The Future of the City Centre: Global Perspectives debates future directions. It looks beyond the post-industrial, post-commercial, and post-retail city centres to examine differing visions of the future form and function of the urban core. This theme and the related sub-topics will assist the development of future city models and help to contextualise urban change. The in-depth research covers not only urban form and the re-use of the built heritage but also the provision for cultural events and different forms of entertainment that will offer vitality, together with visitors and responsible tourism. City authorities are starting to realise that structural changes are happening in city centres, as their influence is declining, and therefore new forms of governance will be needed. The book is based on an international research network hosting four symposia over 24 months. They took place in four cities in four different continents to encompass a world view of developed and developing countries. This book offers theoretical and practical perspectives from leading thinkers, academics, and practitioners, drawing on thematic issues explored across four international cities: Newcastle, UK; Newcastle, Australia; Pretoria-Tshwane, South Africa; and Joao Pessoa, Brazil. It draws on a wider set of global examples to reveal the shared issues and pressures being brought to bear on city centres and the diversity of responses being undertaken to ensure their long-term future. The book includes illustrations from cities around the world, and it is directed at academics, students, and professionals in architecture, planning, urban design, the built environment, geography, economics, sociology, and cultural studies.

This volume, by graduate researchers working in urban agriculture, examines concrete strategies to integrate city farming into the urban landscape. Drawing on original field work in cities across the rapidly urbanizing global south, the book examines the contribution of urban agriculture and city farming to livelihoods and food security. Case studies cover food production diversification for robust and secure food provision; the socio-economic and agronomic aspects of urban composting; urban agriculture as a viable livelihood strategy; strategies for integrating city farming into urban landscapes; and the complex social-ecological networks of urban agriculture. Other case studies look at public health aspects including the impact of pesticides, micro-biological risks, pollution and water contamination on food production and people. Ultimately the book calls on city farmers, politicians, environmentalists and regulatory bodies to work together to improve the long term sustainability of urban farming as a major, secure source of food and employment for urban populations. Published with IDRC

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.

**The 2011 paperback version of this book is an exact reprint of the hardback, originally printed in 1995** The editor and his contributors take an international perspective on the links between land use, development and transport and present the latest thinking, the theory and practice of these links. Authors from six countries - all experts in this area - have been commissioned to write chapters on the theoretical debates and more practical issues, via the use of detailed case studies.

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For nearly a century the Garden City movement has represented one end of a continuum in an ongoing debate about the future of the modern city. In 1898 Ebenezer Howard envisioned an experimental community as the alternative to huge, teeming cities. Small, planned "garden cities" girdled by greenbelts were to serve in time as the "master key" to a higher, more cooperative stage of civilization based on ecologically balanced communities. Howard soon founded an international planning movement which ever since has represented a remarkable blend of accommodation to and protest against urban changes and the rise of the suburbs. In this interconnected history of the Garden City movement in the United States and Britain, Buder examines its influence, strengths and limitations. Howard's garden city, he shows, joined together two very different types of late-nineteenth-century experimental communities, creating a tension never fully resolved. One approach, utopian and radical in nature, challenged conventional values; the other, the model industrial towns of "enlightened" capitalists, reinforceed them. Buder traces this tension through planning history from the nineteenth-century world of visionaries, philanthropy, and self help into our own with its reliance on the expert, bureaucracy, and governmental policy, shedding light on the complex changes in the way we have thought in the twentieth century about community, urban design, and indeed the process of change. His final chapters examine the world-wide enthusiasm for "New Towns" between 1945-1975 and recent political and social trends which challenge many fundamental assumptions of modern planning.

Community Visioning for Place Making is a groundbreaking guide to engaging with communities in order to design better public spaces. It provides a toolkit to encourage and assist organizations, municipalities, and neighborhoods in organizing visually based community participation workshops, used to evaluate their existing community and translate images into plans that embody their ideal characteristics of places and spaces. The book is based on results generated from hundreds of public participation visioning sessions in a broad range of cities and regions, portraying images of what people liked and disliked. These community visioning sessions have been instrumental in generating policies, physical plans, recommendations, and codes for adoption and implementation in a range of urban, suburban, and rural spaces, and the book serves as a bottom-up tool for designers and public officials to make decisions that make their communities more appealing. The book will appeal to community and neighborhood organizations, professional planners, social and psychological professionals, policy analysts, architects, urban designers, engineers, and municipal officials seeking an alternative vision for their future.

