising public health costs and decreased social mobility. If we develop them wisely in the future, our cities can be the force leading us into a new era of progressive and prosperous stewardship of our nation. In compelling chapters, Chakrabarti brings us a wealth of information about cities, suburbs and exurbs, looking at how they developed across the 50 states and their roles in prosperity and globalization, sustainability and resilience, and heath and joy. Counter to what you might think, American cities today are growing faster than their suburban counterparts for the first time since the 1920s. If we can intelligently increase the density of our cities as they grow and build the transit systems, schools, parks and other infrastructure to support them, Chakrabarti shows us how both job opportunities and an improved, sustainable environment are truly within our means. In this call for an urban America, he illustrates his argument with numerous infographics illustrating provocative statistics on issues as disparate as rising childhood obesity rates, ever-lengthening automobile commutes and government subsidies that favor highways over mass transit. The book closes with an eloquent manifesto that rallies us to build "a Country of Cities," to turn a country of highways, houses and hedges into a country of trains, towers and trees.
Vishaan Chakrabarti is the director of Columbia University's Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE). In March 2012, Chakrabarti became a partner at SHoP Architects, where he will be working on such projects as the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn. An architect and planner, Chakrabarti has worked in both the public and private sectors: as a top executive at Related Companies; a director at the New York City Planning Commission; an associate partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; a transportation planner for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Walter Gropius associated standardisation with promoting civilisation in 1935, yet Andrew Carnegie's influence on the proliferation of pattern book public library plans internationally predated these observations by 50 years. Through the first twenty years of his programme, he supported the erection of almost three thousand public buildings across Britain and America. Though better acknowledged in the US than the UK, this philanthropic contribution radically extended the scope of public provision and remains incomparable in its scale and scope in both nations. Frequently engraved with the self-deifying slogan Let there be Light , open access to navigate these new interior public spaces after work coincided with the first provision of electric light. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, professional groups had sought to specify minimum standards of natural light and air for schools and hospitals. However, the commercial quantification of electricity accelerated the development of a readily comparable vocabulary to prescribe adequate quantities of light for all tasks regardless of their location or orientation. Seeking to gauge the extent of universal values, this book concentrates on the design and performance of a handful of early Carnegie library buildings in Britain and America, identifying their response to contemporary design theory, but also by contrast to their respective local environmental contexts. It examines whether their standards of provision were equitable and if these privately financed public buildings were the first roots of generically standardised public environments to be shared transatlantically. The book also argues that the public library building type can provide a datum for acknowledging the twentieth century legacy of shared international environmental standards for public spaces more broadly.

Can an architect pass through walls? Can the city permeate a house? In The Dissolution of Buildings, architect Angelo Bucci presents projects in his native Sao Paulo and abroad. Advocating an architecture that is "the opposite of global action," his work responds to the topography of the city and to its urban environment. In a lecture delivered at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Bucci discusses work designed with his firm SPBR, projects that span from the scale of the house to the city. His built work is here accompanied by an excerpt from his doctoral dissertation, which explores how the devices available to architecture-and the sectional manipulation of groundplanes in particular-can mitigate some of the inequities and exclusions built in to the fabric of the contemporary city. An essay by Kenneth Frampton frames these projects within the rich lineage of Brazilian house design and members of the Paulista school such as Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Joao Batista Vilanova Artigas.

Over the past few years there has been a proliferation of new kinds of retail space. Retail space has cropped up just about everywhere in the urban landscape: in libraries, workplaces, churches and museums. In short, retail is becoming a more and more manifest part of the public domain. The traditional spaces of retail, such as city centres and outlying shopping malls, are either increasing in size or disappearing, producing new urban types and whole environments totally dedicated to retail. The creation of these new retail spaces has brought about a re- and de-territorialisation of urban public space, and has also led to transformations in urban design and type of materials used, and even in the logic and ways through which these design amenities meet the needs of retailers and/or consumers. This book describes how the retailisation of public domains affects our everyday life and our use of the built environment. Taking an architectural and territorial perspective on this issue, it looks specifically at how retail and consumption spaces have changed and territorialised urban life in different ways. It then develops a methodology and a set of concepts to describe and understand the role of architecture in these territorial transformations.

