This book is an academic essay about the urban regeneration policies which have been changing the physical - and partly social - outlook of many English cities during the last 10-15 years, eventually giving birth to a process which is also known as Urban Renaissance . The main focus is on urban design: the way it has been promoted by the government as an important means for delivering attractive places in more sustainable and competitive cities. The research describes the support given to local authorities for this purpose through new laws and powers, the publishing of planning and design manuals and the delivery of especially dedicated funds, bodies and programmes. It also explores the character and purpose of new developments such as scientific parks, creative/cultural quarters, retail and commercial dis-tricts, public realm works, describing recurring design rules and features.
Readers interested in urban policies, architecture and the built environment will find a concise yet comprehensive explanation, enriched by more than a hundred pictures, on why and how many towns and cities like Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester or Sheffield have been changing during the last decade."

A new facsimile edition of a classic work on New York’s architectural masterpiece—Central Park Central Park receives millions of visitors every year, tourists and locals alike. A Description of the New York Central Park, published in 1869, is recognized today as the most important book about the park to appear during its early years. The lively, often wry, text was written by Clarence C. Cook, a distinguished Victorian art critic, while the illustrations were drawn by the popular Albert Fitch Bellows. The author and artist examine many sites in the park that survive to this day as well as features that have vanished over time. In a new Introduction, Maureen Meister reveals how the book came about. In the mid-1860s, the park’s designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, were battling to defend their plan. Of greatest concern was a proposal to build ornate entrances, suggestive of French imperialism. If realized, the gates would have undermined the park’s natural and democratic image. At the same time, the park was threatened by a proliferation of monuments. Meister tells how Olmsted and Vaux advised Cook on what he wrote, and she has found evidence to suggest that they initiated the book’s publication. This book is their book. While the original volume offers much to delight the modern reader, Meister’s Introduction sheds light on how the book served a greater purpose. It was published to champion Olmsted and Vaux and to advocate for their vision—a dream for a magnificent public park that has come to be regarded as New York City’s achievement and a model for the nation.

Postmodern architecture - with its return to ornamentality, historical quotation, and low-culture kitsch - has long been seen as a critical and popular anodyne to the worst aspects of modernist architecture: glass boxes built in urban locales as so many interchangeable, generic anti-architectural cubes and slabs. This book extends this debate beyond the modernist/postmodernist rivalry to situate postmodernism as an already superseded concept that has been upended by deconstructionist and virtual architecture as well as the continued turn toward the use of theming in much new public and corporate space. It investigates architecture on the margins of postmodernism -- those places where both architecture and postmodernism begin to break down and to reveal new forms and new relationships. The book examines in detail not only a wide range of architectural phenomena such as theme parks, casinos, specific modernist and postmodernist buildings, but also interrogates architecture in relation to identity, specifically Native American and gay male identities, as they are reflected in new notions of the built environment. In dealing specifically with the intersection between postmodern architecture and virtual and filmic definitions of space, as well as with theming, and gender and racial identities, this book provides provides ground-breaking insights not only into postmodern architecture, but into spatial thinking in general.

