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Books > Arts & Architecture > Architecture > Landscape art & architecture
"America's interstate highway system is deteriorating, and traffic congestion in most urban centers is worsening. Because of the many strong and conflicting interests, policy discussions about the road system are also in gridlock. The only consensus that seems to have emerged is that public spending must be increased. Improving our highway system and its financing will not be easy. Road Work proposes a comprehensive highway pricing and investment policy to meet the goals of efficiency, equity, and financial stability. In this study, Kenneth A. Small, Clifford Winston, and Carol A. Evans base their policy on two economic principles: efficient pricing to regulate demand for highway services and efficient investment to minimize the total public and private costs of providing them. Policy recommendations include a set of pavement-wear taxes for heavy trucks, a set of congestion taxes for all vehicles, and a program of optimal investments in road durability. Their proposals should be especially attractive to policymakers because they can be implemented with current technology, offer little threat to the major interest group, and in the long run will reduce the strain on state and local governments' highway budgets. "
Acculturating the Shopping Centre examines whether the shopping centre should be qualified as a global architectural type that effortlessly moves across national and cultural borders in the slipstream of neo-liberal globalization, or should instead be understood as a geographically and temporally bound expression of negotiations between mall developers (representatives of a global logic of capitalist accumulation) on the one hand, and local actors (architects/governments/citizens) on the other. It explores how the shopping centre adapts to new cultural contexts, and questions whether this commercial type has the capacity to disrupt or even amend the conditions that it encounters. Including more than 50 illustrations, this book considers the evolving architecture of shopping centres. It would be beneficial to academics and students across a number of areas such as architecture, urban design, cultural geography and sociology.
This book advocates a fresh approach to planning that anticipates, rather than reacts to, the changes in climate currently in process. Today's spatial planning procedures rely on historical evidence instead of preparing for factors that by definition lie in the future, yet which are relatively uncontroversial: shortages of water, sea level rise and rises in average temperatures being but three examples. Arguing for more flexibility, the contributors view 'complexity' as the key to transforming the way we plan in order to better equip us to face uncertainties about our future environment.
From 2008, for the first time in human history, half of the world s population now live in cities. Yet despite a wealth of literature on green architecture and planning, there is to date no single book which draws together theory from the full range of disciplines - from architecture, planning and ecology - which we must come to grips with if we are to design future cities which are genuinely sustainable. Paul Downton s Ecopolis takes a major step along this path. It highlights the urgent need to understand the role of cities as both agents of change and means of survival, at a time when climate change has finally grabbed world attention, and it provides a framework for designing cities that integrates knowledge - both academic and practical - from a range of relevant disciplines. Identifying key theorists, practitioners, places and philosophies, the book provides a solid theoretical context which introduces the concept of urban fractals, and goes on to present a series of design and planning tools for achieving Sustainable Human Ecological Development (SHED). Combining knowledge from diverse fields to present a synthesis of urban ecology, the book will provide a valuable resource for students, researchers and practitioners in architecture, construction, planning, geography and the traditional life sciences."
Urban Landscape Perspectives explores how landscape terminology can be usefully brought into the urban debate. The articles are by scholars who have a particular interest in and experience of the city project at various operative scales. They include theoretical reflections on the landscape as an eminently project-like figure. The book describes new methods and approaches dealing with the contemporary environment, whether it is from the point of view of the city or the landscape.
A practical guide to creating sites, plans, and designs for the campus landscape Broad lawns, open spaces, wooded groves–the campus landscape is both the seat and symbol of higher education. It also has a growing role to play for institutions seeking toput their best foot forward in pursuit of students and funding. This comprehensive handbook provides information, instruction, and ideas on planning and designing every aspect of the campus landscape, from parking lots to playing fields. Using real-world examples of classic and contemporary campus landscapes, this unique resource features:
This book is the first of its type on NEOM Region, NW of Saudi Arabia. This region has been designated in 2017 to be an international economic hub. However, no studies have been done on this region which occupies several natural resources including remarkable landscape with unique ecological species, ores and water resources. The region is also vulnerable to many aspects of threatening natural hazards. Based on her expertise, namely geomorphological processes, earth sciences, space techniques and natural risk assessment, the author made an initiative to produce this book using advanced tools, specifically satellite images and geo-information system. The book introduces several thematic maps obtained for the first time for NEOM Region. Hence, it represents a scientific guide for land management and urban planning approaches. This book is a very significant document for a variety of readers and researchers including decision makers, land managers and planners, as well as geographers and geologists. In addition, the basic concepts and new approaches attract researchers and academic teams including students, universities and research centers not only in Saudi Arabia, but in different parts of the World.
