Every 20 years since 1920, Madrid has undergone an urban planning cycle in which a city plan was prepared, adopted by law, and implemented by a new institution. This preparation-adoption-institutionalization sequence, along with the institution's structures and procedures, have persisted - with some exceptions - despite frequent upheavals in society. The planning institution itself played a lead role in maintaining continuity, traumatic history notwithstanding. Why and how was this the case? Madrid's planners, who had mostly trained as architects, invented new images for the city and metro region: images of urban space that were social constructs, the products of planning processes. These images were tools that coordinated planning and urban policy. In a complex, fragmented institutional milieu in which scores of organized interests competed in overlapping policy arenas, images were a cohesive force around which plans, policies, and investments were shaped. Planners in Madrid also used their images to build new institutions. Images began as city or metropolitan designs or as a metaphor capturing a new vision. New political regimes injected their principles and beliefs into the governing institution via images and metaphors. These images went a long way in constituting the new institution, and in helping realize each regime's goals. This empirically-based life cycle theory of institutional evolution suggests that the constitutional image sustaining the institution undergoes a change or is replaced by a new image, leading to a new or reformed institution. A life cycle typology of institutional transformation is formulated with four variables: type of change, stimulus for change, type of constitutional image, and outcome of the transformation. By linking the life cycle hypothesis with cognitive theories of image formation, and then situating their synthesis within a frame of cognition as a means of structuring the institution, this book arrives at a new theory

Spatial Implications and Planning Criteria for High-speed Rail Cities and Regions evaluates the varied experiences that HSR systems have brought about to different station-cities and their regional territories around the world, with an eye towards better future planning and policy of such systems. This edited volume draws from examples of high-speed rail operations in different cities in Europe and Asia to depict the various impacts of this major transportation infrastructure. It attempts to distinguish the short- and long-term impacts described in the literature, classifying them into regional and inter-urban effects, urban effects, and wider economic impacts. Planning challenges appear at two major points: 1) during the initial planning stage that includes the route and location of stations; and 2) during the development process that follows. The case studies in the book concentrate on a variety of topics from the impact of high-speed rail on population growth in some station-cities, to the regional economic impacts that an HSR system can bring about to the larger territories it passes through, to the potential of station-cities to better attract firms, or to experience increases in tourism and commerce. They also assess planning strategies and experiences from station-cities to draw lessons for future HSR planning policies. The Chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of European Planning Studies.

Big Data, Code and the Discrete City explores how digital technologies are gradually changing the way in which the public space is designed by architects, managed by policymakers and experienced by individuals. Smart city technologies are superseding the traditional human experience that has characterised the making of the public space until today. This book examines how computers see the public space and the effect of algorithms, artificial intelligences and automated processes on the human experience in public spaces. Divided into three parts, the first part of this book examines the notion of discreteness in its origins and applications to computer sciences. The second section presents a dual perspective: it explores the ways in which public spaces are constructed by the computer-driven logic and then translated into control mechanisms, design strategies and software-aided design. This perspective also describes the way in which individuals perceive this new public space, through its digital logic, and discrete mechanisms (from Wi-Fi coverage to self-tracking). Finally, in the third part, this book scrutinises the discrete logic with which computers operate, and how this is permeating into aspects of city life. This book is valuable for anyone interested in urban studies and digital technologies, and more specifically in big data, urban informatics and public space.

Cultural sustainability is a very important aspect of the overall sustainability framework and is regarded as the fourth pillar alongside the other three: environmental, economic, and social sustainability. However, the concept is neither fully explored, nor widely accepted or recognized. This book elicits the interplay of nature-culture-architecture and theorizes the concept of cultural sustainability and culturally sustainable architecture. It identifies four key themes in Chinese philosophy: Harmony with Heaven, Harmony with Earth, Harmony with Humans, and Harmony with Self, along with Greek philosopher Aristotle's physics: form, space, matter, and time, it sets them as criteria to evaluate the renewed and new courtyard housing projects constructed in China since the 1990s. Using an innovative architectural and social science approach, this book examines the political, economic, social, and spatial factors that affect cultural sustainability. Supported by a multiplicity of data including: field surveys, interviews with residents, architects, and planners, time diaries, drawings, photos, planning documents, observation notes, and real estate brochures, the book proposes new courtyard garden house design strategies that promote healthy communities and human care for one another, a concept that is universally applicable. The volume is a first opportunity to take a holistic view, to encompass eastern and western, tangible and intangible, cultures in the theorization of cultural sustainability and culturally sustainable architecture. It is a comprehensive contribution to architectural theory.