Since the Garden of Eden, humanity has been concerned with shelter. Yet housing means different things to different people. This work is a comprehensive, historical reference guide that reviews housing concepts and issues. It introduces the reader to the current body of literature and seminal work in housing from a multidisciplinary perspective. The nature of the topic is multifaceted, fragmented, and demanding of serious study from diverse disciplines-this study spans the broad domains of housing knowledge in architectural history and theory; environment and behavior; design process and methods; and building and environmental technology. The book begins with a discussion of vernacular housing and American culture and makes the case that dwellings reflect the people of different regions, materials, techniques, and design traditions of an earlier time. The history of American housing is reviewed with biographies and bibliographies, setting the stage for the environmental and social science perspective of housing. Residential environments are then considered in the broad sense of home and housing. Neighborhood and community are examined with a special focus on people, behavior, and the physical setting. The arts and popular media chapter presents American popular housing as image and icon, focusing on the arts and popular media as channels of visual and symbolic information or communication. These channels include painting, prints, pattern books, photography, music, film, television and video, literature, how-to manuals, and newspapers and magazines. Taking a macro-level perspective, direct and indirect programs of public administration and policy for housing are discussed. Then, the complex systems of financing, and the prevalance and mechanisms for matching buyers with sellers is considered in the chapter that considers housing finance, marketing, economics and management. The chapter on environmental design, construction process, and technology reviews the professional disciplines and their perspectives on housing, special populations and accessibility needs, descriptions of building trades, terms, materials, construction processes and past industrial housing experiments, as well as issues of energy management, computer technology, futuristic housing, air quality and household hazards. Using current technology to conduct research, the final chapter breaks from the conventional ways of locating hard-copy, copyrighted references to a seemingly endless potential of electronic communication systems such as data tapes; on-line databases; other electronic databases; electronic mail; listserves, chat, and on-line communities; libraries; on-line electronic texts; software; and news and journals including electronic journals.

If architectural judgment were a city, a city of ideas and forms, then it is a very imperfect city. When architects judge the success or failure of a building, the range of ways and criteria which can be used for this evaluation causes many contentious and discordant arguments. Proposing that the increase in number and intensity of such arguments threatens to destabilize the very grounds upon which judgment is supposed to rest, this book examines architectural judgment in its historical, cultural, political, and psychological dimensions and their convergence on that most expressive part of architecture, namely: architectural character. It stresses the value of reasoned judgment in justifying architectural form -a judgment based on three sets of criteria: those criteria that are external to architecture, those that are internal to architecture, and those that pertain to the psychology of the architect as image-maker. External criteria include, philosophies of history or theories of modernity; internal criteria include architectural character and architectural composition; while the psychological criteria pertain to 'mimetic rivalry', or rivaling desires for the same architectural forms. Yet, although architectural conflicts can adversely influence judgment, they can at the same time, contribute to the advancement of architectural culture.

English Regional Planning 2000-2010 chronicles a vital feature of recent UK planning activity, during the period of the Blair and Brown Labour governments up to 2010. It deals particularly with the regional scale of planning during these years, whereby large steps forward were made, but where policy making often proved very controversial. One purpose of the book is to learn from the many areas of policy development, method and skills which evolved during the decade up to 2010. This will mean that a future return to strategic planning should not have to reinvent the wheel. This book also helps to inform such planning in the rest of the developed world where higher-level planning is more prevalent.

The book has eight chapters written by experts active in English regional planning during these years, alongside two chapters by the editors introducing and concluding on the experience as a whole. Thematic topics covered include the way in which housing and employment development was tackled in the varying English regional contexts, and the growing influence of transport and environmental factors on the spatial strategy. Process elements covered include how policy was made through public consultation and working with numerous stakeholders (economic, social, environmental), how the public examination of issues was organised, followed by final consideration by central government, and how monitoring informed the next policy review.

The authors do not gloss over the difficulties encountered in the highly contested world of English local and regional politics, or the ways in which central government management of the regional planning process made life on the ground difficult for those engaged in the process. Nevertheless the account as a whole shows how a wealth of innovative and forward looking practices were developed. This multi-faceted study contributes to the understanding of how strategic planning can provide the framework for guiding spatial change and allocating resources, looking to a long-term sustainable future.

Traditional studies of the property market have tended to focus solely on commercial and legal issues, but the growing importance of the issue of sustainability means that a different approach is needed.

This new textbook provides an overview of property within a market context, examining the complex nature of property rights and issues related to both investors and occupiers. At the same time it assesses property from the perspective of financial, social and environment sustainability. Topics covered range from the characteristics of property and depreciation, to ownership and development through to investments and sustainability reporting. The book concludes with key skills in sustainable knowledge needed by those working in the real estate industry.

Written by an author team of experienced property professionals, this essential introductory textbook is well suited for property, planning and architecture students on undergraduate, graduate and conversion courses, as well as those on CPD and training programmes in related areas.