Urban public space continues to be the focus of debate regarding its conceptualization and how it is designed, (re)produced and managed. Nowadays public spaces are facing new challenges conceptually and practically. This book focuses on two of them: mobility and aestheticization. Mobility and flows are considered to be key characteristics of the post-modern era. While for some scholars it means the "end of place", others are trying to re-conceptualize it by bringing together notions of space, place, mobility and identity. Still surprisingly few authors address the concept of public space in this respect. Principles of aesthetic and diverse forms of aestheticization seem to have affected urban space and culture throughout Modernity, forming a dimension where power and conflict around urban space are performed. In this book nine authors with social science and arts backgrounds from six countries discuss how these processes shape the life of modern cities, and where the social sciences should move for a better understanding of them.

Shaping Neighbourhoods is unique in combining all aspects of the spatial planning of neighbourhoods and towns whilst emphasising positive outcomes for people's health and global sustainability. This new edition retains the combination of radicalism, evidence-based advice and pragmatism that made earlier editions so popular. This updated edition strengthens guidance in relation to climate change and biodiversity, tackling crises of population health that are pushing up health-care budgets, but have elements of their origins in poor place spatial planning - such as isolation, lack of everyday physical activity, and respiratory problems. It is underpinned by new research into how people use their localities, and the best way to achieve inclusive, healthy, low-carbon settlements. The guide can assist with: * Understanding the principles for planning healthy and sustainable neighbourhoods and towns * Planning collaborative and inclusive processes for multi-sectoral working * Developing know-how and skills in matching local need with urban form * Discovering new ways to integrate development with natural systems * Designing places with character and recognising good urban form Whether you are a student faced with a local planning project; a public health professional, planner, urban designer or developer involved in new development or regeneration; a council concerned with promoting healthy and sustainable environments; or a community group wanting to improve your neighbourhood - you will find help here.

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

Architects, landscape designers, builders, gardeners and teachers have all at some time been called upon to design a play area. Unfortunately, this diversity has not resulted in a similar diversity of design solutions for this very problematic task. Despite a proliferation of 'how to' books on this subject, playgrounds have remained virtually the same throughout the world since their creation over a century ago. This is not a 'how to' design book. Instead, based on thirty years' experience as a specialist play area designer, Barbara Hendricks details a radically new approach, applying cutting-edge thinking from child development and child psychology to find innovative design solutions, challenging the established notions of play provision. Covering key sociological, public policy, environmental and design issues, this book provides designers with an exploration of and guide to, designing from a 'child's eye' view of the world. Beautifully crafted and copiously illustrated with numerous examples of recently designed playgrounds, this book is not only stimulating and informative, but fun to read and seriously playful in itself. This second edition brings the text up to date from 2001 to 2010 with added discussion about new ideas for play area designs and what has not worked in the past decade.

Understanding Cities is richly textured, complex and challenging. It creates the vital link between urban design theory and praxis and opens the required methodological gateway to a new and unified field of urban design. Using spatial political economy as his most important reference point, Cuthbert both interrogates and challenges mainstream urban design and provides an alternative and viable comprehensive framework for a new synthesis.

He rejects the idea of yet another theory in urban design, and chooses instead to construct the necessary intellectual and conceptual scaffolding for what he terms 'The New Urban Design'. Building both on Michel de Certeau's concept of heterology - 'thinking about thinking' - and on the framework of his previous books Designing Cities and The Form of Cities, Cuthbert uses his prior adopted framework - history, philosophy, politics, culture, gender, environment, aesthetics, typologies and pragmatics - to create three integrated texts.

Overall, the trilogy allows a new field of urban design to emerge. Pre-existing and new knowledge are integrated across all three volumes, of which Understanding Cities is the culminating text.

Adaptation Urbanism and Resilient Communities outlines and explains adaptation urbanism as a theoretical framework for understanding and evaluating resilience projects in cities and relates it to pressing contemporary policy issues related to urban climate change mitigation and adaptation. Through a series of detailed case studies, this book uncovers the promise and tensions of a new wave of resilient communities in Europe (Copenhagen, Rotterdam, and London), and the United States (New Orleans and South Florida). In addition, best practice projects in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Delft, Utrecht, and Vancouver are examined. The authors highlight how these communities are reinventing the role of streets and connecting public spaces in adapting to and mitigating climate change through green/blue infrastructure planning, maintaining and enhancing sustainable transportation options, and struggling to ensure equitable development for all residents. The case studies demonstrate that while there are some more universal aspects to encouraging adaptation urbanism, there are also important local characteristics that need to be both acknowledged and celebrated to help local communities thrive in the era of climate change. The book also provides key policy lessons and a roadmap for future research in adaptation urbanism. Advancing resilience policy discourse through multidisciplinary framework this work will be of great interest to students of urban planning, geography, transportation, landscape architecture, and environmental studies, as well as resilience practitioners around the world.