This book is about the unprecedented challenges facing the world's cities as they expand and develop in response to demographic change, human aspirations and the forces of globalization. Most of that growth is taking place in the developing countries and it is here that the megacities (places with over ten million people) seem destined to emerge during the next few decades. While there are considerable variations in the rates of city expansion between and within the different world regions, much of that growth has taken place as formless urban sprawl, as well as the slums and squatter settlements to be found in many of the world's cities. These urbanizing areas face acute economic, social and environmental problems. They stem from, amongst other things, fundamental changes in the nature of work, the economic crisis that began in 2008, the continuing, and often growing, inequalities within the urban population and from the severe pollution and hazardous living conditions that afflict many urban communities. Without suitable action to address them, those problems are likely to worsen as the effects of human induced climate change become ever more apparent. So how can our cities become truly liveable places? Published in tandem with ISOCARP's 47th World Congress held in Wuhan, China, the many case studies in this publication describe new planning and other approaches that seek to create more sustainable, more liveable, cities.

The value of design for contributing to environmental solutions and a sustainable future is increasingly recognised. It spans many spheres of everyday life, and the ethical dimension of design practice that considers environmental, social and economic sustainability is compelling. Approaches to design recognise design as a practice that can transform human experience and understanding, expanding its role beyond stylistic enhancement. The traditional roles of design, designer and designed object are therefore redefined through new understanding of the relationship between the material and immaterial aspects of design where the design product and the design process are embodiments of ideas, values and beliefs. This multi-disciplinary approach considers how to create design which is at once aesthetically pleasing and also ethically considered, with contributions from fields as diverse as architecture, fashion, urban design and philosophy. The authors also address how to teach design based subjects while instilling a desire in the student to develop ethical work practices, both inside and outside the studio.

Latinos are one of the largest and fastest growing social groups in the United States, and their increased presence is profoundly shaping the character of urban, suburban, and rural places. This is a response to these developments and is the first book written for readers seeking to learn about, engage and plan with Latino communities. It considers how placemaking in marginalized communities sheds light on, and can inform, community-building practices of professionals and place dwellers alike.

Dialogos: Placemaking in Latino Communities will help readers better understand the conflicts and challenges inherent in placemaking, and to make effective and sustainable choices for practice in an increasingly multi-ethnic world. The essays explore three aspects of place: the appropriation and territorialization of the built environment, the claiming of rights through collective action, and a sense of belonging through civic participation. The authors illustrate their ideas through case studies and explain the implications of their work for placemaking practice.

A consistent theme about planning and design practice in Latino communities emerges throughout the book: placemaking happens with or without professional planners and designers. All of the essays in Dialogos demonstrate the need to not only imagine, build, and make places with local communities, but also to re-imagine how we practice democracy inclusive of cross-cultural exchange, understanding, and respect. This will require educators, students, and working professionals to incorporate the knowledge and skills of cultural competency into their everyday practices.

Most of the professional training, thinking and strategies of architects, urban designers and planners, are strictly three-dimensional. In reality of course the city is four dimensional, and one needs to acknowledge the influence of time in planning and design strategies. Similarly, there has been relatively little analysis of the importance of interim, short-term or meanwhile activities in urban areas. In an era of increasing pressure on scarce resources, we cannot wait for long-term solutions to vacancy or dereliction. Instead, we need to view temporary uses as increasingly legitimate and important in their own right. They can be a powerful tool through which we can drip-feed initiatives for incremental change as and when we have the resources while being guided by a loose-fit vision.

Peter Bishop and Lesley Williams explore the growing interest among practitioners at the cutting edge of architecture, urban design and regeneration, in temporary, interim, pop-up or meanwhile uses for land and buildings in our urban areas. They explore the origins and the social, economic and technological drivers behind this phenomenon, and its place within modern planning theory and practice. The Temporary City challenges our preoccupation with long-term strategies and masterplans and questions our ability to achieve these in the face of increasing resource constraints and political and economic uncertainty. The book includes sixty-eight diverse case studies from Europe and North America which illustrate the range of temporary use opportunities and the benefits that these can bring.