Back in the 1980s Jean Baudrillard wrote that public space was collapsing due to a double obscenity: 'The most intimate operation of your life becomes the potential grazing ground of the media....The entire universe also unfolds unnecessarily on your home screen.' He termed this the ecstasy of communication. But today, your everyday life is not just the potential grazing ground of the media, but of anyone with a camera, and the entire universe unfolds not just at home but in the palm of your hand virtually anywhere you travel. Bringing together a transdisciplinary team of leading scholars and artists from North America, Europe and Asia, this volume documents and theorizes this new visibility. It focuses on the proliferation of a range of new visual technologies, examining questions of subjectivity, agency, and surveillance as well as mapping and theorizing new practices of visuality within this new visual assemblage. New Visualities, New Technologies addresses the pressing need for the conceptual understanding of new forms of seeing, looking, presenting, and hiding.

Bringing together a multidisciplinary team of scholars, this book explores the importance of ethnicity and cultural economy in the post-Fordist city in the Americas. It argues that cultural, political and economic elites make use of cultural and ethnic elements in city planning and architecture in order to construct a unique image of a particular city and demonstrates how the use of ethnicized cultural production - such as urban branding based on local identities - by the economic elite raises issues of considerable concern in terms of local identities, as it deploys a practical logic of capital exchange that can overcome forms of cultural resistance and strengthen the hegemonic colonization of everyday life. At the same time, it shows how ethnic communities are able to use ethnic labelling of cultural production, ethnic economy or ethno-tourism facilities in order to change living conditions and to empower its members in ways previously impossible. Of wide ranging interest across academic disciplines, this book will be a useful contribution to Inter-American studies.

This book is an exploration of how urban life in Copenhagen, in the period known as the Golden Age (c. 1800 to 1850), was experienced and structured socially, institutionally, and architecturally. It draws on a broad historical source material - spanning urban anecdotes, biography, philosophy, literature, and visual culture - to do so. The book argues that Copenhagen emerged as a modern city at this time, despite the fact that the Golden Age never witnessed the appearance of the main characteristics of the modernisation of cities associated with industrialisation, such as street lighting, sewer systems, and railroads. The book outlines the historical and topographical context of Copenhagen in the Golden Age with a special focus on the works of the most prominent architect of the period, C.F. Hansen. The characterisation of the city is complemented by investigations into writings of three citizens: the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, the novelist Thomasine Gyllembourg, and the criminal Ole Kollerod, who all take an interest in the city's institutional and urban structures as well as their own place in it. From these different sources, a picture is painted of urban life and thought at a time when the city began to take on characteristics of ambiguity and alienation in European thinking, while at the same time the city itself retained some pre-modern motifs of a symbolic order. This transformation is set in a larger process of cultural re-orientation, from traditional Baroque culture to what might be termed Romantic culture. The book reconsiders the significance of this transformation for the emergent order of the modern European city in the nineteenth century and thus of the very foundation on which our own urban culture rests.

Planning is described as being increasingly sidelined by the impacts of neo-liberal restructuring. At the same time, 'culture' is nowadays seen as the world's key intellectual resource possessing new creative weight in sociological, economic and environmental terms. This book argues that, in the light of this cultural turn, there is the opportunity to re-position planning and proposes an original, practical and robust system of 'culturisation'. Culturisation is defined as the ethical, critical and reflexive integration of culture into planning and potentially other areas such as public administration, corporate strategy and development thinking. Cultural theory, planning theory, global governance policy and recent, innovative culturised practices are all explored to this end. The new theoretical and practical approach put forward shows how deeper, richer and more relevant ideas about culture can be utilized in planning, and is illustrated with international examples and two major case studies detailing new vistas for a refurbished planning.

