Across the country, communities rely on their planning commissions for guidance. But who guides the planning commissioners? This step-by-step guidebook gets new commissioners off on the right foot and helps experienced commission members navigate their roles. The authors, all practicing planners, have worked extensively with planning commissions for decades. They have watched commissioners scramble up a steep learning curve, sit in the hot seat of controversy, and strive to make sound decisions for the places they call home. In this helpful handbook, the authors share ideas, insights, and information to help commissioners succeed. Eight detailed chapters cover everything from the nuts and bolts of development applications to the nuances of legal issues to the part commissioners play in long-range planning. Readers will learn how to prepare for their first commission meeting, review a development plan, invite productive public input, and steer clear of ethical dilemmas. Added resources include a glossary of planning terms, a list of training resources, and the American Planning Association's Statement of Ethical Principles in Planning. For anyone serving on a planning commission, The Planning Commissioners Guide is essential reading.

In recent decades, the importance of creative cluster development has gained increasing recognition from national and regional governments. Governments have been investing in initiatives and urban development plans that aim to create or support localized creative industries. Our understanding of creative clusters is expanded with this insightful volume, which looks at issues of governance, place-making and entrepreneurship. In addition to its theoretical contributions, the book also presents a rich range of international case studies, including, among others, an analysis of coworking spaces in Toronto, business park development in MediaCityUK and mediapark.brussels and public-private partnerships in Warsaw. Creative Cluster Development will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers and policymakers in urban planning, regional studies, economic geography, innovation studies and the creative and cultural industries.

Mega-events have long been used by cities as a strategy to secure global recognition and attract future economic investment. However, while cultural mega-events like the European Capital of Culture have become increasingly popular, cities have begun questioning the traditional model of other events such as the Olympic Games with many candidate cities cancelling bids in recent years. This approach to planning and developing cities through mega-events introduces a broad range of physical effects and nuanced institutional changes for cities, particularly for the more sensitive heritage areas of cities. This book explores these issues by first examining the dynamics of cities' attempts to reduce overall costs and increase the sustainability of these large events by further embedding them within the existing fabric of the city and second by studying in depth the impact on the heritage of host cities. This book investigates three World Heritage Cities: Genoa, Liverpool and Istanbul, each of which have hosted the European Capital of Culture and introduced a variety of opportunities and risks for their heritage. The book highlights the potential benefits and challenges of integrating event and heritage planning to provide lessons that can help future historic cities and heritage decision makers better prepare for such events.

This book traces how naturalism-the idea of a common theory uniting natural social systems-has contributed to major shifts in urban planning. Beginning in the 17th century, when the human body began to emerge as an inspiration for urban planning, the book examines the work of medical analyses of city life. Responding to the 19th century industrial revolution and 20th century modernism, the Second World War and mass motorisation, Dr Marco Amati shows how vitalism, eugenics, evolutionary theories and medical treatments were applied to understand cities and propose new urban forms. While critically evaluating the uses of naturalism, Amati also observes a renewed interest in the application of sciences to analyse city life, arguing that this is essential to help resolve challenges of human-induced climate change.

This book, based on extensive international collaborative research, highlights the state-of-the-art design of smart living for metropolises, megacities, and metacities, as well as at the community and neighbourhood level. Smart living is one of six main components of smart cities, the others being smart people, smart economy, smart environment, smart mobility and smart governance. Smart living in any smart city can only be designed and implemented with active roles for smart people and smart city government, and as a joint effort combining e-Democracy, e-Governance and ICT-IoT systems. In addition to using information and communication technologies, the Internet of Things, Internet of Governance (e-Governance) and Internet of People (e-Democracy), the design of smart living utilizes various domain-specific tools to achieve coordinated, effective and efficient management, development, and conservation, and to improve ecological, social, biophysical, psychological and economic well-being in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of development ecosystems and stakeholders. This book presents case studies covering more than 10 cities and centred on domain-specific smart living components. The book is issued in two volumes and this volume focus on community studies and ways and means.

