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Books > Earth & environment > Regional & area planning > Urban & municipal planning > General
With the environment, climate change, and global warming taking center stage in the national debate, the issues seem insurmountable and certainly unsolvable at the local level. Written by Chris Maser, international consultant on forest ecology, sustainable forestry practices, and sustainable development, Social-Environmental Planning: The Design Interface Between Everyforest and Everycity focuses on community based solutions, emphasizing how the heavy lifting of sustainability will always be done inside existing cities and communities. Based on the author's forty years of experience, the book covers the sustainability of the planet and its population when dealing with climate change. The book provides an in-depth understanding of the commonalities of pattern between Everyforest and Everycity. Maser suggests that before changes can be made, society must adapt to the circumstances of global climate change as they already are, and then determine what we can do to stabilize global climate as effectively and quickly as possible. He explores the reciprocal interface between communities and the landscape and how, when this interface is recognized and understood, it can create solutions that work. With this comprehension, people can adapt to the present and begin determining what they can do now to leave the planet a little better for each generation.
Both the number and percentage of people living in urban areas is growing rapidly. Up to half of the world's population is expected to be living in a city by the end of the century and there are over 170 cities in the world with populations over a million. Cities have a huge impact on the local climate and require vast quantities of energy to keep them functioning. The urban environment in turn has a big impact on the performance and needs of buildings. The size, scale and mechanism of these interactions is poorly understood and strategies to mitigate them are rarely implemented. This is the first comprehensive book to address these questions. It arises out of a programme of work (POLISTUDIES) carried out for the Save programme of the European Commission. Chapters describe not only the main problems encountered such as the heat island and canyon effects, but also a range of design solutions that can be adopted both to improve the energy performance and indoor air quality of individual buildings and to look at aspects of urban design that can reduce these climatic effects. The book concludes with some examples of innovative urban bioclimatic buildings. The project was co-ordinated by Professor Mat Santamouris from the University of Athens who is also the editor of the book. Other contributions are from the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, ENTPE, Lyons, France and the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
In the decades following the first Earth Day in 1970, a generation has been enlightened about the unspeakable damage done to our planet. Federal, state, and local governments generated laws and regulations to control development and protect the environment. Local governments have developed environmental standards addressing their needs. The result-an ecologically incongruous pattern of land development known as urban sprawl. Local land use planners can have a greater effect on the quality of our environment than all of the federal and state regulators combined. Historically, they have existed on the periphery of land management. The author suggests that federal and state environmental regulators need to incorporate local governments into their environmental protection plans. Ecologically Based Municipal Land Use Planning provides easily understood, nuts and bolts solutions for controlling urban sprawl, emphasizing the integration of federal, state, and local land use plans. The book discusses ecological resources and provides practical solutions that municipal planners can implement immediately. It discusses the most recent scientific data, how to extract what is important, and how to apply it to the local land planning process. The author includes the application of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to problem solving. Despite compelling evidence and sound arguments favoring the implementation of an ecologically sensitive approach to land use planning, municipal planners, in general, remain skeptical. It will take considerably more encouragement and education to win them over completely. Ecologically Based Municipal Land Use Planning makes the case for sound land use policies that will reduce sprawl.
Landscape Ecology - a rapidly growing science - quantifies the ways ecosystems interact. It establishes links between activities in one region and repercussions in another. Landscape Ecology: A Top-Down Approach serves as a general introduction to this emerging area of study. In this book the authors take a "top down" approach. They believe that context is equally as important as content and that an isolated, dismembered landscape fragment loses biodiversity. In contrast, past and current ecosystem studies have not considered the consequences of outside influences. The authors argue that the most detailed mathematical models of biodiversity within a landscape do not suffice to predict the outcome of management practices if the contextual analysis reveals that human impacts outside the landscape contribute to a reserve's ultimate demise. The material presented in this book demonstrates that protecting disconnected vignettes of nature in isolated national parks and reserves, or saving so-called "hot spots" of biodiversity, does not work. The rapid convergence of themes in ecology supports the study of the ecology of landscapes. Advances in this field will come from studies in landscape effects and the mobile organisms whose top down effects create and maintain landscapes. Landscape Ecology: A Top Down Approach supplies the basics for this work.