This book is about a lost world, albeit one less than 50 years old. It is the story of a grand plan to demolish most of Whitehall, London's historic government district, and replace it with a ziggurat-section megastructure built in concrete. In 1965 the architect Leslie Martin submitted a proposal to Charles Pannell, Minister of Public Building and Works in Harold Wilson's Labour government, for the wholesale reconstruction of London's 'Government Centre'. Still reeling from war damage, its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century palaces stood as the patched-up headquarters of an imperial bureaucracy which had once dominated the globe. Martin's plan - by no means modest in conception, scope or scale - proposed their replacement with a complex that would span the roads into Parliament Square, reframing the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. The project was not executed in the manner envisaged by Martin and his associates, although a surprising number of its proposals were implemented. But the un-built architecture is examined here for its insights into a distinctive moment in British history, when a purposeful technological future seemed not just possible but imminent, apparently sweeping away an anachronistic Edwardian establishment to be replaced with a new meritocracy forged in the 'white heat of technology'. The Whitehall plan had implications well beyond its specific site. It was imagined by its architects as a scientific investigation into ideal building forms for the future, an important development in their project to unify science and art. For the political actors, it represented a tussle between government departments, between those who believed that Britain needed to discard much of its Victorian and Edwardian decoration in the name of 'professionalization' and those who sought to preserve its ornate finery. Demolishing Whitehall investigates these tensions between ideas of technology and history, science and art, socialism and el

Revolt and Reform in Architecture's Academy uniquely addresses the complicated relationship between architectural education and urban renewal in the 1960s, which paved the way for what is today known as public interest design. Through an examination of curricular reforms at Columbia University's and Yale University's schools of architecture in the 1960s, this book translates the "urban crisis" through the experiences of two influential groups of architecture students, as well as their contributions to design's lexicon. The book argues that urban renewal and campus expansion half a century ago recast architectural education at two schools whose host cities, New York and New Haven, were critical sites for political, social, and urban upheaval in America. The urban challenges of that time are the same challenges rapidly growing cities face today-access, equity, housing, and services. As architects, architects in training, and architecture students continue to wrestle with questions surrounding how design may serve a broadly defined public interest, this book is a timely assessment of the forces that have shaped the debate.

The Arab World is perceived to be a region rampant with constructed and ambiguous national identities, overwhelming wealth and poverty, religious diversity, and recently the Arab uprisings, a bottom-up revolution shaking the foundations of pre-established, long-standing hierarchies. It is also a region that has witnessed a remarkable level of transformation and development due to the accelerated pace imposed by post-war reconstruction, environmental degradation, and the competition among cities for world visibility and tourism. Accordingly, the Arab World is a prime territory for questioning urban design, inviting as it does a multiplicity of opportunities for shaping, upgrading, and rebuilding urban form and civic space while subjecting global paradigms to regional and local realities. Providing a critical overview of the state of contemporary urban design in the Arab World, this book conceptualizes the field under four major perspectives: urban design as discourse, as discipline, as research, and as practice. It poses two questions. How can such a diversity of practice be positioned with regard to current international trends in urban design? Also, what constitutes the specificity of the Middle Eastern experience in light of the regional political and cultural settings? This book is about urban designers 'on the margins': how they narrate their cities, how they engage with their discipline, and how they negotiate their distance from, and with respect to global disciplinary trends. As such, the term margins implies three complementary connotations: on the global level, it invites speculation on the way contemporary urban design is being impacted by the new conceptualizations of center-periphery originating from the post-colonial discourse; on the regional level, it is a speculation on the specificity of urban design thinking and practice within a particular geographical and cultural context (here, the Arab World); and finally, on the local level, it is an a

This book explores the conditions needed to make public and private investments in healthy cities most effective. The authors argue that three conditions are essential for such investments: citizen empowerment, corporate responsibility and a coordinated improvement of urban health conditions. Using an integrated approach to health in line with the Healthy Cities philosophy of the World Health Organization, case studies in Helsinki, Liverpool, London, Udine and Vancouver are not only used to demonstrate the relevance of these conditions, but also to show how actors in these cities are trying to meet these conditions.

The spread of newly 'invented' places, such as theme parks, shopping malls and revamped historic areas, necessitates a redefinition of the concept of 'place' from an architectural perspective. In this interdisciplinary work, these invented places are categorized according to the different phenomenological experiences they are able to provide. The book explores how such 'cloning spaces' use placemaking and placemarketing in attempt to replicate the characteristics found in urban spaces traditionally viewed as successful, and how these places can affect society's environmental perception. A range of international empirical studies illustrates how such invented places can be perceived as legitimate urban spaces, and contribute towards the quality of life in today's cities.

