An urban history of modern Britain, and how the built environment shaped the nation's politics Foundations is a history of twentieth-century Britain told through the rise, fall, and reinvention of six different types of urban space: the industrial estate, shopping precinct, council estate, private flats, shopping mall, and suburban office park. Sam Wetherell shows how these spaces transformed Britain's politics, economy, and society, helping forge a midcentury developmental state and shaping the rise of neoliberalism after 1980. From the mid-twentieth century, spectacular new types of urban space were created in order to help remake Britain's economy and society. Government-financed industrial estates laid down infrastructure to entice footloose capitalists to move to depressed regions of the country. Shopping precincts allowed politicians to plan precisely for postwar consumer demand. Public housing modernized domestic life and attempted to create new communities out of erstwhile strangers. In the latter part of the twentieth century many of these spaces were privatized and reimagined as their developmental aims were abandoned. Industrial estates became suburban business parks. State-owned shopping precincts became private shopping malls. The council estate was securitized and enclosed. New types of urban space were imported from American suburbia, and planners and politicians became increasingly skeptical that the built environment could remake society. With the midcentury built environment becoming obsolete, British neoliberalism emerged in tense negotiation with the awkward remains of built spaces that had to be navigated and remade. Taking readers to almost every major British city as well as to places in the United States and Britain's empire, Foundations highlights how some of the major transformations of twentieth-century British history were forged in the everyday spaces where people lived, worked, and shopped.

When designing, planning and building urban spaces, many contradictory and conflicting actors, practices and agendas coexist. This book propounds that, at present, this process is conducted in an artificial reality, 'Concept City', characterized by a simplified and outdated conception of space. It provides a constructive critique of the concepts, underlying the practices of planning and architecture and, in order to facilitate more dynamic, inclusive and subtle practices, it formulates a new theory about space in general and public urban space in particular. The central notions in this theory are temporality, experiment and conflict, which are grounded on empirical observations in Helsinki, Manchester and Berlin. While the book contextualizes Lefebvre's ideas on urban planning and architecture, it is in no way limited to Lefebvrean discourse, but allows insights to new theoretical work, including that of Finnish and Swedish authors. In doing so, it suggests and develops exciting new approaches and tools leading to 'experiential urbanism'.

Public spaces mirror the complexities of urban societies: as historic social bonds have weakened and cities have become collections of individuals public open spaces have also changed from being embedded in the social fabric of the city to being a part of more impersonal and fragmented urban environments. Can making public spaces help overcome this fragmentation, where accessible spaces are created through inclusive processes? This book offers some answers to this question through analysing the process of urban design and development in international case studies, in which the changing character, level of accessibility, and the tensions of making public spaces are explored.

The book uses a coherent theoretical outlook to investigate a series of case studies, crossing the cultural divides to examine the similarities and differences of public space in different urban contexts, and its critical analysis of the process of development, management and use of public space, with all its tensions and conflicts. While each case study investigates the specificities of a particular city, the book outlines some general themes in global urban processes. It shows how public spaces are a key theme in urban design and development everywhere, how they are appreciated and used by the people of these cities, but also being contested by and under pressure from different stakeholders.

Public spaces mirror the complexities of urban societies: as historic social bonds have weakened and cities have become collections of individuals public open spaces have also changed from being embedded in the social fabric of the city to being a part of more impersonal and fragmented urban environments. Can making public spaces help overcome this fragmentation, where accessible spaces are created through inclusive processes? This book offers some answers to this question through analysing the process of urban design and development in international case studies, in which the changing character, level of accessibility, and the tensions of making public spaces are explored.

The book uses a coherent theoretical outlook to investigate a series of case studies, crossing the cultural divides to examine the similarities and differences of public space in different urban contexts, and its critical analysis of the process of development, management and use of public space, with all its tensions and conflicts. While each case study investigates the specificities of a particular city, the book outlines some general themes in global urban processes. It shows how public spaces are a key theme in urban design and development everywhere, how they are appreciated and used by the people of these cities, but also being contested by and under pressure from different stakeholders.

