Facadism - the preservation of historic facades, the creation of facsimiles in front of new buildings and the decorative exercises of postmodernism - is accused of destroying architectural innovation, of divorcing the interior and exterior of buildings and of reducing townscapes to theatre sets. Its defenders describe facadism as the way urban tradition and progress walk hand in hand.
Facadism presents a critical analysis of a concept central to the way in which the city is being remodelled. Assessing architectural and townscape philosophies and their aesthetics, the principles of urban conservation, the process of heritage planning and the market forces of urban development, the book builds a complete picture of the causes and effects of facadism in the Twentieth Century.

This book explores the notion of affective space in relation to architecture. It helps to clarify the first-person, direct experience of the environment and how it impacts a person's emotional states, influencing their perception of the world around them. Affective space has become a central notion in several discussions across philosophy, geography, anthropology, architecture and so on. However, only a limited selection of its key features finds resonance in architectural and urban theory, especially the idea of atmospheres, through the work of German phenomenologist Gernot Boehme. This book brings to light a wider range of issues bound to lived corporeal experience. These further issues have only received minor attention in architecture, where the discourse on affective space mostly remains superficial. The theory of atmospheres, in particular, is often criticized as being a surface-level, shallow theory as it is introduced in an unsystematic and fragmented fashion, and is a mere "easy to use" segment of what is a wider and all but impressionistic analytical method. This book provides a broader outlook on the topic and creates an entry point into a hitherto underexplored field. The book's theoretical foundation rests on a wide range of non-architectural sources, primarily from philosophy, anthropology and the cognitive sciences, and is strengthened through cases drawn from actual architectural and urban space. These cases make the book more comprehensible for readers not versed in contemporary philosophical trends.

Gentrification is one of the most debilitating-and least understood-issues in American cities today. Scholars and community activists adjoin in Gentrification, Displacement, and Alternative Futures to engage directly and critically with the issue of gentrification and to address its impacts on marginalized, materially exploited, and displaced communities. Authors in this collection begin to unpack and explore the forces that underlie these significant changes in an area's social character and spatial landscape. Central in their analyses is an emphasis on racial formations and class relations, as they each look to find the essence of the urban condition through processes of demographic change, economic restructuring, and gentrification. Their original findings locate gentrification within a carefully integrated theoretical and political framework and challenge readers to look critically at the present and future of gentrification studies. Gentrification, Displacement, and Alternative Futures is a vital read for scholars and researchers, as well as planners and organizers hoping to understand the contemporary changes happening in our urban areas.

This book advocates an approach to lighting design that focuses on how people experience illumination. Lighting Design in Shared Public Spaces contextualises light, dark and lighting design within the settings, sensations, ideas and imaginaries that form our understandings of ourselves and the world around us. The chapters in this collection bring a new perspective to lighting design, arguing for an approach that addresses how lighting is experienced, understood and valued by people. Across a range of new case studies from Australia, Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, the authors account for lighting design's crucial role in shaping our dynamic and messy experiential worlds. With many turning to innovative ethnographic methodologies, they powerfully demonstrate how feelings of comfort, safety, security, vulnerability, care and well-being can configure in and through how people experience and manipulate light and dark. By focusing on how lighting is improvised, arranged, avoided and composed in relation to the people and things it acts upon, the book advances understandings of lighting design by showing how improved experiences of the built environment can result from more sensitive and context-specific illumination. The book is intended for social scientists who are interested in the lit or sensory world, as well as designers, architects, urban planners and others concerned with how the experience of light, dark and lighting might be both better understood and implemented in our shared public spaces.

Offers pragmatic information on the realities of day-to-day practice from some of the most innovative, respected, and visionary leaders in the planning profession today. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this guide provides straightforward lessons from today's most effective planners on the core values, skills, and techniques needed for success. Through personal, real-life examples from the trenches, these experts explain in their own words what works, what doesn't, and why.

Originally published in 1956, this book provides a non-technical analysis of contemporary building by on the of the world's greatest architects. Published a few years after the end of WW2, it was an inspiring and constructive picture of what kind of living could lie ahead for Western industrial society. This book, the result of many year in the forefront of architectural experiment and achievement by the author, outlines in practical terms the road to improved existence through science, mass production in building and renewed emphasis on the individual.

This book provides an empirical analysis of the concept of play as a form of spatial practice in urban public spaces. The introduced City-Play-Framework (CPF) is a practical urban analysis tool that allows urban designers, landscape architects and researchers to develop a shared awareness when opening up this window of possibility for adventure. Two case studies substantiate and illustrate the development process and testing of the framework in Canberra, Australia, and Potsdam, Germany. The appropriation of public spaces that transcend boundaries can facilitate an intrinsic connection between people and their immediate environment, towards a more joyful ontological state of human existence in which imagination, co-creation and a sense of agency are key elements of the design approach. The framework presents an alternative understanding of public spaces and public life, reflecting on theory and its implications for practice in a post-pandemic world in dense urban centres. A bridge between theory and practice, this book explores possibilities on what future design ought to be when openness and ambiguity are consciously integrated parts of practice and process. The book presents a valuable discussion on public space and play for academic audiences across a wide range of disciplines such as landscape architecture, urban design, planning, architecture and urban sociology, which is informative for future practice.