In the latter part of the C20th, a series of seminal books were written which examined Los Angeles by the likes of Reyner Banham, Mike Davis, Edward Soja, Allen Scott, Michael Dear, Frederick Jameson, Umberto Eco, Bernard-Henri Levy, and Jean Baudrillard which have been hugely influential in thinking about cities more broadly. The debates which were generated by these works have tended to be very heated and either defensive or offensive in approach. A sufficient amount of time has since passed that a more measured approach to evaluating this work can now be taken. The first section of this book, 'Contra This and Contra That', provides such a critique of the various theories applied to Los Angeles during the last century, balancing the positive with the negative. The second part of the book is an investigation of L.A. as it exists on the ground today. While political, the theoretical stance taken in this investigation is not mounted as a platform from which to advocate a particular ideology. Instead, it encompasses cultural as well as economic issues to put forth a view of L.A. which is coherent and cogent while at the same time considering its multi-layed, complex and ever-changing qualities. It concludes by arguing that sectored off and 'totalizing' visions of the city will not do as instruments of urban analysis and that only a theory as mobile as its target will do: one that replicates the polymer nature of this place. It proposes that, extending that theory to the world beyond this particular city, only a theory that models itself on the mobile and polymer nature of the world, while still retaining a sense of the actual and the real, will do as an instrument with which to comprehend the world. In doing so, this book is not only a model by which to think through Los Angeles, but as a model by which to think through other world cities.

The book has an attractive blend of urban planning and policy insights, colorful historic background, intriguing consideration of technological trends, and essential technical background (written for the educated layperson). It has extensive illustrations and case studies. It would be accessible and interesting to those without the engineering expertise required for most similar books on the topic. It addresses safety, personal security, aesthetics, economics, environmental impacts, and sense of place, generally from a policy and planning perspective.

Geography Speaks is an investigation of how geography is informed by speech act theory and performativity. Starting with a critical analysis of how J.L. Austin's speech act theory probed the permeability between fact and fiction, it then assesses oppositional interpretations by John Searle and Jacques Derrida, and in doing so, it explores the fictional aspects within scientific knowledge. The book then focuses on five key aspects of the geographical discipline and analyses them using the theories of speech acts and performance: the performative aspects of the creation of place; speech act performances and geopolitics; acts of cartographical construction as variations of speech act performance; the performative aspects of the creation of public and private space, and, finally; the history of the discipline as a sequence of performative acts that attempt to establish geography as being constitutive of this or that type of disciplinary method or scientific viewpoint. Geography Speaks is an interdisciplinary text with a distinct and clear focus on cultural geography while also synthesizing into geography ideas germane to historiography, the philosophy of language, the history of science, and comparative literature.

In Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre put forward his ideas on the relationship between time and space, particularly how rhythms characterize space. Here, leading geographers advance and expand on Lefebvre's theories, examining how they intersect with current theoretical and political concerns within the social sciences. In terms of geography, rhythmanalysis highlights tensions between repetition and innovation, between the need for consistency and the need for disruption. These tensions reveal the ways in which social time is managed to ensure a measure of stability through the instantiation of temporal norms, whilst at the same time showing how this is often challenged. In looking at the rhythms of geographies, and drawing upon a wide range of geographical contexts, this book explores the ordering of different rhythms according to four main themes: rhythms of nature, rhythms of everyday life, rhythms of mobility, and the official and routine rhythms which superimpose themselves on the multiple rhythms of the body.

Sir James Stirling was arguably the greatest British architect of the twentieth century. This book provides the most comprehensive critical survey of Stirling's work to date, charting the development of his ideas from his formative years, through his partnership with James Gowan, on to his period in practice as sole partner; and finally, his partnership with Michael Wilford. Using archival material, extensive interviews with his partners and others who worked for him, together with analytical examination of key buildings, this detailed critical examination explains his philosophy, working method and design strategy. In doing so, it sheds new light on the atelier structure of his office and who did what on his major buildings. Geoffrey Baker is the first to analyse in depth the articulation systems used in major projects undertaken by Stirling. He confirms that the Staatsgalerie complex at Stuttgart does not demonstrate Stirling's interest in post modernism but rather an enhanced sensitivity towards context informed by his growing allegiance to the classical canon. Baker explains how this important development in his work, powerfully influenced by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, is consummated in perhaps the finest of Stirling's uncompleted works, the extension to London's National Gallery. In a discussion of his mature works, Baker explains how Stirling's work can be understood in terms of several interconnected ideas. These include surrealism, historicism, myth and metaphor, inconsistency and ambiguity, bi-lateral symmetry, the garden, rusticity and arcadia, and the archetype, seen as the repository of the collective architectural memory. As well as discussing his interests and those who influenced Stirling, the book compares his oeuvre with that of the pioneers of modern architecture, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier. This book charts a remarkable career, and offers invaluable insights not only into the masterly, timeless architecture, but also into the man himself: charismatic, irreverent, courageous, serious; sometimes rude, often stubborn, belligerent, yet gentle. He was endlessly inventive and deeply dedicated to his art, producing buildings that reflect all of the above, buildings that are magnificent and ultimately humane.