"American cities are shifting collections of individual neghborhoods. Thousands of residents move every year within and among neighborhoods; their flows across a city can radically and quickly alter the character of its neighborhoods. What is behind all this ferment-the decline of one area, the revitalization of another? Can the process be made more rational? Can city neighborhoods be stabilized--and older cities thus preserved? This book argues that such flows of residents are not random. Rather, they are closely linked to overall migration into or out of each metropolitan area and to the way U.S. cities develop. Downs contends that both urban development and the social problems it spawns are built upon social arrangements designed to benefit the middle-class majority. Racial segregation divides housing in each metropolitan area into two or more markets. Socioeconomic segregation subdivides neighborhoods within each market into a class hierarchy. The poor live mainly in the oldest neighborhoods, close to the urban center. The affluent live in the newest neighborhoods, mostly at the urban periphery. This separation stems not from pure market forces but from exclusionary laws that make the construction of low-cost housing illegal in most neighborhoods. The resulting pattern determines where housing is built and what housing is left to decay. Downs uses data from U.S. cities to illustrate neighborhood change and to reach conclusions about ways to cope with it. he explores the causes and nature of racial segregation and integration, and he evaluates neighborhood revitalization programs, which in reviving part of a city often displace many poor residents. He presents a timely analysis of the effect of higher energy costs upon urban sprawl, argues the wisdom of reviving older cities rather than helping their residents move elsewhere, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of public and private policies at the federal, state, metropolitan-area, city, and neighborhood levels. "

China turned majority urban only in the recent decade, a dramatic leap given that less than 20 percent of its population lived in cities before 1980. This book situates China’s urbanization in the interconnected forces of historical legacies, contemporary state interventions, and human and ecological conditions. It captures the complexity of the phenomenon of urbanization in its historical and regional variations, and explores its impact on the country’s socioeconomic welfare, environment and resources, urban form and lifestyle, and population and health. It is also a book about China, in which the contributors provide new perspectives to understand the transitions underway and the gravity of the progress, particularly in the context of demographic shifts and climate change. The chapters in China Urbanizing, written by American and Chinese scholars, achieve three interconnected aims. The first is to explore how the process of urbanization has shaped and been influenced by the social, economic, and physical interactions that take place in and beyond cities, and the state interventions intended to regulate such interactions. The second is to examine the shifts and evolutions emerging in urban China, such as the economic slowdown, population aging and low fertility rates, and how cities interact with the environment and planet given China’s rising role in the global discourse on climate change. The third is to explore new sources of information for conducting research on urban China, such as satellite and street-level imagery data and online listings, to account for the complexity and heterogeneity that characterize contemporary Chinese urbanization. Contributors: Juan Chen, Dean Curran, Deborah Davis, Peilei Fan, Qin Gao, Pierre F. Landry, Shi Li, Shiqi Ma, Justin Remais, Alan Smart, Shin Bin Tan, Jeremy Wallace, Sarah Williams, Binbin Wu, Weiping Wu, Guibin Xiong, Wenfei Xu.

In twenty-first-century American cities, policy makers increasingly celebrate university-sponsored innovation districts as engines of inclusive growth. But the story is not so simple. In University City, Laura Wolf-Powers chronicles five decades of planning in and around the communities of West Philadelphia's University City to illuminate how the dynamics of innovation district development in the present both depart from and connect to the politics of mid-twentieth-century urban renewal. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, Wolf-Powers concludes that even as university and government leaders vow to develop without displacement, what existing residents value is imperiled when innovation-driven redevelopment remains accountable to the property market. The book first traces the municipal and institutional politics that empowered officials to demolish a predominantly Black neighborhood near the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University in the late 1960s to make way for the University City Science Center and University City High School. It also provides new insight into organizations whose members experimented during that same period with alternative conceptions of economic advancement. The book then shifts to the present, documenting contemporary efforts to position university-adjacent neighborhoods as locations for prosperity built on scientific knowledge. Wolf-Powers examines the work of mobilized civic groups to push cultural preservation concerns into the public arena and to win policies to help economically insecure families keep a foothold in changing neighborhoods. Placing Philadelphia's innovation districts in the context of similar development taking place around the United States, University City advocates a reorientation of redevelopment practice around the recognition that despite their negligible worth in real estate terms, the time, care, and energy people invest in their local environments-and in one another-are precious urban resources.