The aim of this book is to highlight the great potential of decentralized (i.e. local or urban) energy policies in achieving environmentally-benign developments for modern cities. Urban sustainability is placed in the context of the debate on global sustainable development. A wide array of policy initiatives is discussed and evaluated, ranging from market-based energy policies to technological innovation policies for the energy sector. A theoretical framework for technology adoption processes is developed and empirically tested. The main question addressed is: which are the critical success factors for successful urban energy policies? This question is also dealt with in a meta-analytic context by assessing and comparing the performance of energy policies in various European cities, with a particular view to renewable energy.

This book examines the use of big data in regenerative urban environment and how data helps in functional planning and design solutions. This book is one of the first endeavors to present the data-driven methods for regenerative built environments and integrate it with the novel design solutions. It looks at four specific areas in which data is used - urban land use, transportation and traffic, environmental concerns and social issues - and draws on the theoretical literature concerning regenerative built environments to explain how the power of big data can achieve the systematic integration of urban design solutions. It then applies an in-depth case study method on Asian metropolises including Beijing and Tehran to bring the developed innovation into a research-led practical context. This book is a useful reference for anyone interested in driving sustainable regeneration of our urban environments through big data-centric design solutions.

This book tackles the emerging smart urbanism to advance a new way of urban thinking and to explore a new design approach. It unravels several urban transformations in dualities: economic relationality and centrality, technological flattening and polarisation, and spatial division and fusion. These dualities are interdependent; concurrent, coexisting, and contradictory, they are jointly disrupting and reshaping many aspects of contemporary cities and spaces. The book draws on a suite of international studies, experiences, and observations, including case studies in Beijing, Singapore, and Boston, to reveal how these processes are impacting urban design, development, and policy approaches. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many changes already in motion, and provides an extreme circumstance for reflecting on and imagining urban spaces. These analyses, thoughts, and visions inform an urban imaginary of smart design that incorporates change, flexibility, collaboration, and experimentation, which together forge a paradigm of urban thinking. This paradigm builds upon the modernist and postmodernist urban design traditions and extends them in new directions, responding to and anticipating a changing urban environment. The book proposes a smart design manifesto to stimulate thought, trigger debate, and, hopefully, influence a new generation of urban thinkers and smart designers. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in the fields of urban design, planning, architecture, urban development, and urban studies.

This book is a comparative analysis of the architecture of central public spaces of capital cities in Central and Eastern Europe during the period of their authoritarian and post-authoritarian development. It demonstrates that national identity transformations cause structural changes in urban public spaces, and theorises identity and national identity within urban planning in order to explain the influence of historical, cultural, mental, social as well as ideological and political conditions on the processes of shaping and perceiving the architecture of public space. The book addresses the process of shaping and restructuring historic centres of European capital cities of Kiev, Moscow, Berlin, and Warsaw, which developed under authoritarian regime conditions throughout the 20th century and were characterised by ideological determinism and the influence of state ideology and politics on the architecture of public spaces. The book will be useful for urban planners, architects, land management specialists, art historians, political scientists, and readers interested in the theory and history of cities, the fundamentals of urban planning and architecture, and the planning of cities and public spaces.

By focusing on the skyscraping transnational building, this book bridges two key debates on the transformation and emerging problems besetting major cities - globalization and ecological and sustainable building design. While such structures tend to be constructed and/or used by transnational companies and are generally viewed as emblems of a 'global city', they nevertheless impact seriously on their local environment, posing numerous environmental burdens on it. By examining office blocks held by multinational firms in Amsterdam, Sao Paolo and Beijing, the book analyses how transnational buildings might be made sustainable. It compares and contrasts the different social mechanisms that are, or may be, in place and how sustainable building practices that are being activated in certain locations could be adopted elsewhere.

Environmental quality is one of the most important issues faced by contemporary urban and regional policy. Amenities such as access to the natural environment, attractive neighbourhood characteristics and high quality public goods and services, play a direct role in determining where people choose to live and how much they are willing to do so. Likewise, negative environmental conditions, such as contamination, influence the real estate markets and the 'value' of a region. Increasingly, regions become winners or losers based on the quality of life they offer their inhabitants. Bringing together a team of leading scholars, this book addresses the issues of environmental valuation, answering questions such as: What kinds of features matter? How large of an affect do they have? How do they affect the spatial distribution of the population? And how should the value that people place on their environment affect urban and regional policy?