Bringing together a diverse team of leading scholars and professionals, this book offers a variety of insights into ongoing gender mainstreaming policies in Europe with a focus on urban/spatial planning. Gender mainstreaming was first legislated for in the European Union with the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999 and, although many interesting developments have occurred throughout the decade that followed, there is still much to do in terms of policy, knowledge production, dissemination and education. This work contributes to all three objectives, by advancing the state of knowledge, as well as providing educational and professional tools in the field of gender sensitive planning in Europe. The volume begins by explaining the concept of gender mainstreaming in relation to its origins in the 'second wave' of the women's movement and critiques of planning, architecture, transport planning and other built environment disciplines. It then provides a brief history of how gender mainstreaming was incorporated into European law, before focussing on the theoretical issues and questions that surround the concept of gender mainstreaming as they relate to urban space and the planning of cities and regions, including a discussion of the persistence of inequalities between the sexes in their access to urban space and services. In particular, the division between waged and unwaged work and its impact on the social construction of gender and of the physical built environment is considered. The differences between definitions of feminism and their implications for action in planning and design are also explored, paying regard to the tensions between a feminist vision of a transformation of gender relations and the requirements of gender mainstreaming to accommodate the different needs of women and men in their everyday lives in urban space. Throughout the book, key issues recur, such as the importance of time and space in the experience of urbanism, resistances to change on the part of institutions and social structures, and the importance of networks. Education and training also appear as common themes, as do citizen participation and the structures of governance. The chapters are organised into four sections: concepts, structures, empowerment and spatial quality. Contributors demonstrate a variety of approaches to the intersections of gender, women, cities, and planning, dealing with substantive and procedural issues in planning, at both local and regional scales. They stress the links between environmental sustainability and gender-sensitive urban development. The book concludes by putting forward an outlook for future action.

Drawing upon the literature of landscape geography, tourism studies, cultural studies, visual studies and philosophy, this book offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the interaction between urban environments and tourists. This is a necessary prerequisite for cities as they make themselves into enticing destinations and compete for tourists' attention. It argues that tourists make sense of, and draw meaningful conclusions about, the places in which they tour based upon the interpretation of the signs or elements encountered within the built environment, elements such as graffiti and lamp posts. The writings of the American pragmatist Charles S. Peirce on interpretation provide the theoretical model for explaining the way in which mind and world, or thoughts and objects, result in tourists interacting with place. This theoretical framework elucidates three applied studies undertaken with foreign visitors to the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Based upon extensive ethnographic field work, these studies focus on tourists' interpretation of the urban landscape, with particular attention paid to the encounters with national culture, the role of architecture and the importance of the prosaic in urban tourism.

Virtually every city-region in West and Central Europe has developed policies and strategies to attract, retain and encourage creative industries and knowledge-intensive services. Since most of these citiy-regions tend to see a creative knowledge economy as 'the best bet for the future', one of the main goals of such policies and strategies is increasing the international competitiveness of their city-region. Using the cities of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, Helsinki, Leipzig, Manchester, and Munich as case studies, this book explores the spatial, economic, historical, socio-demographic, socio-cultural and political conditions that may determine whether a city-region is or can become attractive for creative and knowledge-intensive companies, and for the talented people working for or founding these companies. A comparison of the case studies and an overview of the key findings, similarities and differences which lead to policy recommendations as well as suggested directions for further research will make this book attractive to urban and regional academics, planners and students.