Effective use of microcomputers can greatly aid professional city planners and managers in the exacting duties they perform. Microcomputers are a low-cost, high-powered means of mechanizing both routine and sophisticated analytical operations. This text demonstrates how to incorporate microcomputer technology in a range of city planning problems and situations. The authors link a variety of methods and applications to concrete examples and exercises. Their hands-on approach is designed specifically for professional planners and managers in both the public and private sectors. It covers everything from inserting a floppy disk into the processing unit to producing typed copy of results from predictive modeling and forecasting future trends. The study begins with a basic introduction to the technical jargon associated with PCs and an explanation of the Input-Process-Output cycles. A series of chapters follow, explaining specific software packages and their functions and operations. Specific applications using spreadsheets, graphics, and database management schemes are extremely useful. Further chapters introduce graphics and database systems. The book's learn-by-example format will prove extremely useful to time-pressed practitioners and students in city planning and management, as well as students preparing to enter the field.
Many forces threaten the viability of town centers. One of them is trade concentration in which family businesses are replaced by large, vertically integrated retail enterprises. Town centers, once locations of a rich variety of street stores in the hands of a local and independent merchant community, are being supplanted by monolithic and decentralized commercial zones. This process is documented in contemporary Germany for two towns, one grounded in a market economy and the other, until recently, socialistically based. In both cases, trade concentration is a prevailing force-- a pattern that is not only found in post-industrialized nations, but also in developing countries in Latin America and Asia and is indicative of an emerging global culture.
Windtower offers a unique insight into a past way of life, exploring Dubai's rich and storied past and heritage. This new and extended edition celebrates the 50th anniversary of the formation of the United Arab Emirates, diving deeper into the merchant community's central role in Dubai's pre-oil economy and social life. This new edition also considers the lessons to be learned from Dubai's traditional windtowers at a time of global warming and climate crisis, and how this knowledge might benefit contemporary urban design. The title features a foreword from His Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales, who writes: "I do hope this book will enable other people to join in appreciating the unique nature of these buildings and that it will encourage an awareness of how relevant many of their distinctive features are to the modern challenges of building sustainable communities in a way that maximizes the use of renewable energy." With exclusive archival photography, custom maps, as well as original architectural plans and diagrams, Windtower is a must-have book for anyone interested in Dubai's architecture, culture and fascinating historical development.
In recent years, the presence of ubiquitous computing has increasingly integrated into the lives of people in modern society. As these technologies become more pervasive, new opportunities open for making citizens' environments more comfortable, convenient, and efficient. Enriching Urban Spaces with Ambient Computing, the Internet of Things, and Smart City Design is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the interaction between people and computing systems in contemporary society, showcasing how ubiquitous computing influences and shapes urban environments. Highlighting the impacts of these emerging technologies from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book is ideally designed for professionals, researchers, academicians, and practitioners interested in the influential state of pervasive computing within urban contexts.
This book presents a comprehensive overview of the various aspects for the development of smart cities from a European perspective. It presents both theoretical concepts as well as empirical studies and cases of smart city programs and their capacity to create value for citizens. The contributions in this book are a result of an increasing interest for this topic, supported by both national governments and international institutions. The book offers a large panorama of the most important aspects of smart cities evolution and implementation. It compares European best practices and analyzes how smart projects and programs in cities could help to improve the quality of life in the urban space and to promote cultural and economic development.
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. In this original approach to the world of planning theory, Robert A. Beauregard cuts across the many different ways to think about planning by organizing them around four core tasks: knowing, engaging, prescribing, and executing. In doing so, Beauregard explores how a basic concern with the relationship between knowledge and action has evolved into a complex discussion of democracy, inclusion, and justice. Key features include: a cross-national approach to the topic a unique overview of key concepts centred on the profession of urban and regional planning coverage of historical planning theory as well as recent developments in the field an accessible writing style suitable for both those studying urban and regional planning, as well as practicing planners.
This book presents a compendium of the urban layout maps of 2-mile square downtown areas of more than one hundred cities in developed and developing countries-all drawn at the same scale using high-resolution satellite images of Google Maps. The book also presents analytic studies using metric geometrical, topological (or network), and fractal measures of these maps. These analytic studies identify ordinaries, extremes, similarities, and differences in these maps; investigate the scaling properties of these maps; and develop precise descriptive categories, types and indicators for multidimensional comparative studies of these maps. The findings of these studies indicate that many geometric relations of the urban layouts of downtown areas follow regular patterns; that despite social, economic, and cultural differences among cities, the geometric measures of downtown areas in cities of developed and developing countries do not show significant differences; and that the geometric possibilities of urban layouts are vastly greater than those that have been realized so far in our cities.