A study of particular aspects of the politics of planning a new town, this book, originally published in 1980, covers events from the inception of Stevenage in 1946 up to 1978. As a case study, the focus is on two expansion schemes, which were intended to extend the designated area of the town, and on the public protest that the two schemes engendered. Emphasis is placed on the structure and action of three groups of people: the 'urban managers' - the Stevenage Development Corporation; Stevenage industrialists; and local organisations engaged in protest. The theoretical focus is on the thesis of 'urban managerialism': the book examines the constraints placed upon both the structure and action of the Stevenage urban managers over the previous thirty years. In showing how matters work in practice, it directs light on issues of theory which other sociologists of planning, such as Pickvance and Castells, had only discussed in the abstract. The author argues that the experience of Stevenage illustrates a case of urban policy (particularly in housing and employment) being determined by the interests of industry alone, while at the same time pointing to the interrelationship of Stevenage industry and the town's Development Corporation. He examines the membership, strategies and aims of the various protest groups involved over the years, and casts considerable doubt on the notion that the groups were 'for democracy' and 'against bureaucracy'. Finally, he concludes, controversially, that in Stevenage's case, public participation and protest were basically irrelevant to the decision-making processes.

The volume examines the role of telecommunications in the development process. While it seems obvious that telecommunications contribute to the efficient operation and productive growth of an economy, telecommunications may be a cause, a consequence, and a manifestation of development. There has been a growing interest among researches in examining the impact of telecommunications in both industrialized and developing societies. The purpose of this volume is to bring together the research in the field in order to make it more widely available, and to put research questions and findings within a development framework.

Two hundred years ago, Sir Stamford Raffles established the modern settlement of Singapore with the intent of seeing it become 'a great commercial emporium and fulcrum'. But by the time independence was achieved in 1965, the city faced daunting problems of housing shortage, slums and high unemployment. Since then, Singapore has become one of the richest countries on earth, providing, in Sir Peter Hall's words, 'perhaps the most extraordinary case of economic development in the history of the world'. The story of Singapore's remarkable achievements in the first half century after its independence is now widely known. In Planning Singapore: The Experimental City, Stephen Hamnett and Belinda Yuen have brought together a set of chapters on Singapore's planning achievements, aspirations and challenges, which are united in their focus on what might happen next in the planning of the island-state. Chapters range over Singapore's planning system, innovation and future economy, housing, biodiversity, water and waste, climate change, transport, and the potential transferability of Singapore's planning knowledge. A key question is whether the planning approaches, which have served Singapore so well until now, will suffice to meet the emerging challenges of a changing global economy, demographic shifts, new technologies and the existential threat of climate change. Singapore as a global city is becoming more unequal and more diverse. This has the potential to weaken the social compact which has largely existed since independence and to undermine the social resilience undoubtedly needed to cope with the shocks and disruptions of the twenty-first century. The book concludes, however, that Singapore is better-placed than most to respond to the challenges which it will certainly face thanks to its outstanding systems of planning and implementation, a proven capacity to experiment and a highly developed ability to adapt quickly, purposefully and pragmatically to changing circumstances.

- The book tackles five cutting-edge topics in the field of urban studies: the anti-progress movement, resilient urban model, localism, the urban commons, and the bottom-up urbanism. - The use of an attractive cultural narrative, the eco-lifestyle, to analyse and interpret architectural and urban spaces. - The use of the ecological crisis as starting point and backbone of that narrative. This topic is a mainstream concern in contemporary society.

This volume studies the urbanisation trends of medium-sized cities of India to develop a typology of urban resilience. It looks at historic second-tier cities like Nashik, Bhopal, Kolkata and Agra, which are laboratories of smart experiments and are subject to technological ubiquity, with rampant deployment of smart technologies and dashboard governance. The book examines the traditional values and systems of these cities that have proven to be resilient and studies how they can be adapted to contemporary times. It also highlights the vulnerabilities posed by current urban development models in these cities and presents best practices that could provide leads to address impending climate risks. The book also offers a unique Resilience Index that can drive change in the way cities are imagined and administered, customised to specific needs at various scales of application. Part of the Urban Futures series, the volume is an important contribution to the growing scholarship of southern urbanism and will be of interest to researchers and students of urban studies, urban ecology, urban sociology, architecture, geography, urban design, anthropology, cultural studies, environment, sustainability, urban planning and climate change.