Bicycle Utopias investigates the future of urban mobilities and post-car societies, arguing that the bicycle can become the nexus around which most human movement will revolve. Drawing on literature on post-car futures (Urry 2007; Dennis and Urry 2009), transition theory (Geels et al. 2012) and utopian studies (Levitas 2010, 2013), this book imagines a slow bicycle system as a necessary means to achieving more sustainable mobility futures. The imagination of a slow bicycle system is done in three ways: Scenario building to anticipate how cycling mobilities will look in the year 2050. A critique of the system of automobility and of fast cycling futures. An investigation of the cycling senses and sociabilities to describe the type of societies that such a slow bicycle system will enable. Bicycle Utopias will appeal to students and scholars in fields such as sociology, mobilities studies, human geography and urban and transport studies. This work may also be of interest to advocates, activists and professionals in the domains of cycling and sustainable mobilities.
Ways of handling climate change vary worldwide. Differences can be observed in the perception of potential threats and opportunities as well as in the appraisal of adequate coping strategies. Collective efforts often fail not because of technical restrictions, but as a result of social and cultural differences between the actors involved. Consequently, there is a need to explore in greater depth those zones of cultural friction which emerge when actors deal with climate change. This book examines how cultural differences in the handling of climate change can be described and explained. The work develops the concept of culture as relational space, elaborates explanatory approaches, and investigates them by surveying more than 800 actors responsible for spatial development of the European coastal regions in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Poland. In doing so, this book engages with debates on cultural globalisation, in which the attachment of culture to place is increasingly being questioned. Adopting the approach of culture as relational space allows possible cultural formations to be examined across diverse fields of application from the local to the global scale. In addition, the book investigates how far different value orientations, beliefs, and identities can explain diverse perceptions of problems and opportunities right up to preferences for climate-mitigation and adaptation measures. Providing comprehensive insights into the diverse zones of cultural friction which scholars and practitioners face when handling climate change locally and globally, this book will be of great interest to those studying climate change, environmental sociology, and sustainable planning.
This book makes a significant contribution to the history of placemaking, presenting grassroots to top-down practices and socially engaged, situated artistic practices and artsled spatial inquiry that go beyond instrumentalising the arts for development. The book brings together a range of scholars to critique and deconstruct the notion of creative placemaking, presenting diverse case studies from researcher, practitioner, funder and policymaker perspectives from across the globe. It opens with the creators of the 2010 White Paper that named and defined creative placemaking, Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa Nicodemus, who offer a cortically reflexive narrative on the founding of the sector and its development. This book looks at vernacular creativity in place, a topic continued through the book with its focus on the practitioner and community-placed projects. It closes with a consideration of aesthetics, metrics and, from the editors, a consideration of the next ten years for the sector. If creative placemaking is to contribute to places-in-the-making and encourage citizenled agency, new conceptual frameworks and practical methodologies are required. This book joins theorists and practitioners in dialogue, advocating for transdisciplinary, resilient processes.
A comparative analysis of eight different urban areas - Bologna, Bordeaux, Geneve-Lausanne, Lyons, Manchester, Rotterdam, Stuttgart and Torino - examining key urban issues that are high on the policy agenda of every national government.
First published in 2005, this book examines the contribution of planning and integrated landscape management to the process of reversing the continuing deterioration of our natural environment. Planning for integrated buffer zones is important to conserve national parks, nature reserves, threatened habitats, other ecologically sensitive areas and heritage sites. This book begins with an examination of the role and nature of planning. It identifies the main types of planning problems and details a 'model' planning process that can be usefully applied to resolve them. Several theoretical and practical approaches to buffering environmentally sensitive areas are evaluated and a classification of existing approaches is detailed. Case studies are included to illustrate and test some of these approaches. The book concludes by recommending that integrated buffer zone planning should become a standard tool in real-life environmental planning and management. To facilitate this, an innovative approach to the design and implementation of integrated buffers is offered, including a step-by-step planning guide.