** This title was originally published in 2007. The version published in 2012 is a PB reprint of the original HB** The protection of natural resources and biodiversity through protected areas is increasingly based on ecological principles. Simultaneously the concept of ecosystem-based management has become broadly accepted and implemented over the last two decades. However, this period has also seen unprecedented rapid global social and ecological change, which has weakened many protection efforts.These changes have created an awareness of opportunities for innovative approaches to managing protected areas and of the need to integrate social and economic concerns with ecological elements in protected areas and parks management. A rare collection of articles that fuses academic theory, critique of practice and practical knowledge, Transforming Parks and Protected Areas analyzes and critiques these theories, practices, and philosophies, looking in-detail at the emerging issues in the design and operation of parks and protected areas. Addressing critical dynamics and current practices in parks and protected areas management, the excellent volume goes well beyond simple managerial solutions and descriptions of standard practice. With contributions from leading academics and practitioners, this book will be of value to all those working within ecology, natural resources, conservation and parks management as well as students and academics across the environmental sciences and land use management.

Japanese cities are amongst the most intriguing and confounding anywhere. Their structures, patterns of building and broader visual characteristics defy conventional urban design theories, and the book explores why this is so. Like its cities, Japan's written language is recognized as one of the most complicated, and the book is unique in revealing how the two are closely related. Set perceptively against a sweep of ideas drawn from history, geography, science, cultural and design theory, Learning from the Japanese City is a highly original exploration of contemporary urbanism that crosses disciplines, scales, time and space. This is a thoroughly revised and much extended version of a book that drew extensive praise in its first edition. Most parts have stood the test of time and remain. A few are replaced or removed; about a hundred figures appear for the first time. Most important is an entirely new (sixth) section. This brings together many of the urban characteristics, otherwise encountered in fragments through the book, in one walkable district of what is arguably Japan's most convenient metropolis, Nagoya. The interplay between culture, built form and cities remains at the heart of this highly readable book, while a change in subtitle to Looking East in Urban Design reflects increased emphasis on real places and design implications.

This book presents a set of new and innovative essays on landscape and garden culture in precolonial India, with a special focus on the Deccan. Most research to date has concentrated on the comparatively well preserved gardens and built landscapes of the celebrated Mughal empire, giving the impression that they have been lacking in other times and regions. Not only does this volume provide a corrective to such assumptions, it also moves away from traditional art-historical approaches by posing new questions and exploring hitherto neglected source materials.

The contributors understand gardens in two related ways: first as real or imagined spaces and manipulated landscapes that are often invested with pronounced semiotic density; and second as congeries of institutions and practices with far-reaching social ramifications for the constitution of elite societies. The essays here present a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of garden culture in precolonial India, and together suggest several new and exciting directions of enquiry for those working in the Deccan, Mughal India, and beyond.

Waterfront regeneration and development represents a unique opportunity to spatially and visually alter cities worldwide. However, its multi-faceted nature entails city-building with all its complexity including the full range of organizations involved and how they interact. This book examines how more inclusive stakeholder involvement has been attempted in the nine cities that took part in the European Union funded Waterfront Communities Project. It focuses on analysing the experience of creating new public realms through city-building activities. These public realms include negotiation arenas in which different discourses meet and are created - including those of planners, urban designers and architects, politicians, developers, landowners and community groups - as well as physical environments where the new city districts' public life can take place, drawing lessons for waterfront regeneration worldwide. The book opens with an introduction to waterfront regeneration and then provides a framework for analysing and comparing waterfront redevelopments, which is followed by individual case study chapters highlighting specific topics and issues including land ownership and control, decision making in planning processes, the role of planners in public space planning, visions for waterfront living, citizen participation, design-based waterfront developments, young peoples' involvement, a social approach to urban waterfront regeneration and successful place making. Significant findings include the difficulty of integrating long term 'sustainability' into plans and the realization that climate change adaptation needs to be explicitly integrated into regeneration planning. The transferable insights and ideas in this book are ideal for practising and student urban planners and designers working on developing plans for long-term sustainable waterfront regeneration anywhere in the world.