Urban theory traditionally links modernity to the city, to the historical emergence of certain forms of subjectivity and the rise of important developments in culture, arts and architecture. This is often in response to technological, economic and societal transformations in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries in select Euro-American metropolises. In contrast, non-Western cities in the modern period are often considered through the lens of Westernization and development. How do we account for urban modernity in "other" cities? This book seeks to highlight cultural creativity by examining the diverse and shifting ways Istanbulites have defined themselves while they debate, imagine, build and consume their city. It focuses on a series of exhibitionary sites, from print press/photography, cinema/films, exhibitions of architectural heritage, theme parks and museums, and explores the links between these popular depictions through shared practices of representation. In doing so it argues that understanding how the future is imagined through images and interpretations of the past can broaden current theoretical thinking about Istanbul and other cities. In line with postcolonial calls for a comparative urbanism that decouples understanding of the modern from its privileged association with Western cities, this book offers a new perspective on the lens of urban modernity. It will appeal to urban geographers and historians, cultural studies scholars, art historians and anthropologists as well as planners, architects and artists.

The twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of capital cities worldwide. This book explores what makes capital cities different from other cities, why their planning is unique, and why there is such variety from one city to another.

For anyone with an interest in urban planning and design, architectural, planning and urban history, urban geography, or simply capital cities and why they are what they are, this book will be the key source book for a long time to come.

Are Britaina (TM)s cities attractive places in which to live, work and play? Asking that question, this is a critical review of how the design dimension of the Urban Renaissance strategy was developed and applied, based on expert academic assessments of progress in Britaina (TM)s thirteen largest cities. The case studies are preceded by a dissection of New Laboura (TM)s renaissance agenda, and concluded by a synthesis of achievements and failings. Exploring the implications of this strategy for the future of urban planning and design, this is a must-read for students, practitioners of these subjects and for all those who wish to improve the quality of the British urban environment.

In this first comprehensive work in English to describe the building of Latin America's capital cities in the postcolonial period, Arturo Almandoz and his contributors demonstrate how Europe, and France in particular, shaped their culture, architecture and planning until the United States began to play a part in the 1930s. A series of case studies are devoted to individual cities, each extensively illustrated and written by authorities on the city concerned. Providing a historical survey of Latin American urban development, this book also offers a new perspective on international planning.

The night-time economy represents a particular challenge for planners and town centre managers. In the context of liberalised licensing and a growing culture around the '24-hour city', the desire to foster economic growth and to achieve urban regeneration has been set on a collision course with the need to maintain social order.

Roberts and Eldridge draw on extensive case study research, undertaken in the UK and internationally, to explain how changing approaches to evening and night-time activities have been conceptualised in planning practice. The first to synthesise recent debates on law, health, planning and policy, this research considers how these dialogues impact upon the design, management, development and the experience of the night-time city.

This is incisive and highly topical reading for postgraduates, academics and reflective practitioners in Planning, Urban Design and Urban Regeneration.

The night-time economy represents a particular challenge for planners and town centre managers. In the context of liberalised licensing and a growing culture around the '24-hour city', the desire to foster economic growth and to achieve urban regeneration has been set on a collision course with the need to maintain social order.

Roberts and Eldridge draw on extensive case study research, undertaken in the UK and internationally, to explain how changing approaches to evening and night-time activities have been conceptualised in planning practice. The first to synthesise recent debates on law, health, planning and policy, this research considers how these dialogues impact upon the design, management, development and the experience of the night-time city.

This is incisive and highly topical reading for postgraduates, academics and reflective practitioners in Planning, Urban Design and Urban Regeneration.

Uncertain Regional Urbanism in Venezuela explores the changes cities face when they become metropolises, forming expanding regions which create both potential and problems within settlements. To do so, it focuses on three metropolitan areas located in Venezuela's Center-North region: Caracas, Maracay and Valencia, designated as "Camava." Considering three core topics, government and territorial administration, infrastructure and environment, as well as looking at the reciprocal impact, this book describes and analyzes the determinant variables that characterize the phenomenon of regional urbanization in this area and in the wider Global South. It includes documentary research, semi-structured interviews and Delphi methodology, involving a total of forty experts from different disciplines to build a comprehensive outlook on the situation. This book presents a broader understanding of the region to encourage a more sustainable and knowledge-based development plan, moving away from the exploitation of natural resources, with six future-oriented scenarios to consider. This is a much-needed study in the urban regions of Venezuela, which will be of interest to academics and researchers in Latin American studies, the Global South, architecture and planning.