- Explores how mixed, virtual and augmented reality technologies can enable designers to create immersive experiences and expand the aesthetic potential of the medium - Curated selection of projects and essays by leading international architects and designers, including those from Zaha Hadid Architects and MVRDV- Illustrated with over 150 images

The Art of City Sketching: A Field Manual guides readers through the process of freehand architectural sketching and explains orthographic, diagrammatic, three-dimensional, and perceptual-type drawings. The book presents hundreds of drawings of historic buildings and urban spaces, examples, and exercises, which help readers develop their drawing skills and employ sketching as an analytical tool. The book is divided into three parts, based on the reader's skill level: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. As an architect and field sketching instructor, the author shows that through drawing the reader can discover, analyze, and comprehend the built environment. The new edition of The Art of City Sketching expands on the drawing techniques of the previous version by adding new drawing examples, exercises, and two new chapters-Chiaroscuro and Storyboard. New drawing tips, demonstrations, and composition "do's and don'ts" will support readers when they illustrate their viewpoint of the city by using simple drawing tools. The lessons in this book will allow readers to mix method with imagination and sensibility.

Spatial planning is a process. The focus of this book is on the sequence of key tasks that constitute the process and on special techniques that are suitable to conduct these tasks. Spatial planners require a number of skills to manage this process in an efficient manner, select the necessary tasks for each specific planning context, as well as the appropriate techniques for each task always considering the people with whom and for whom they plan.

Rather than recommending options, or recipes, this book stimulates critical thinking and questioning: What do we want to achieve? How can we do that? What options do we have? Which option is the best for our case? This book contains enough planning theory to discuss the function of the planner and the alternative approaches, as well as to provide the background for defining a core set of planning tasks.

Building Competences for Spatial Planners is ideal for both planning students and newly qualified planners who are rapidly accumulating knowledge and experience. Perdicoulis uses practice examples, diagrams and thought provoking chapter questions to help planners develop high-level skills such as efficient organisation, communication and thinking. His engaging style carries the reader through areas such as team functions, how to define the planning problem, organising timings and how to use charts and diagrams to help planners and their clients.

More details at http: //www.tasso.utad.pt/

Spatial planning is a process. The focus of this book is on the sequence of key tasks that constitute the process and on special techniques that are suitable to conduct these tasks. Spatial planners require a number of skills to manage this process in an efficient manner, select the necessary tasks for each specific planning context, as well as the appropriate techniques for each task always considering the people with whom and for whom they plan.

Rather than recommending options, or recipes, this book stimulates critical thinking and questioning: What do we want to achieve? How can we do that? What options do we have? Which option is the best for our case? This book contains enough planning theory to discuss the function of the planner and the alternative approaches, as well as to provide the background for defining a core set of planning tasks.

Building Competences for Spatial Planners is ideal for both planning students and newly qualified planners who are rapidly accumulating knowledge and experience. Perdicoulis uses practice examples, diagrams and thought provoking chapter questions to help planners develop high-level skills such as efficient organization, communication and thinking. His engaging style carries the reader through areas such as team functions, how to define the planning problem, organizing timings and how to use charts and diagrams to help planners and their clients.

More details at http: www.tasso.utad.pt

Patrick Geddes is considered a forefather of the modern urban planning movement. This boook studies the various, and even opposing ways, in which Geddes has been interpreted up to this day, providing a new reading of his life, writing and plans.

Geddes' scrutiny is presented as a case study for Town Planning as a whole. Tying together for the first time key concepts in cultural geography and colonial urbanism, the book proposes a more vigorous historiography, exposing hidden narratives and past agendas still dominating the disciplinary discourse. Written by a cultural geographer and a town planner, this book offers a rounded, full-length analysis of Geddes' vision and its material manifestation, functioning also as a much needed critical tool to evaluate Modern Town Planning as an academic and practical discipline. The book also includes a long overdue model of his urban theory.

In recent years there has been a growing focus on urban and environmental studies, and the skills and techniques needed to address the wider challenges of how to create sustainable communities. Central to that demand is the increasing urgency of addressing the issue of urban decline, and the response has almost always been to pursue growth policies to attempt to reverse that decline. The track record of growth policies has been mixed at best.