Exploring Food and Urbanism looks at the ways food and cities interconnect in a diversity of places across the globe. The book's focus moves from transformations in feeding the city and its hinterland in Istanbul, Turkey, through neighbourhoods struggling with food access in Blantyre, Malawi, to the challenges in making convivial public food spaces in Cairo. It explores everyday buying practices in Islamabad food markets that reflect wider changes in food cultures in Pakistan. The possibilities for growing food in suburban Cape Town in South Africa are tested, while possibilities for sharing meals using online methods to bring cooks and eaters together are considered across the Netherlands. This edited volume makes clear that globally food is critical to sustainable urbanism everywhere across cities from kitchens to gardens, food markets, food shops, streets, squares, neighbourhoods, cities, suburbs, and hinterlands. It shows how food cultures, practices, and economics are closely intertwined with how places are planned and designed even if this is not always fully recognised. The editors of the book conclude that food can and should contribute to responding to the challenges presented by the worsening climate emergency through a focus on sustainable urbanism. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urbanism.

Many communities in cities around the world do not like the growing number of residential towers, but they also realise that the detached house is not a sustainable urban solution. Between these two extremes, there is a 'missing middle' of mid-rise apartment buildings that relate to the street and are within the height of trees. This book argues that the mid-rise way of urban living is an essential component of growing cities, demonstrating that the economics of this form of development are better than that of terrace houses or town houses. It begins by examining successful historic precedents of this housing type, such as the tenements of Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona and New York and successful mid-rise housing in London. The book then discusses reasons for the relative lack of contemporary mid-rise housing developments, including planning legislation, and the perception that it is a dull and uniform building type. It brings together and analyses a wide range of award-winning international contemporary examples by leading architecture firms, looks at the importance of location, the need for urban placemaking, visual interest and design diversity and mixed use precincts, and highlights the advantages, including demographic diversity, urban density, sociability and reduction of car use.

If you own a car, use public transportation, go to work or school, use health care, shop or dine out, or are part of a metropolitan community, parking affects you, probably in more ways than you've thought about. Because parking has such a huge effect on what happens in cities and towns and how the greater transportation system functions, decision-makers are beginning to realize that it's critical to employ parking expertise at the beginning of the planning process. Designing and implementing an effective, professionally managed parking strategy can mean the difference between frustrating and costly traffic congestion and efficient, time-saving traffic flow. A Guide to Parking provides information on the current state of parking, providing professionals and students with an overview on major areas of parking and the transportation and mobility industry, punctuated by brief program examples.

This collection of essays explores the history, implications, and usefulness of phenomenology for the study of real and virtual places. While the influence of phenomenology on architecture and urban design has been widely acknowledged, its effect on the design of virtual places and environments has yet to be exposed to critical reflection. These essays from philosophers, cultural geographers, designers, architects, and archaeologists advance the connection between phenomenology and the study of place. The book features historical interpretations on this topic, as well as context-specific and place-centric applications that will appeal to a wide range of scholars across disciplinary boundaries. The ultimate aim of this book is to provide more helpful and precise definitions of phenomenology that shed light on its growth as a philosophical framework and on its development in other disciplines concerned with the experience of place.

Around the world, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners are working to ensure cities and communities are prepared for the challenges and opportunities of aged and highly urbanised populations. Bringing together stakeholders from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, this book presents new evidence and critical reviews of current knowledge to promote ongoing discussions on: affordable and accessible housing to support ageing in place; built environment supports for health-enhancing physical activity and mobility; and planning and design strategies and approaches to promote healthy and active ageing in cities and communities. The book content is framed by socio-ecological models of ageing and well-being that emphasise the dynamic interconnections between people and environment. Contributions in this edited volume stem from the International Ageing Urbanism Colloquium, 2017, Singapore University of Technology and Design.

From 2008, for the first time in human history, half of the world s population now live in cities. Yet despite a wealth of literature on green architecture and planning, there is to date no single book which draws together theory from the full range of disciplines - from architecture, planning and ecology - which we must come to grips with if we are to design future cities which are genuinely sustainable.

Paul Downton s Ecopolis takes a major step along this path. It highlights the urgent need to understand the role of cities as both agents of change and means of survival, at a time when climate change has finally grabbed world attention, and it provides a framework for designing cities that integrates knowledge - both academic and practical - from a range of relevant disciplines.

Identifying key theorists, practitioners, places and philosophies, the book provides a solid theoretical context which introduces the concept of urban fractals, and goes on to present a series of design and planning tools for achieving Sustainable Human Ecological Development (SHED). Combining knowledge from diverse fields to present a synthesis of urban ecology, the book will provide a valuable resource for students, researchers and practitioners in architecture, construction, planning, geography and the traditional life sciences."

- The book tackles five cutting-edge topics in the field of urban studies: the anti-progress movement, resilient urban model, localism, the urban commons, and the bottom-up urbanism. - The use of an attractive cultural narrative, the eco-lifestyle, to analyse and interpret architectural and urban spaces. - The use of the ecological crisis as starting point and backbone of that narrative. This topic is a mainstream concern in contemporary society.