This book explores new forms and modalities of relations between people and space that increasingly affect the life of the city. The investigation takes as its starting point the idea that in contemporary societies the loss of our relationship with place is a symptom of a breakdown in the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. This in turn has caused a crisis not only in taste, but also in our sense of beauty, our aesthetic instinct, and our moral values. It has also led to the loss of our engagement with the landscape, which is essential for cities to function. The authors argue that new, fertile forms of interaction between people and space are now happening in what they call the 'intermediate space', at the border of "urban normality" and those parts of a city where citizens experiment with unconventional social practices. This new interaction engenders a collective conscience, giving a new and productive vigor to the actions of individuals and also their relations with their environment. These new relations emerge only after we abandon what is called the "therapeutic illusion of space", which still exists today, and which binds in a deterministic manner the quality of civitas, the associative life of people in the city, to the quality of urban space. Projects for the city should, instead, have as their keystone the notion of social action as a return to a critical perspective, to a courageous acceptance of social responsibility, at the same time as seeking the generative structures of urban life in which civitas and urbs again acknowledge each other.
Way to the West is a glorious collection resulting from a collaboration between disciplines of art. Featuring twenty-five beautiful full-page watercolours alongside accompanying poems, its focus is on the western tip of Cornwall. For Andy and Vally Cornwall's geographical remoteness, its abiding attraction as a holiday location, its proud fishing and mining history and the varying and often dramatic moods of its weather and sea are an inspiration and cause for celebration. The profound emotional and psychological effects on visitors to Cornwall is not lost on the authors, who have a long association with the area, having walked its entire coastline and holidayed there for over a half a century. Way to the West is a celebration of the natural world and the home, the past and the present, and of the fierce interconnectedness of people with their landscape.
In this work, Carl Anthony shares his perspectives as an African-American child in post-World War II Philadelphia; a student and civil rights activist in 1960s Harlem; a traveling student of West African architecture; and an architect, planner, and environmental justice advocate in Berkeley. He contextualizes this within American urbanism and human origins, making profoundly personal both African American and American urban histories as well as planetary origins and environmental issues, to not only bring a new worldview to people of color, but to set forth a truly inclusive vision of our shared planetary future. The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race connects the logics behind slavery, community disinvestment, and environmental exploitation to address the most pressing issues of our time in a cohesive and foundational manner. Most books dealing with these topics and periods silo issues apart from one another, but this book contextualizes the connections between social movements and issues, providing tremendous insight into successful movement building. Anthony's rich narrative describes both being at the mercy of racism, urban disinvestment, and environmental injustice as well as fighting against these forces with a variety of strategies. Because this work is both a personal memoir and an exposition of ideas, it will appeal to those who appreciate thoughtful and unique writing on issues of race, including individuals exploring their own African American identity, as well as progressive audiences of organizations and community leaders and professionals interested in democratizing power and advancing equitable policies for low-income communities and historically disenfranchised communities.
The Reinvented City reflects on externity, the principal feature of a reinvented city. Three basic trends of the city are investigated; "discomposed," "generic" and "segregated" phenomena with the loss of the city as a space of social interaction and communication. Important questions are posed: What is the true public sphere in contemporary societies? What is the contemporary public space corresponding to it? In what way can the city project construct contemporary public space?
Undeservedly out of print for decades, American Plants for American Gardens was one of the first popular books to promote the use of plant ecology and native plants in gardening and landscaping. Emphasizing the strong links between ecology and aesthetics, nature and design, the book demonstrates the basic, practical application of ecological principles to the selection of plant groups or "associations" that are inherently suited to a particular climate, soil, topography, and lighting. Specifically, American Plants for American Gardens focuses on the vegetation concentrated in the northeastern United States, but which extends from the Atlantic Ocean west to the Alleghenies and south to Georgia. The plant community settings featured include the open field, hillside, wood and grove, streamside, ravine, pond, bog, and seaside. Plant lists and accompanying texts provide valuable information for the design and management of a wide range of project types: residential properties, school grounds, corporate office sites, roadways, and parks. In his introduction, Darrel G. Morrison locates American Plants for American Gardens among a handful of influential early books advocating the protection and use of native plants--a major area of interest today among serious gardeners, landscape architects, nursery managers, and students of ecology, botany, and landscape design. Included is an appendix of plant name changes that have occurred since the book's original publication in 1929. Ahead of their time in many ways, Edith A. Roberts and Elsa Rehmann can now speak to new generations of ecologically conscious Americans.
This book is about African and Asian cities. Illustrated through selected case cities, the book brings together a rich collection of papers by leading scholars and practitioners in Africa and Asia to offer empirical analysis and up-to-date discussions and assessments of the urban challenges and solutions for their cities. A number of key topics concerning housing, sustainable urban development and climate change in Africa and Asia are explored along with how policy interventions and partnerships deliver specific forms of urban development. It is intended for all who are interested in the state of the cities and urban development in Africa and Asia. Africa and Asia present, in many ways, useful lessons in dealing with the burgeoning urban population, and the problems surrounding this influx of people and climate change in the developing word. |
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