'Several high quality scientific journals are published in the area of building energy and indoor/outdoor environment; however, one has been missing. Advances in Building Energy Research fills the gap. I recommend ABER to all technical libraries, research institutes and universities. It should also be used by construction companies and those manufacturing building materials and building products.' Professor Olli Sepp nen, President of REHVA (Federation of Heating and Air-conditioning Associations) 'Advances in Building Energy Research is a unique index. It will be an inexhaustible resource for energy related sciences and a continuous inspiration for architects around the world.' N. Fintikakis, Architect and Director of UIA-ARES WP (Architecture and Renewable Energy Sources) 'The collection of articles provides an encyclopaedic overview of the state of the art of the subject; and they are written clearly and concisely. This volume is a must for researchers and advanced students.' Professor Edward Ng, Department of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 'This is a very valuable first volume of a new series with each section written by leaders in their respective fields. Contributions cover a range of related topics and present evaluations of contemporary issues in building energy research that give the reader an immediate and clear insight.' Dr Adrian Pitts, Senior Lecturer in Energy, Environment and Sustainability, University of Sheffield Advances in Building Energy Research (ABER) offers state-of-the-art information on the environmental science and performance of buildings, linking new technologies and methodologies with the latest research on systems, simulations and standards. As stringently reviewed as a journal but with the breadth of a book, this annual volume brings together invited contributions from the foremost international experts on energy efficiency and environmental quality of buildings. Spanning a broad range of technical subjects, this is a 'must have' reference on global developments in the field, suitable for architects and building engineers, environmental engineers, industry professionals, students, teachers and researchers in building science, technical libraries and laboratories. This first volume covers double skin fa ades; artificial intelligence in buildings; indoor thermal comfort and the progress of the adaptive approach; heat island research and the effect of urban microclimate; the use of techniques such as high dynamic range imaging and satellite remote sensing; and vital management and monitoring approaches such as post-occupancy evaluation.
Often seen as the host nation's largest ever logistical undertaking, accommodating the Olympics and its attendant security infrastructure brings seismic changes to both the physical and social geography of its destination. Since 1976, the defence of the spectacle has become the central feature of its planning, one that has assumed even greater prominence following the bombing of the 1996 Atlanta Games and, most importantly, 9/11. Indeed, the quintupled cost of securing the first post-9/11 summer Games in Athens demonstrates the considerable scale and complexity currently implicated in these operations. Such costs are not only fiscal. The Games stimulate a tidal wave of redevelopment ushering in new gentrified urban settings and an associated investment that may or may not soak through to the incumbent community. Given the unusual step of developing London's Olympic Park in the heart of an existing urban milieu and the stated commitments to 'community development' and 'legacy', these constitute particularly acute issues for the 2012 Games. In addition to sealing the Olympic Park from perceived threats, 2012 security operations have also harnessed the administrative criminological staples of community safety and crime reduction to generate an ordered space in the surrounding areas. Of central importance here are the issues of citizenship, engagement and access in urban spaces redeveloped upon the themes of security and commerce. Through analyzing the social and community impact of the 2012 Games and its security operation on East London, this book concludes by considering the key debates as to whether utopian visions of legacy can be sustained given the demands of providing a global securitized event of the magnitude of the modern Olympics.
In 1935, the Russian-born Jewish architect Berthold Lubetkin and his firm Tecton designed Highpoint, a block of flats in London, which Le Corbusier called 'revolutionary'. Three years later, Lubetkin completed a companion design. Yet Highpoint II felt very different, and the sense that the ideals of modernism had been abandoned seemed hard to dispute. Had modern architecture failed to take root in England? This book challenges the belief that English architecture was on hiatus during the 1930s. Using Highpoint II as a springboard, Deborah Lewittes takes us on a journey through the defining moments of modern English architecture - the 'high points' of the period surrounding Highpoint II. Drawing on Lubetkin's work and his writings, the book argues that he advanced influential, lasting theories which were rooted in his design for Highpoint II. Lubetkin's work is explored within the context of wider Jewish emigration to London during the interwar years as well as the anti-Semitism that pervaded Britain during the 1930s. As Lewittes demonstrates, this decade was anything but quiet. Providing a new perspective on twentieth-century English architecture, this book is of interest to students and scholars in architectural history, urban studies, Jewish studies, and related fields.
New York in Cinematic Imagination is an interdisciplinary study into urbanism and cinematic representations of the American metropolis in the twentieth century. It contextualizes spatial transformations and discourse about New York during the Great Depression and the Second World War, examining both imaginary narratives and documentary images of the city in film. The book argues that alternating endorsements and critiques of the 1920s machine age city are replaced in films of the 1930s and 1940s by a new critical theory of "agitated urban modernity" articulated against the backdrop of turbulent economic and social settings and the initial practices of urban renewal in the post-war period. Written for postgraduates and researchers in the fields of film, history and urban studies, with 40 black and white illustrations to work alongside the text, this book is an engaging study into cinematic representations of New York City.