As with so many facets of contemporary western life, architecture and space are often experienced and understood as a commodity or product. The premise of this book is to offer alternatives to the practices and values of such westernised space and Architecture (with a capital A), by exploring the participatory and grass-roots practices used in alternative development models in the Global South. This process re-contextualises the spaces, values, and relationships produced by such alternative methods of development and social agency. It asks whether such spatial practices provide concrete realisations of some key concepts of Western spatial theory, questioning whether we might challenge the space and architectures of capitalist development by learning from the places and practices of others. Exploring these themes offers a critical examination of alternative development practices methods in the Global South, re-contextualising them as architectural engagements with socio-political space. The comparison of such interdisciplinary contexts and discourses reveals the political, social, and economic resonances inherent between these previously unconnected spatial protagonists. The interdependence of spatial issues of choice, value, and identity are revealed through a comparative study of the discourses of Henri Lefebvre, John Turner, Doreen Massey, and Nabeel Hamdi. These key protagonists offer a critical framework of discourses from which further connections to socio-spatial discourses and concepts are made, including post-marxist theory, orientalism, post-structural pluralism, development anthropology, post-colonial theory, hybridity, difference and subalterneity. By looking to the spaces and practices of alternative development in the Global South this book offers a critical reflection upon the working practices of Westernised architecture and other spatial and political practices. In exploring the methodologies, implications and values of such participatory development practices this book ultimately seeks to articulate the positive potential and political of learning from the difference, multiplicity, and otherness of development practice in order to re-imagine architecture and space. .

Through Time and the City: Notes on Rome offers a new approach to exploring cities. Using Rome as a guide, the book follows familiar sites, geographies, and characters in search of their role within a larger narrative that includes the environmental processes required to generate enough space and material for the city, the emergent ecologies to which its buildings play host, and the social patterns its various structures help to organize. Through Time and the City argues that Rome is made and unmade by an endlessly evolving chorus that has, for better or worse, gained geological legitimacy; that the city absorbs and emits countless artifacts in its search for collective identity; that the city is a platform for the constant staging of negotiations between agents (humans, buildings, plants, animals, pathogens, goods, waste, water) that drive and are driven by the entanglements of climate and culture. This book provides textual and visual frameworks for identifying the material traces, emergent patterns, or speculated futures that expose a city as inseparable from its capacity to change.

Set within an insightful analysis, this book describes the genesis, ideas and ideologies which influenced La Construction des Villes by Le Corbusier. This volume makes the important theoretical work available for the first time in English, offering an interpretation as to how much and in what way his 'essai' may have influenced his later work. Dealing with questions of aesthetic urbanism, La Construction des Villes shows Le Corbusier's intellectual influences in the field of urbanism. Discontent that the script was not sufficiently avant-garde, he abandoned it soon after it was written in the early 20th century. It was only in the late 1970s that American historian H. Allen Brooks discovered 250 pages of the forgotten manuscript in Switzerland. The author of this book, Christoph Schnoor, later discovered another 350 handwritten pages of the original manuscript, consisting of extracts, chapters, and bibliographic notes. This splendid find enabled the re-establishment of the manuscript as Le Corbusier had abandoned it, unfinished, in the spring of 1911. This volume offers an unbiased extension of our knowledge of Le Corbusier and his work. In addition, it reminds us of the urban design innovations of the very early 20th century which can still serve as valuable lessons for a new understanding of contemporary urban design.

With In the Skin of the City, Antonio Tomas traces the history and transformation of Luanda, Angola, the nation's capital as well as one of the oldest settlements founded by the European colonial powers in the Southern Hemisphere. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research alongside his own experiences growing up in Luanda, Tomas shows how the city's physical and social boundaries-its skin-constitute porous and shifting interfaces between center and margins, settler and Native, enslaver and enslaved, formal and informal, and the powerful and the powerless. He focuses on Luanda's "asphalt frontier"-the (colonial) line between the planned urban center and the ad hoc shantytowns that surround it-and the ways squatters are central to Luanda's historical urban process. In their relationship with the state and their struggle to gain rights to the city, squatters embody the process of negotiating Luanda's divisions and the sociopolitical forces that shape them. By illustrating how Luanda emerges out of the continual redefinition of its skin, Tomas offers new ways to understand the logic of urbanization in cities across the global South.