1. A state-of-the art resource on the practice of comprehensive planning, for use by planners, elected officials, citizens, students, and others interested in planning for sustainable, communities 2. Guidance on how local jurisdictions can address pressing 21st century issues, such as climate change, socioeconomic inequality, and disruptive technologies, through comprehensive planning

2020 was a year unlike any other in U.S. history. The Future of Emergency Management After 2020: The New, Normal and Novel provocatively addresses the significant changes to the emergency management field. This title discusses the specific changes, commonalities, and future and persistent challenges for the next decade. The Future of Emergency Management After 2020: The New, Normal and Novel will draw attention to a variety of issues and challenges which will alter the scope, complexity and priorities of future emergency managers. This title will delineate the differences between emergency management and public safety. Additionally, it addresses international challenges that may arise. Faculty, students, and practitioners of emergency management along with anyone with a general interest in emergency management will find this book extremely pertinent and valuable.

'Having been one of many collaborating with Charles on this journey, I believe this publication is valuable in bringing together the many streams of thinking, exploration and practice behind the notion of a truly ''Creative City''.' - Richard Brecknock, Brecknock Consulting, Australia 'At last the comprehensive story of the creative city and the many streams of thought it inspires - by the most significant author and thinker in this space. As Charles argues, thinking with imagination and creativity is no longer a choice for cities, it's essential for them to thrive.' - Margie Caust, Urban Strategist 'Now that the ''shock and awe'' of claim and counterclaim has blown over; an inspiring reflective synthesis of both the practices and the potentials for the Creative City.' - Andy C. Pratt, City University of London, UK Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Written by the leading authority Charles Landry, inventssor of the concept of the creative city, this timely book offers an insightful and engaging introduction to the field. Exploring the development of the concept, it discusses the characteristics of cities, the qualities of creativity, the creative and regeneration repertoires and the gentrification dilemma. Other key topics of this definitive work include ambition and creativity, cities and psychology, digitization and the creative bureaucracy. Key features include: clear and compact style a unique survey of contemporary developments in the field provides a theoretical base for evaluating the concept of creative cities considerations of the urban-sociological context of creative cities sets an agenda for future research in the field. The Advanced Introduction to the Creative City will be an indispensable guide for scholars and students working in urban geography, urban sociology, urban planning and urban studies.

For the first time, Early Modern Streets unites the diverse strands of scholarship on urban streets between circa 1450 and 1800 and tackles key questions on how early modern urban society was shaped and how this changed over time. Much of the lives of urban dwellers in early modern Europe were played out in city streets and squares. By exploring urban spaces in relation to themes such as politics, economies, religion, and crime, this edited collection shows that streets were not only places where people came together to work, shop, and eat, but also to fight, celebrate, show their devotion, and express their grievances. The volume brings together scholars from different backgrounds and applies new approaches and methodologies to the historical study of urban experience. In doing so, Early Modern Streets provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most dynamic fields of scholarship in early modern history. Accompanied by over 50 illustrations, Early Modern Streets is the perfect resource for all students and scholars interested in urban life in early modern Europe.

Innovative study of state politics, identity and buildings that sheds new light on the links between the material and the ideational realms of contemporary life in Africa. Buildings shape politics in the ways they define communities, enable economic activity, reflect political ideas, and impact state-society relations. They are materially and symbolically interwoven with the everyday lives of elites and citizens, as well global flows of money, goods, and contracts. Yet, to date, there has been no research that explicitly connects debates about Africa's domestic and international politics with the study of architecture. This innovative book fills this gap, providing a new and compelling reading of the politics of identity in sub-Saharan Africa through an examination of some of its most significant buildings. Using case studies from nine countries across sub-Saharan Africa, this volume reveals how they are commissioned and built, how they enable elites to project power, and how they form a basis for popular conceptions of the state. Exploring a diverse range of buildings including parliaments, airports, prisons, ministries, regional institutions, libraries, universities, shopping malls, public housing, cathedrals and palaces, the contributors suggest a innovative perspective on African politics, identity and urban development. This book will be a compelling reference for scholars and students of African politics, development studies and city life in its elaboration of and challenges to established concepts and arguments about the relationship between material objects and political ideas. This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND.