The handbook presents a compendium of the diverse and growing approaches to place from leading authors as well as less widely known scholars, providing a comprehensive yet cutting-edge overview of theories, concepts and creative engagements with place that resonate with contemporary concerns and debates. The volume moves away from purely western-based conceptions and discussions about place to include perspectives from across the world. It includes an introductory chapter, which outlines key definitions, draws out influential historical and contemporary approaches to the theorisation of place and sketches out the structure of the book, explaining the logic of the seven clearly themed sections. Each section begins with a short introductory essay that provides identifying key ideas and contextualises the essays that follow. The original and distinctive contributions from both new and leading authorities from across the discipline provide a wide, rich and comprehensive collection that chimes with current critical thinking in geography. The book captures the dynamism and multiplicity of current geographical thinking about place by including both state-of-the-art, in-depth, critical overviews of theoretical approaches to place and new explorations and cases that chart a framework for future research. It charts the multiple ways in which place might be conceived, situated and practised. This unique, comprehensive and rich collection will be an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate teaching, for experienced academics across a wide range of disciplines and for policymakers and place-marketers. It will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines, such as Geography, Sociology and Politics, and interdisciplinary fields such as Urban Studies, Environmental Studies and Planning.
How cities are planned and designed has a major impact on individuals' mobility and safety. If individuals feel unsafe in public transportation or on the way to it, they may avoid certain routes or particular times of the day. This is problematic, since research has also found that, in some cities, especially those in the Global South, a large percentage of women are "transit captives". Namely, they have relatively less access to non-public forms of transportation and are, therefore, especially reliant on public transport. This issue is important not only because it affects people's safety but also because it influences the long-term sustainability of a city. In a sustainable city, safety guarantees the ability to move freely for everyone and provides a wider sense of place attachment. Transit Crime and Sexual Violence in Cities examines the evidence of victimization in transit environments in countries around the world, exploring individuals' feelings of perceived safety or lack thereof and the necessary improvements that can make transit safer and, hence, cities more sustainable. The book's contributions are grounded in theories at the crossroads of several disciplines such as environmental criminology, architecture and design, urban planning, geography, psychology, gender and LGBTQI studies, transportation, and law enforcement. International case studies include Los Angeles, Vancouver, Stockholm, London, Paris, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Bogota, Tokyo, Guangzho, Melbourne, and Lagos, among others.
This book presents practical approaches for tackling the threats from climate change and disasters to urban growth in Pacific island countries and Asian nations. With chapters written by leading scholars and practitioners, Urbanisation at Risk presents research and case studies from island countries across the Pacific, Cambodia, Nepal and the Philippines. The book explores and presents the theory, policy and practice of how governments, civil society, aid organisations and people themselves prepare for, withstand and recover better from urban disasters including windstorms, floods, earthquakes and fires, and the effects of climate change. This book is written for urban policy makers, researchers, humanitarian aid and development workers, and anyone interested in urbanisation, participatory approaches, disasters, resilience and climate change adaptation.
Transforming Cities examines the profound changes that have characterised cities of the advanced capitalist societies in the final decades of the twentieth century. It analyses ways in which relationships of contest, conflict and co-operation are realised in and through the social and spatial forms of contemporary urban life. This book focuses on the impact of economic restructuring and changing forms of urban deprivation and social exclusion. It contends that these processes are creating new patterns of social division and new forms of regulation and control.
First published in 1997, Imagining Cities gives students access to the most exciting recent work on the city from within sociology, cultural studies and cultural geography. Contributions are grouped around four major themes: The theoretical imagination Ethnic diversity and the politics of difference Memory and nostalgia The city as narrative The book considers the interplay of past and present, imagined and substantive, and links present and future in examining the idea of the virtual city. Here, the world of cyberspace not only recasts views of space and communication, but has a profound impact on the sociological imagination itself.
Given that around 50 per cent of the world's population live in cities, and that urban populations are expanding rapidly, the issues are important and becoming increasingly urgent. To reduce the effects of such impacts, management is required irrespective of whether the groundwater is to be used or not. This management must be based on a sound technical understanding of the interacting processes involved. The forty papers in this volume explore the state of this understanding in the context of a wide range of countries (and therefore cultures), climates, and geologies. They are divided into topic areas covering flow, chemical water quality, biological water quality, remediation, engineering, and socio-economics. An initial section sets the scene with a range of integrated regional-scale studies.