Is the garden a consumption site where identities are constructed? Do gardeners make aesthetic choices according to how they are positioned by class and gender? This book presents the first scholarly analysis of the relationship between media interest in gardening and cultural identities. With an examination of aesthetic dispositions as a symbolic mode of communication closely aligned to peoples' identities and drawing on ethnographic data gathered from encounters with gardeners, this book maps a typology of gardening taste, revealing that gardening - how plants are chosen, planted and cared for - is a classed and gendered practice manifested in specific types of visual aesthetics. This timely and original book develops a new area within cultural studies while contributing to debates about lifestyle and lifestyle media, consumption, class and methodology. A must read for anybody concerned with or intrigued by the cultural construction of identification practices.

Despite considerable interest in social capital amongst urban policy makers and academics alike, there is currently little direct focus on its urban dimensions. In this volume leading urban researchers from the Netherlands, the UK, the USA, Australia, Italy and France explore the nature of social networks and the significance of voluntary associations for contemporary urban life. Networked Urbanism recognizes that there is currently a sense of crisis in the cohesion of the city which has led to public attempts to encourage networking and the fostering of 'social capital'. However, the contributors collectively demonstrate how new kinds of 'networked urbanism' associated with ghettoization, suburbanization and segregation have broken from the kind of textured urban communities that existed in the past. This has generated new forms of exclusionary social capital, which fail to significantly resolve the problems of poor residents, whilst strengthening the position of the advantaged. Grounded in theoretical reflection and empirical research, Networked Urbanism will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, geography and urban studies, as well as to policy makers.

Because many people and ecosystems share-or constitute-any given place, they all have a stake in the outcome of what any of us do in regard to environmental problems. It is not surprising that issues are hotly contested given the many divergent interests, needs, and preferences of a community's members, much less those of people "downstream" who are affected by the consequences of our actions or of "outside" parties who play a part, including those who would speak on behalf of the ecosystems. Thus, we not only must make careful individual decisions concerning the environment, but need to improve the way we operate socially, especially given the roles and responsibilities we have as environmental professionals, private-sector developers, public policy-makers and staff, or engaged citizens. To aid in resolving our environmental dilemmas, Mugerauer and Manzo focus on the decision making process. Their goal is to help readers become more aware of the worldviews, beliefs, and values that enter into the decisions they make and to better resolve differences with others. To guide readers in thinking about their own positions and how to approach ethical decisions, Mugerauer and Manzo employ a number of exercises and cases to investigate the choices and issues that different stakeholders face (for example, concerning sustainability). Additionally, the book presents alternatives in terms of formalized ethical principles, the major ethical theories, and professional codes of ethics.

Because many people and ecosystems share_or constitute_any given place, they all have a stake in the outcome of what any of us do in regard to environmental problems. It is not surprising that issues are hotly contested given the many divergent interests, needs, and preferences of a community's members, much less those of people 'downstream' who are affected by the consequences of our actions or of 'outside' parties who play a part, including those who would speak on behalf of the ecosystems. Thus, we not only must make careful individual decisions concerning the environment, but need to improve the way we operate socially, especially given the roles and responsibilities we have as environmental professionals, private-sector developers, public policy-makers and staff, or engaged citizens. To aid in resolving our environmental dilemmas, Mugerauer and Manzo focus on the decision making process. Their goal is to help readers become more aware of the worldviews, beliefs, and values that enter into the decisions they make and to better resolve differences with others. To guide readers in thinking about their own positions and how to approach ethical decisions, Mugerauer and Manzo employ a number of exercises and cases to investigate the choices and issues that different stakeholders face (for example, concerning sustainability). Additionally, the book presents alternatives in terms of formalized ethical principles, the major ethical theories, and professional codes of ethics.

Urban design continues to grow as an increasingly important and expanding field of study, research and professional endeavour.

Distinguished by its broad scope and comprehensiveness on the subject of urban design, this new collection combines selected essays from both practitioners and academia.

Writing Urbanism is the ideal volume for both students, architects and urban designers.