This comprehensive volume examines contemporary life and history in Beijing, covering such topics as culture, politics, economics, crime, security, the environment, and more. While it is not China's most populated city, Beijing serves an important role as the political and cultural capital of the country. This volume examines Beijing's long history, contemporary society, and current challenges the city faces as we move further into the 21st century. Geared toward high school readers, undergraduates, and general readers interested in learning about Beijing, this volume consists of 12 narrative chapters focused on geography, history, and culture. Coverage includes location, people, history, politics, economy, environment and sustainability, local crime and violence, security issues, natural hazards and emergency management, culture and lifestyle, popular culture, and the future. "Life in the City" sidebars feature interviews and memories transcribed by people who are from, lived in, or traveled through Beijing, while other sidebars offer cultural fun facts and travel tips. This volume is the perfect read for anyone looking to get a better idea of what life is like in Beijing and how its culture has arrived at this point.

This book presents a multifaceted perspective on regional development and corresponding processes of adaptation and response, focusing on the concepts of polarization and peripheralization. It discusses theoretical and empirical foundations and presents several compelling case studies from Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.

For the first time, Early Modern Streets unites the diverse strands of scholarship on urban streets between circa 1450 and 1800 and tackles key questions on how early modern urban society was shaped and how this changed over time. Much of the lives of urban dwellers in early modern Europe were played out in city streets and squares. By exploring urban spaces in relation to themes such as politics, economies, religion, and crime, this edited collection shows that streets were not only places where people came together to work, shop, and eat, but also to fight, celebrate, show their devotion, and express their grievances. The volume brings together scholars from different backgrounds and applies new approaches and methodologies to the historical study of urban experience. In doing so, Early Modern Streets provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most dynamic fields of scholarship in early modern history. Accompanied by over 50 illustrations, Early Modern Streets is the perfect resource for all students and scholars interested in urban life in early modern Europe.

Urban transformations and public health in the emergent city examines how urban health and wellbeing are shaped by migration, mobility, racism, sanitation and gender. Adopting a global focus that spans Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, the essays in this volume bring together a wide selection of voices that explore the interface between social, medical and natural sciences. Moving beyond traditional approaches to urban research, this interdisciplinary approach offers a unique perspective on today's cities and the challenges they face. Edited by Michael Keith and Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, this volume also features contributions from leading thinkers on cities in Brazil, China, South Africa and the United Kingdom. This geographic diversity is matched by the breadth of their different fields, from mental health and gendered violence to sanitation and food systems. Together, they present a complex yet connected vision of a 'new biopolitics' in today's metropolis, one that requires an innovative approach to urban scholarship regardless of geography or discipline. With chapters from a number of renowned authors including former Deputy Mayor of Rio de Janeiro Luiz Eduardo Soares, this volume is an important resource for anyone seeking to better understand the dynamics of urban change. Through a focus on the everyday realities of urban living, from health services to public transportation, the contributors offer valuable lessons for academics, policy makers and practitioners alike. -- .

Post-suburbia is a term that encapsulates a variety of contemporary urban forms, in particular the 'edge city' - a term used to describe the rapid growth of new urban centres at the edges of established major cities. Widely discussed in the US, very little has been written about European edge cities and this book provides a comparative analysis of examples in Greece, Spain, Paris, Finland and the UK, offering a theoretical analysis of the edge city and of post-suburban Europe.

Professionals in the construction industry must respond quickly to meet the increasing pressures of heightened urban migration, and provide sustainable alternatives to resource scarcity in established cities - Smart Cities offers solutions to the demands of rising urban populations. The smartness of a city stems from the relationship between construction stakeholders and the citizens, with the shared goal to improve all standards and support social, physical, and economic growth. Surplus and reusable are key terminologies when striving towards sustainable development. Smart Cities aims to provide necessary information on the adoption of smart cities concepts towards achieving sustainable development, with a view to ensuring socially cohesive and resilient urban districts for both the current and future generations.