This is essential reading for all those struggling to address the current problems of urban renewal in an era of great change. It offers a prism through which to view the city as a rich mosaic of time-limited, but inspiring urban interventions."

How does the design of a neighborhood affect the people who live there? In this thoughtful, engaging book, Sidney Brower explains how a neighborhood's design lays the groundwork for the social relationships that make it a community. Blending social science with personal interviews, Brower shares the lessons of planned communities from historic Riverside, Illinois, to archetypal Levittown, New York, and Disney's Celebration, Florida. Through these inspirational stories, readers will discover the characteristics of neighborhoods that promote the attitudes and behaviors of a healthy community. Neighbors and Neighborhoods is an eye-opener for everyone who's wondered what makes their local neighborhoods tick. It demystifies the way planners, architects, developers, organizers, and citizens come together in crafting a community's physical elements, policies, programs, and processes. Readers will come away with a new understanding of their roles in creating the communities they want.

You're overseeing a large-scale project, but you're not an engineering or construction specialist, and so you need an overview of the related sustainability concerns and processes. To introduce you to the main issues, experts from the fields of engineering, planning, public health, environmental design, architecture, and landscape architecture review current sustainable large-scale projects, the roles team members hold, and design approaches, including alternative development and financing structures. They also discuss the challenges and opportunities of sustainability within infrastructural systems, such as those for energy, water, and waste, so that you know what's possible. And best of all, they present here for the first time the Zofnass Environmental Evaluation Methodology guidelines, which will help you and your team improve infrastructure design, engineering, and construction.

Contributors include:
Pierre B langer, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Christopher Benosky, AECOM
Joe Bryan, Halcrow
Richard Forman, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
James Grant, HNTB
Erin Hyland, Halcrow
Susannah Kerr Adler, Parsons Brinckerhoff
Mohsen Mostafavi, Harvard University Graduate School of Design Gregory Norris, Harvard University School of Public Health
SCS Engineers
Shaun O Rourke, AECOM
SK Telecom
Tom Pedersen, CDM
Bill Valentine, HOK John Williams, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs

Women continue to be extremely under-represented in the architectural profession. Despite equal numbers of male and female students entering architectural studies, there is at least 17-25% attrition of female students and not all remaining become practicing architects. In both the academic and the professional fields of architecture, positions of power and authority are almost entirely male, and as such, the profession is defined by a heterosexual, Eurasian male perspective. This book argues that it is vital for all architectural students and practitioners to be exposed to a diversity of contemporary architectural practices, as this might provide a first step into broadening awareness and transforming architectural engagement. It considers the relationships between feminist methodologies and the various approaches toward design and their impact upon our understanding and relationship to the built environment. In doing so, this collection challenges two conventional ideas: firstly, the definition of architecture and secondly, what constitutes a feminist practice. This collection of up-and-coming female architects and designers use a wide range of local and global examples of their work to question different aspects of these two conventional ideas. While focusing on feminist perspectives, the book offers insights into many different issues, concerns and interpretations of architecture, proposing through these types of engagement, architecture can become more culturally, politically and environmentally relevant. This 'next generation' of architects claim feminism as their own and through doing so, help define what feminism means and how it is evolving in the 21st century.

Far more than being about a single artwork, this book participates in the myriad conversations and debates on the meaning of public art. Essays by Mark Gevisser, Mpho Matsipa, Alexandra Dodd, and Jonathan Cane and Zen Marie prise open critical questions about public space in Johannesburg; Oliver Barstowís interviews with the various collaborators on the sculpture?from the commissioning agent to the steelworker?reveal the complexities and challenges of creating such a massive work in so short a time (construction and installation took a mere six weeks); and the extraordinary images by John Hodgkiss of the making of the sculpture, alongside two evocative photo essays on fire walker vendors (by Ben Law-Viljoen) and old city monuments (by Alastair McLachlan), suggest the metaphorical power of Fire Walker as well as the fragile hold of street vendors over their small share of city space.