The value of design for contributing to environmental solutions and a sustainable future is increasingly recognised. It spans many spheres of everyday life, and the ethical dimension of design practice that considers environmental, social and economic sustainability is compelling. Approaches to design recognise design as a practice that can transform human experience and understanding, expanding its role beyond stylistic enhancement. The traditional roles of design, designer and designed object are therefore redefined through new understanding of the relationship between the material and immaterial aspects of design where the design product and the design process are embodiments of ideas, values and beliefs. This multi-disciplinary approach considers how to create design which is at once aesthetically pleasing and also ethically considered, with contributions from fields as diverse as architecture, fashion, urban design and philosophy. The authors also address how to teach design based subjects while instilling a desire in the student to develop ethical work practices, both inside and outside the studio.

Biodesign in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Deep Green investigates the potential of nature based technology for shaping the evolution of contemporary architecture and design. It takes on the now pervasive topic of design intelligence, extending its definition to encompass both biological and digital realms. As in their first title, Systemic Architecture: Operating Manual for the Self Organizing City, the authors engage the topic through the specific lens of their innovative design practice, ecoLogicStudio and their research at the University of Innsbruck and at the Bartlett, UCL. Part One of the book, entitled PhotoSynthetica (TM), illustrates design solutions that engage the urban microbiome and seek to achieve an immediate impact, while Part Two, entitled Deep Green, includes synthetic landscapes and operates within a much larger spatio-temporal frame, going beyond human perception and life span to envision design as a geographical and geological force. In the age of catastrophic climate change, such perceptual expansion helps to clarify that change cannot simply be stopped or rolled back. We must instead establish more positive dynamics of change within the living world. To this end, this book proposes to engage with design and architecture as an extended cognitive interface, a sentient being that is co-evolutionary and symbiotic with the living planet, contributing to its beauty and to our continued enjoyment of it.

Latinos are one of the largest and fastest growing social groups in the United States, and their increased presence is profoundly shaping the character of urban, suburban, and rural places. This is a response to these developments and is the first book written for readers seeking to learn about, engage and plan with Latino communities. It considers how placemaking in marginalized communities sheds light on, and can inform, community-building practices of professionals and place dwellers alike.

Di logos: Placemaking in Latino Communities will help readers better understand the conflicts and challenges inherent in placemaking, and to make effective and sustainable choices for practice in an increasingly multi-ethnic world. The essays explore three aspects of place: the appropriation and territorialization of the built environment, the claiming of rights through collective action, and a sense of belonging through civic participation. The authors illustrate their ideas through case studies and explain the implications of their work for placemaking practice.

A consistent theme about planning and design practice in Latino communities emerges throughout the book: placemaking happens with or without professional planners and designers. All of the essays in Di logos demonstrate the need to not only imagine, build, and make places with local communities, but also to re-imagine how we practice democracy inclusive of cross-cultural exchange, understanding, and respect. This will require educators, students, and working professionals to incorporate the knowledge and skills of cultural competency into their everyday practices.

That the topic ofdesign review is somehow trou My biases are clearfrom the start: I am among blesome is probably one thing all readers can those who believe that, despite all signals to the contrary, the physical structure of our environ agree on. Beyond this, however, I suspect pros pects of consensus are dim. Differing opinions ment can be managed, and that controlling it is on the subject likely range from those desiring the key to the ameliorationofnumerous problems control tothosedesiringfreedom. Saysonecamp: confronting society today. I believe that design our physical and natural environments are going can solve a host ofproblems, and that the design to hell in a hand basket. Says the other: design of the physical environment does influence be review boards are only as good as their members; havior. more often than not their interventions produce Clearly, this is a perspective that encompasses mediocre architecture. more than one building at a time and demands As a town planner and architect, I am sympa that each building understand its place in a larger thetic to the full range of sentiment. Perhaps a context-the city. Indeed, anyone proposing discussion of these two concepts-control and physical solutions to urban problems is designing freedom-and their differences would now be or, as may seem more often the case, destroying useful. But let me instead suggest that both posi the city."