Implementing Data-Driven Strategies in Smart Cities is a guidebook and roadmap for practitioners seeking to operationalize data-driven urban interventions. The book opens by exploring the revolution that big data, data science, and the Internet of Things are making feasible for the city. It explores alternate topologies, typologies, and approaches to operationalize data science in cities, drawn from global examples including top-down, bottom-up, greenfield, brownfield, issue-based, and data-driven. It channels and expands on the classic data science model for data-driven urban interventions - data capture, data quality, cleansing and curation, data analysis, visualization and modeling, and data governance, privacy, and confidentiality. Throughout, illustrative case studies demonstrate successes realized in such diverse cities as Barcelona, Cologne, Manila, Miami, New York, Nancy, Nice, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Singapore, Stockholm, and Zurich. Given the heavy emphasis on global case studies, this work is particularly suitable for any urban manager, policymaker, or practitioner responsible for delivering technological services for the public sector from sectors as diverse as energy, transportation, pollution, and waste management.

The Climate Planner is about overcoming the objections to climate change mitigation and adaption that urban planners face at a local level. It shows how to draft climate plans that encounter less resistance because they involve the public, stakeholders, and decisionmakers in a way that builds trust, creates consensus, and leads to implementation. Although focused on the local level, this book discusses climate basics such as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement of 2015, worldwide energy generation forecasts, and other items of global concern in order to familiarize urban planners and citizen planners with key concepts that they will need to know in order to be able to host climate conversations at the local level. The many case studies from around the United States of America show how communities have encountered pushback and bridged the implementation gap, the gap between plan and reality, thanks to a commitment to substantive public engagement. The book is written for urban planners, local activists, journalists, elected or appointed representatives, and the average citizen worried about climate breakdown and interested in working to reshape the built environment.

As human and machine agency become increasingly intermingled and digital media is overlaid onto the urban landscape, The machinic city argues that performance art can help us to understand contemporary urban living. Dias analyses several performance art interventions from artists such as Blast Theory, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Rimini Protokoll, which draw from a rich history of avant-garde art movements to create spaces for deliberation and reflection on urban life and to speculate on its future. While cities are increasingly controlled by autonomous processes mediated by technical machines, Dias analyses the performative potential of the aesthetic machine, as it assembles with media, capitalist, human and urban machines. The aesthetic machine of performance art in urban space is examined through its different components - design, city and technology actants. This unveils the unpredictable nature and emerging potential of performance art as it unfolds in the machinic city, which consists of assemblages of efficient and not-so-efficient machines. -- .

This book presents a comprehensive debate and analysis of existing Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) methodologies, designed under the auspices of the ESPON programme since the mid-2000s. This is intended to serve as a TIA handbook for the reader, to better understand the main differences, advantages and shortcomings of each presented TIA methodology. It also serves as a manual for professors and students in the field of policy evaluation, and territorial analysis, as it presents concrete examples of the implementation of each TIA methodology, their formulas and intrinsic evaluation elements. The purpose of policy evaluation methodologies is to check the main effects of private and public investments, in order to report back to policymakers and citizens on their efficiency and effectiveness. Over the past decades, both in Europe and worldwide, there has been an increasingly awareness of the need to implement/reinforce policy evaluation practices, at all territorial levels. At the same time, it has become widely accepted that many policy interventions produce impacts in more than one dimensions of territorial development. In this context, the use of a holistic and territorial approach for policy impact assessment evaluation has rapidly been adopted by the European Commission as a mainstream policy evaluation procedure.

Focusing on different tools, platforms, and techniques, Blockchain and the Smart City: Infrastructure and Implementation uses case studies from around the world to examine blockchain deployment in diverse smart city applications. The book begins by examining the fundamental theories and concepts of blockchain. It looks at key smart cities' domains such as banking, insurance, healthcare, and supply chain management. It examines Using case studies for each domain, the book looks at payment mechanisms, fog/edge computing, green computing, and algorithms and consensus mechanisms for smart cities implementation. It looks at tools such as Hyperledger, Etherium, Corda, IBM Blockchain, Hydrachain, as well as policies and regulatory standards, applications, solutions, and methodologies. While exploring future blockchain ecosystems for smart and sustainable city life, the book concludes with the research challenges and opportunities academics, researchers, and companies in implementing blockchain applications.

--International case studies from the US, UK, Germany, Taiwan, Uganda, Italy, and Canada --As small communities, especially in rural areas, continue to lose population it will be even more important for them to rely on innovative financing approaches to retain quality of life. --Reviews the experiences in the countries identified along with approaches used to glean the common elements that make them successful and viable