There is almost nothing new left to say about the urgent need to reduce our devastating impact on the biosphere that supports us. In architectural terms, we have been told since the 1960s that mainstream architecture is not engaged enough with the environmental consequences of what it produces and how it produces it. The usual approach is to propose new ways of designing and building to persuade the reader of the centrality of environmental concerns. But too many readers have remained resolutely unpersuaded over decades. In four sharp, interlocking essays, this book asks why the majority of the architectural profession and its clients still only pay lip service to the importance of the environmental. The first - Overthrowing - examines the Modern Movement's astonishing success in establishing itself, and its legacy in contemporary architectural culture; the second - Converting - explores the inability of the environmental movement to ignite and transform architecture in the same way; the third - Making - discusses the importance of shifting architecture back to a materially-based view of itself to increase its effectiveness, and finally - Educating - looks at the need for architectural education to urgently reconsider how and what it teaches in the volatile 21st century. This in no way diminishes the extraordinary contribution that a minority in architectural practice and education have made to the development of environmental design and environmental thinking over the past fifty years. In each essay, therefore, are examples of innovative and determined people pursuing other ways of practicing architecture and other ways of training architects for this critical century, who are pulling the model of a nature-centric practice out of the margins and into the centre.

Unprecedented in its scope, Cross-Cultural Urban Design: Global or Local Practice? explores how urban design has responded to recent trends towards global standardisation. Following analysis of its practice in the local domain, the book looks at how urban planning and design should be repositioned for the future. It looks at: population movement urbanization suburbanization tourism commercialization environmental degradation flows of capital. Mapping out how urban practitioners, researchers and educators are currently responding to these issues in their work, this volume presents and discusses cases and theories of urbanism from across the globe. Contributions are framed in three sections: Re-conceptualising the city; presenting ways to read the contemporary city and re-think work within it, Experiments in practice; presenting and discussing case studies where practitioners have confronted new conditions and Learning cross-cultural urban design; presenting and discussing learning as a field of research and its contribution to practice. A unique collection, Cross-cultural Urban Design outlines a new way of thinking about urban design within the complex context of the contemporary world and points a way forward - as a cross-cultural practice that supports and develops sustainability.

Accessible and comprehensive, written by the current President of the International Planning History Society, this volume provides readers with a highly visual account of historical, contemporary and international projects. Looking at the ways in which the City Beautiful movement influenced the design and development of Australian cities, this pioneering national study surveys the ruling ideas, influences, outcomes and enduring legacies of the early artistic turn in Australian urban design. With the return of the American City Beautiful movement to the forefront of urban design, Designing Australia's Cities is a relevant account of the ways in which this movement influenced and shaped Australian city design, but more importantly sheds light on a planning culture that stretches far beyond Australia and is of increasing relevance worldwide today. Laying bare an important design and reform movement, whose under-appreciated legacy is clearly evident in urban landscapes today, this book is ideal for students of planning, architecture, urban design and the history of planning.

Accessible and comprehensive, written by the current President of the International Planning History Society, this volume provides readers with a highly visual account of historical, contemporary and international projects.

Looking at the ways in which the City Beautiful movement influenced the design and development of Australian cities, this pioneering national study surveys the ruling ideas, influences, outcomes and enduring legacies of the early artistic turn in Australian urban design. With the return of the American City Beautiful movement to the forefront of urban design, Designing Australia 's Cities is a relevant account of the ways in which this movement influenced and shaped Australian city design, but more importantly sheds light on a planning culture that stretches far beyond Australia and is of increasing relevance worldwide today.

Laying bare an important design and reform movement, whose under-appreciated legacy is clearly evident in urban landscapes today, this book is ideal for students of planning, architecture, urban design and the history of planning.

Beyond the Metropolis is an attempt to mend the lacuna that exists between large and small city studies in urban geography, especially in North America. It covers a wide range of topics organized around some of the most common themes that urban geographers have addressed in their study of large cities. In addition to a general introduction and conclusion, the book is divided into three parts. Part I focuses on the evolution and growth of small cities. It outlines in very broad terms the status of small city studies within urban studies, in general, and urban geography, in particular, to underscore the relatively little attention that has been given to small cities. Part II deals with the internal structure of small cities. Part III examines issues related to planning and managing change in small cities. The chapters examine established conventions in urban geography and related disciplines from the perspectives of small cities for the purpose of understanding small cities. Students and researchers as well as city administrators will find the book useful.