Housing is a major contributor to CO2 emissions in Europe and America today and the construction of new homes offers an opportunity to address this issue. Providing homes that achieve "zero carbon", "carbon neutral", "zero-net energy" or "energy-plus" standard is becoming the goal of more innovative house-builders globally, whilst energy providers seek to decarbonise the energy supply to new and existing development. Various new technical systems for achieving these goals are beginning to emerge. For example the passive house whose energy requirement for space heating and cooling is almost zero; the smart grid that has revolutionized the management of energy, whilst enabling the connection of small-scale, renewable energy producers and electric vehicles to the grid; or the European super-grid which will enable zero carbon energy to be generated in the Sahara desert and stored in Norway. This book explores the diverse approaches that are being adopted around the world to deliver zero carbon homes and the different societal systems and geographic circumstances in which they have developed. It postulates a roadmap for delivering zero carbon homes, together with a toolbox approach for policy and practice to suit particular national and local circumstances. A series of case studies are presented that offer lessons for delivering zero carbon homes. These examples are also used to demonstrate how prototype systems can move into the mainstream. The book highlights some of the instruments and mechanisms that could be used to support this transformation and addresses the wider implications of introducing these innovative systems in terms of industry, lifestyle and urban form.

"Designing for Zero Waste is a timely, topical and necessary publication. Materials and resources are being depleted at an accelerating speed and rising consumption trends across the globe have placed material efficiency, waste reduction and recycling at the centre of many government policy agendas, giving them an unprecedented urgency. While there has been a considerable literature addressing consumption and waste reduction from different disciplinary perspectives, the complex nature of the problem requires an increasing degree of interdisciplinarity. Resource recovery and the optimisation of material flow can only be achieved alongside and through behaviour change to reduce the creation of material waste and wasteful consumption. This book aims to develop a more robust understanding of the links between lifestyle, consumption, technologies and urban development. "--

Tower and Slab looks at the contradictory history of the modernist mass housing block - home to millions of city dwellers around the world. Few urban forms have roused as much controversy. While in the United States decades-long criticism caused the demolition of most mass housing projects for the poor, in the booming metropolises of Shanghai and Mumbai remarkably similar developments are being built for the wealthy middle class. While on the surface the modernist apartment block appears universal, it is in fact diverse in its significance and connotations as its many different cultural contexts.

Florian Urban studies the history of mass housing in seven narratives: Chicago, Paris, Berlin, Brasilia, Mumbai, Moscow, and Shanghai. Investigating the complex interactions between city planning and social history, Tower and Slab shows how the modernist vision to house the masses in serial blocks succeeded in certain contexts and failed in others. Success and failure, in this respect, refers not only to the original goals to solve the housing crisis and provide modern standards for the entire society but equally to changing significance of the housing blocks within the respective societies and their perception by architects, politicians, and inhabitants.

These differences show that design is not to blame for mass housing 's mixed record of success. The comparison of the apparently similar projects suggests that triumph or disaster does not depend on a single variable but rather on a complex formula that includes not only form, but also social composition, location within the city, effective maintenance, and a variety of cultural, social, and political factors.

In the present age of migration, the influx of immigrants from distant lands leads inevitably to the spatial and social restructuring of cities and regions. It is often accompanied by fears of and hostility towards the newcomers. Nevertheless, in Europe, North America and Japan this influx of immigrants is essential to economic growth. How can immigrants become accepted members of the society of their adopted country? How can strangers become neighbours? What alchemies of political and social imagination are required to achieve peaceful coexistence in the mongrel cities of the 21st century? What philosophies and policies have made integration successful in Canada and how can it be translated into European context?