In this book, Lori Brown examines the relationship between space, defined physically, legally and legislatively, and how these factors directly impact the spaces of abortion. It analyzes how various political entities shape the physical landscapes of inclusion and exclusion to reproductive healthcare access, and questions what architecture's responsibilities are in respect to this spatial conflict. Employing writing, drawing and mapping methodologies, this interdisciplinary project explores restrictions and legislatures which directly influence abortion policy in the US, Mexico and Canada. It questions how these legal rulings produce spatial complexities and why architecture isn't more culturally and spatially engaged with these spaces. In Mexico, where abortion is fully legal only in Mexico City during the first trimester, women must travel vast distances and undergo extreme conditions in order to access the procedure. Conservative state governments continue to make abortion a severely punishable crime. In Canada, there are nowhere near the cultural and religious stigmas to abortion as in the US and Mexico. Completely legal and without restrictions, Canada offers an important contrast to the ongoing abortion issues within the US and Mexico. Researching the spatial implications of such a politicized space, this book expands beyond a study of abortion clinic and includes other spaces such as women's shelters and hospitals that require multiple levels of secured spaces in order to discuss the spatial ramifications of access and security within spaces that are highly personal, private, and sometimes secret or even hidden. In questioning what architecture's responsibility is in these spatial conflicts, the book looks at how what architecture 'does' can be used to reconsider the spaces and security around such contested places, and ultimately suggests what design's potential impact might be. In doing so, it shows how architecture's role might be redefined within social and spatial practices.

Charting the development of the travel plan as a concept, this book draws on a range of research-based contributions to determine the state-of-the-art and to explore a series of future scenarios in this area for practitioners and policy makers. Site-based mobility management or 'travel plans' address the transport problem by engaging with those organisations such as employers that are directly responsible for generating the demand for travel, and hence have the potential to have a major impact on transport policy. To do this effectively however, travel plans need to be reoriented to be made more relevant to the needs of these organisations, whilst the policy framework in which they operate needs modifying to better support their diffusion and enhance their effectiveness. Marcus Enoch breaks down the travel plan concept into four axes related to its development (namely segment, scale, structure and support), and investigates the following questions: - What makes them special? - Why are they introduced? - What do they look like in terms of their design and the measures they use? - How common are they and in what sectors and location types? - How effective are they? - What barriers do they face and how might these be overcome?

Bringing together a team of international scholars with an interest in urban transformations, spatial justice and territoriality, this volume questions how the interstice is related to the emerging processes of partitioning, enclave-making and zoning, showing how in-between spaces are intimately related to larger flows, networks, territories and boundaries. Illustrated with a range of case studies from places such as the US, Quebec, the UK, Italy, Gaza, Iraq, India, and South-east Asia, the volume analyses the place and function of interstitial locales in both a 'disciplined' urban space and a disordered space conceptualized through the notions of 'excess', 'danger' and 'threat'. Warning not to romanticize the interstice, the book invites us to study it as not simply a place but also a set of phenomena, events and social interactions. How are interstices perceived and represented? What is the politics of visibility that is applied to them? How to capture their peculiar rhythms, speeds and affects? On the one hand, interstices open up venues for informality, improvisation, challenge, and bricolage, playful as well as angry statements on the neoliberal city and enhanced urban inequalities. On the other hand, they also represent a crucial site of governance (even governance by withdrawal) and urban management, where an array of techniques ranging from military urbanism to new forms of value extraction are experimented. At the point of convergence of all these tensions, interstices appear as veritable sites of transformation, where social forces clash and mesh prefiguring our urban future. The book interrogates these territories, proposing new ways to explore the dynamics, events and visibilities that define them.

Useful and inspiring cases illustrate participatory placemaking practices and strategies. How Spaces Become Places tells stories of place makers who respond to daunting challenges of affordable housing, racial violence, and immigration, as well as community building, arts development, safe streets, and coalition-building. The book's thirteen contributors share their personal experiences tackling complex and contentious situations in cities ranging from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and from Paris to Detroit. These activists and architects, artists and planners, mediators and gardeners transform ordinary spaces into extraordinary places. These place makers recount working alongside initially suspicious residents to reclaim and enrich the communities in which they live. Readers will learn how place makers listen and learn, diagnose local problems, convene stakeholders, build trust, and invent solutions together. They will find instructive examples of work they can do within their own communities. In the aftermath of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, the editor argues, these accessible practice stories are more important than ever.