Engendering Cities examines the contemporary research, policy, and practice of designing for gender in urban spaces. Gender matters in city design, yet despite legislative mandates across the globe to provide equal access to services for men and women alike, these issues are still often overlooked or inadequately addressed. This book looks at critical aspects of contemporary cities regarding gender, including topics such as transport, housing, public health, education, caring, infrastructure, as well as issues which are rarely addressed in planning, design, and policy, such as the importance of toilets for education and clothes washers for freeing-up time. In the first section, a number of chapters in the book assess past, current, and projected conditions in cities vis-a-vis gender issues and needs. In the second section, the book assesses existing policy, planning, and design efforts to improve women's and men's concerns in urban living. Finally, the book proposes changes to existing policies and practices in urban planning and design, including its thinking (theory) and norms (ethics). The book applies the current scholarship on theory and practice related to gender in a planning context, elaborating on some critical community-focused reflections on gender and design. It will be key reading for scholars and students of planning, architecture, design, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, and political science. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy makers, providing discussion of emerging topics in the field.
This book is about ageing in Bulgaria. How do Bulgaria's elderly-abandoned by the state and left behind by their adult children and grandchildren-adapt to their continuously shifting environment and a state of perpetual uncertainty? Drawing on dozens of interviews with older people in Bulgaria's capital Sofia as well as a village in the Bulgarian Balkans, Iossifova unravels how the dramatic socio-political transitions of the past eighty years have influenced the lifecourse of older people today. She carefully traces their patterns of everyday life in order to draw out the mechanisms through which older people cope with their meagre pensions, sustain their ailing bodies and make do in their tattered homes. Iossifova argues that 'ageing in place' as a popular paradigm underpinning neoliberal policy agendas has no place in Bulgaria and the wider Global East, where translocal ageing is the norm.
Originally published in 1987, Regenerating the Inner City looks at the changes to Glasgow's East End and how industrial closures and slum clearance projects have caused people to leave. This is reflected across the western world, and causes severe blows to cities where these industries are located. The book draws on Glasgow's Eastern Area Renewal Scheme, the first big urban renewal project in Britain. The contributors to the volume come from a range of disciplines and form practical conclusions for policy-makers, and community activists. The book uses door-to-door surveys in Glasgow's east end, and interviews with community groups to gain an authentic understanding of the issue.
The revised and updated second edition of Qualitative Analysis for Planning & Policy is a roadmap to help planners access qualitative data and integrate it into their planning investigations. Planning and policy decisions are not based solely on numbers, and this book equips planners with a how-to guide to see what has been missing "between the lines" of quantitative data and make good decisions using the best possible information. Each chapter offers step-by-step instruction on how to set up and enact diverse types of qualitative research, and case studies demonstrate how qualitative research techniques can be combined with quantitative methods to tackle complex real-world projects. For over a decade Qualitative Analysis for Planning & Policy has been an indispensable resource for students and researchers, experienced and novice planners. The revised second edition offers myriad tools to help twenty-first-century planners make intelligent decisions, including new qualitative research techniques, technological innovations, and contemporary case studies.
Disruptive Urbanism examines how different forms and modes of the so called "sharing economy" are manifesting in cities and regions throughout the world, and how policy makers are responding to these disruptions. The emergence of the so called "sharing economy" and the "disruptive technologies" have profound implications for urban policy and governance. Initial expectations that "sharing" of homes, offices or vehicles could solve urban problems such as congestion or housing affordability have given way to concerns over job precarity, neighbourhood transformation, and the growing power of platforms in disrupting urban governance and regulation. Contributors to this volume canvas these issues, examining how the "sharing economy" is manifesting in urban areas, the implications of this for urban living, and how policy makers are responding to these changes. Implications for urban research, policy, and practice are highlighted through chapters which address forms of urban "sharing" across housing, transport, work, and food and wider processes of globalisation and neoliberalism as they disrupt cities and urban policy making. Disruptive Urbanism will be of great interest to scholars of urban planning, urban governance, the sharing economy, and housing studies. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Urban Policy and Research.
Originally published in 1986 Urban Hospital Location examines the rising costs of health care and how the problem of providing a cost-effective and equitable pattern of health services is now a vital issue in many countries. It looks at how location decisions are especially difficult in cities because of the shifting geographical distribution and demographic structure of urban populations. The book shows how the utilisation of health services is strongly influenced by their location and argues that better geographical organisation of health care facilities would contribute significantly to a better and more effective health service. |
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