The book tackles an important contemporary issue the social integration of immigrants in a large metropolis by way of the detailed case study of one Canadian city. The book provides a large political and legal context which makes this case study comprehensible and inspiring to readers outside Canada.

Ports have been and continue to be critical in not just the global movement of goods, but also the global movement of ideas, social change, and cultural phenomena, including architecture and urban form. The connected points of a multi-faceted network, ports profoundly affect both each other and the cities and regions to which they belong. Shipping and trade networks have created a legacy embodied in the street patterns, land use and buildings of interconnected port cities. Multiple forces are at play: technological requirements, elite preferences and working class needs, urban policy and globalization.

Port Cities brings together original scholarship by both well-published and younger scholars from multiple disciplines and builds upon long-standing research on the international exchange of architectural and planning ideas. A carefully selected series of essays examines comprehensively and globally the changing built and urban environment of selected port cities. They explore similarities, dissimilarities, and how sea-based networking has influenced urban landscapes and architecture, socio-economic and cultural development from the 19th to the 21st centuries.

The first section examines global networks linking ports and cities and explores the effect of inter-continental transfers on architecture and planning. The second part focuses on interconnected port cities in regional contexts, analyzing socio-economic structures and urban and built form. The third section examines the built environment of selected cities in view of their response to changing technology, transforming socio-economic networks and political contexts, as well as evolving design concepts. Overall, the book proposes a networked analysis of the built and urban environment, arguing that international maritime networks are paradigmatic for the creation of dynamic, multi-scaled, and interconnected "port cityscapes."

Cities, Allan B. Jacobs contends, ought to be magnificent, beautiful places to live. They should be places where people can be fulfilled, where they can be what they can be, where there is freedom, love, ideas, excitement, quiet and joy. Cities ought to be the ultimate manifestation of society 's collective achievements.

Allan B. Jacobs is one of the world 's best known planners and urban design practitioners, with a long and distinguished international career. Drawing on his professional experience of almost sixty years, Jacobs guides the reader through the lessons he 's learnt as a planner and lover of cities. Cities from Brazil, Italy, India, Japan, China and the US are featured.

Written with a wonderfully engaging, humorous tone and Jacobs own drawings, The Good City transfers lessons on city design, building and urban change to all those willing to help cities become the magnificent, beautiful places they should be - and encourages all inhabitants to learn to appreciate and explore their own cities.

This book explores the shared qualities of mountains as naturally-formed landscapes, and of megastructures as manmade landscapes, seeking to unravel how each can be understood as an open system of complex network relationships (human, natural and artificial). By looking at mountains and megastructures in an interchangeable way, the book negotiates the fixed boundaries of natural and artificial worlds, to suggest a more complex relationship between landscape and architecture. It suggests an ecological understanding of the interconnectedness of architecture and landscape, and an entangled network of relations. Urban, colonialist, fictional, rural and historical landscapes are interwoven into this fabric that also involves discontinuities, tensions and conflicts as parts of a system that is never linear, but rather fluid and organic as driven by human endeavor.

Written by a leading instructor, it focuses on accessible methods and concepts to introduce active, rather than passive, photography to students, instructors and practitioners in the fields of landscape, planning, architecture and environmental design Provides clear guidance on a diverse set of approaches and explores deeper discussions about making and using photography in environmental design, along with further reading It covers techniques to build on such as casual composition, constraints, slowing down, investigating, non-visual cues, POV, narrative and detachment that encourage enhanced visual focus Includes 190 full colour images, with examples by the author and invited contributors from practice.

This wonderful resource for homeowners and landscapers is packed with fences and gates of every kind and description. Examples made of various metals, wood, masonry, stone, and concrete are all included. Styles run the gamut from the simplest to the most ornate, from practical and functional to purely ornamental, from rustic to sophisticated, from unusual to inspired. Ideas abound for enclosing entire properties, garden areas, or pools -- all with a creative flair that will set your home apart from others. For added interest, fences and gates used at famous homes and places of interest are also featured. Use this book to dream, to plan, to create... to enjoy!