Housing is a major contributor to CO2 emissions in Europe and America today and the construction of new homes offers an opportunity to address this issue. Providing homes that achieve "zero carbon", "carbon neutral", "zero-net energy" or "energy-plus" standard is becoming the goal of more innovative house-builders globally, whilst energy providers seek to decarbonise the energy supply to new and existing development. Various new technical systems for achieving these goals are beginning to emerge. For example the passive house whose energy requirement for space heating and cooling is almost zero; the smart grid that has revolutionized the management of energy, whilst enabling the connection of small-scale, renewable energy producers and electric vehicles to the grid; or the European super-grid which will enable zero carbon energy to be generated in the Sahara desert and stored in Norway. This book explores the diverse approaches that are being adopted around the world to deliver zero carbon homes and the different societal systems and geographic circumstances in which they have developed. It postulates a roadmap for delivering zero carbon homes, together with a toolbox approach for policy and practice to suit particular national and local circumstances. A series of case studies are presented that offer lessons for delivering zero carbon homes. These examples are also used to demonstrate how prototype systems can move into the mainstream. The book highlights some of the instruments and mechanisms that could be used to support this transformation and addresses the wider implications of introducing these innovative systems in terms of industry, lifestyle and urban form.

Recent societal changes have brought about renewed interest from architects, town planners, housing officials and the public in terraces and townhouses. The small footprint that this style of house occupies allows a sustainable high density approach to habitation, slowing sprawl and creating energy-efficient affordable living.

Townhouses have been used for hundreds of years, and their evolution is covered from their inception right up to the present day. With the changing demographics of buyers in mind, Avi Friedman details how the design of these houses can be adapted to keep-up with contemporary needs.

Friedman uses a systematic approach to cover the many facets of townhouses from interior design and construction methods, to urban planning issues like adjusting to the site s natural conditions, street configurations and open spaces. This approach creates a book which will be a valuable resource for those involved in the planning, design and creation of terraced and town houses.

Over 150 detailed diagrams and plans, and eighty photos, illustrate the essential elements of this style of housing. In the final chapter, lessons learnt throughout the book are draw together in ten broad ranging case study projects, showing how the various aspects can be put into practice.

Recent societal changes have brought about renewed interest from architects, town planners, housing officials and the public in terraces and townhouses. The small footprint that this style of house occupies allows a sustainable high density approach to habitation, slowing sprawl and creating energy-efficient affordable living. Townhouses have been used for hundreds of years, and their evolution is covered from their inception right up to the present day. With the changing demographics of buyers in mind, Avi Friedman details how the design of these houses can be adapted to keep-up with contemporary needs. Friedman uses a systematic approach to cover the many facets of townhouses from interior design and construction methods, to urban planning issues like adjusting to the site's natural conditions, street configurations and open spaces. This approach creates a book which will be a valuable resource for those involved in the planning, design and creation of terraced and town houses. Over 150 detailed diagrams and plans, and eighty photos, illustrate the essential elements of this style of housing. In the final chapter, lessons learnt throughout the book are draw together in ten broad ranging case study projects, showing how the various aspects can be put into practice.

"Designing for Zero Waste is a timely, topical and necessary publication. Materials and resources are being depleted at an accelerating speed and rising consumption trends across the globe have placed material efficiency, waste reduction and recycling at the centre of many government policy agendas, giving them an unprecedented urgency. While there has been a considerable literature addressing consumption and waste reduction from different disciplinary perspectives, the complex nature of the problem requires an increasing degree of interdisciplinarity. Resource recovery and the optimisation of material flow can only be achieved alongside and through behaviour change to reduce the creation of material waste and wasteful consumption. This book aims to develop a more robust understanding of the links between lifestyle, consumption, technologies and urban development. "--

This book is about a subject that Michael Greenberg has worked on and lived with for almost forty years. He was brought up in the south Bronx at a time when his neighborhood suffered from terrible air and noise pollution, and domestic waste went untreated into the Hudson River. For him, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was a blessing. It included an ethical position about the environment, and the law required some level of accountability in the form of an environmental impact statement, or EIS.

After forty years of thinking about and working with NEPA and the EIS process, Greenberg decided to conduct his own evaluation from the perspective of a person trained in science who focuses on environmental and environmental health policies. This book of carefully chosen real case studies goes beyond the familiar checklists of what to do, and shows students and practitioners alike what really happens during the creation and implementation of an EIS.