Until the first decade of the twenty-first century decline was assumed to be an issue only for former industrial cities the so-called Rust Belt. But the sudden reversal in growth in the major cities of the American Sunbelt has shown that urban decline can be a much wider issue. Justin Hollander 's research into urban decline in both the Sun and Rust Belts draws lessons planners and policy makers that can be applied universally.

Hollander addresses the reasons and statistics behind these "shrinking cities" with a positive outlook, arguing that growth for growth 's sake is not beneficial for communities, suggesting instead that urban development could be achieved through shrinkage. Case studies on Phoenix, Flint, Orlando and Fresno support the argument, and Hollander delves into the numbers, literature and individual lives affected and how they have changed in response to the declining regions.

Written for urban scholars and to suit a wide range of courses focused on contemporary urban studies, this text forms a base for all study on shrinking cities for professionals, academics and students in urban design, planning, public administration and sociology.

Presenting diverse case studies of contemporary sustainable urban practice from Europe, Africa, India, South America, the USA and Australia, this book offers the reader a fantastic wealth of practical material from a range of internationally renowned authors.

Each practical case study has addressed issues and then offered solutions to implement sustainable cities across a range of urban scales and cultures. Urgent design challenges explored include population density, recreating infrastructure that supports carbon neutral or low carbon (emission) intensive urban activities, and retrofitting for sustainability.

Highly illustrated, thematically focused and with superb global coverage, this book presents a multi-voiced and yet highly cohesive reference for anyone interested in green issues in urban design and architecture.

This book considers urban development in China, highlighting links between China's history and civilization and the rapid evolution of its urban forms. It explores the early days of urban dwelling in China, progressing to an analysis of residential environments in the industrial age. It also examines China's modern and postmodern architecture, considered as derivative or lacking spiritual meaning or personality, and showcases how China's traditional culture underpins the emergence of China's modern cities. Focusing on the notion of "courtyard spirit" in China, it offers a study of the urban public squares central to Chinese society, and examines the disruption of the traditional Square model and the rise and growth of new architectural models.

Presenting diverse case studies of contemporary sustainable urban practice from Europe, Africa, India, South America, the USA and Australia, this book offers the reader a fantastic wealth of practical material from a range of internationally renowned authors.

Each practical case study has addressed issues and then offered solutions to implement sustainable cities across a range of urban scales and cultures. Urgent design challenges explored include population density, recreating infrastructure that supports carbon neutral or low carbon (emission) intensive urban activities, and retrofitting for sustainability.

Highly illustrated, thematically focused and with superb global coverage, this book presents a multi-voiced and yet highly cohesive reference for anyone interested in green issues in urban design and architecture.

This book highlights radical urban transformation in eight cities spread across continental Europe. The point of departure, and the foundation of European urbanisation, is the Roman colonial town. In every case social dynamics guided the urban transitions in a traceable way, such that it has been possible to deduce the intellectual underpinnings of the contemporary built environments, as featured in these pages. Differing contexts of time and place show the overarching march of European history and related themes at the urban level. Fundamental changes are brought to light. Each story demonstrates a separate and fundamental transition, ranging from earlier collective configurations to the more institutionalised structures of later periods.

Strategic Spatial Projects presents four years of case study research and theoretical discussions on strategic spatial projects in Europe and North America. It takes the position that planning is not well equipped to take on its current challenges if it is considered as only a regulatory and administrative activity. There is an urgent need to develop a mode of planning that aims to innovate in spatial as well as social terms. This timely, important book is for spatial planning, urban design and community development and policy studies courses. For academics, researchers and students in planning, urban design, urban studies, human and economic geography, public administration and policy studies.

The quality of life of millions of people living in cities could be improved if the form of the city were to evolve in a manner appropriate to its climatic context. Climatically responsive urban design is vital to any notion of sustainability: it enables individual buildings to make use of renewable energy sources for passive heating and cooling, it enhances pedestrian comfort and activity in outdoor spaces, and it may even encourage city dwellers to moderate their dependence on private vehicles. Urban Microclimate bridges the gap between climatology research and applied urban design. It provides architects and urban design professionals with an understanding of how the structure of the built environment at all scales affects microclimatic conditions in the space between buildings, and analyzes the interaction between microclimate and each of the elements of the urban landscape. In the first two sections of the book, the extensive body of work on this subject by climatologists and geographers is presented in the language of architecture and planning professionals. The third section follows each step in the design process, and in part four a critical analysis of selected case study projects provides a demonstration of the complexity of applied urban design. Practitioners will find in this book a useful guide to consult, as they address these key environmental issues in their own work.