To attract investment and tourists and to enhance the quality of life of their citizens, municipal authorities are paying considerable attention to the quality of the public domain of their cities - including their urban squares. Politicians find them good places for rallies. Children consider squares to be playgrounds, the elderly as places to catch-up with each other, and for many others squares are simply a place to pause for a moment. Urban Squares as Places, Links and Displays: Successes and Failures discusses how people experience squares and the nature of the people who use them. It presents a 'typology of squares' based on the dimensions of ownership, the square's instrumental functions, and a series of their basic physical attributes including size, degree of enclosure, configuration and organization of the space within them and finally based on their aesthetic attributes - their meanings. Twenty case studies illustrate what works and what does not work in different cities around the world. It discusses the qualities of lively squares and quieter, more restorative places as well as what contributes to making urban squares less desirable as destinations for the general public. The book closes with the policy implications, stressing the importance and difficulties of designing good public places. Urban Squares offers how-to guidance along with a strong theoretical framework making it ideal for architects, city planners and landscape architects working on the design and upgrade of squares.

The contributors to this volume propose strategies of urgent and vital importance that aim to make today's urban environments more resilient. Resilience, the ability of complex systems to adapt to changing conditions, is a key frontier in ecological research and is especially relevant in creative urban design, as urban areas exemplify complex systems. With something approaching half of the world's population now residing in coastal urban zones, many of which are vulnerable both to floods originating inland and rising sea levels, making urban areas more robust in the face of environmental threats must be a policy ambition of the highest priority. The complexity of urban areas results from their spatial heterogeneity, their intertwined material and energy fluxes, and the integration of social and natural processes. All of these features can be altered by intentional planning and design. The complex, integrated suite of urban structures and processes together affect the adaptive resilience of urban systems, but also presupposes that planners can intervene in positive ways. As examples accumulate of linkage between sustainability and building/landscape design, such as the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park and Toronto's Lower Don River area, this book unites the ideas, data, and insights of ecologists and related scientists with those of urban designers. It aims to integrate a formerly atomized dialog to help both disciplines promote urban resilience.

This volume examines the policies and initiatives now underway on both sides of the Atlantic to revitalize the poorest urban neighborhoods. With contributors from the US, France, and the UK, the volume explains the range of community building programs and explores critical issues such as the role of partnerships and the importance of race and gender in urban regeneration.

Experiential Landscape offers new ways of looking at the relationship between people and the outdoor open spaces they use in their everyday lives. The book takes a holistic view of the relationship between humans and their environment, integrating experiential and spatial dimensions of the outdoors, and exploring the theory and application of environmental design disciplines, most notably landscape architecture and urban design. The book explores specific settings in which an experiential approach has been applied, setting out a vocabulary and methods of application, and offers new readings of experiential characteristics in site analysis and design. Offering readers a range of accessible mapping tools and details of what participative approaches mean in practice, this is a new, innovative and practical methodology. The book provides an invaluable resource for students, academics and practitioners and anyone seeking reflective but practical guidance on how to approach outdoor place-making or the analysis and design of everyday outdoor places.

This multidisciplinary book examines the diverse ways in which environmental disasters with compounding impacts are being governed as they traverse sovereign territories across rapidly urbanising societies in Asia and the Pacific. Combining theoretical advances with contextually rich studies, the book examines efforts to tackle the complexities of cross-border environmental governance. In an urban age in which disasters are not easily contained within neatly delineated jurisdictions, both in terms of their interconnected causalities and their cascading effects, governance structures and mechanisms are faced with major challenges related to cooperation, collaboration and information sharing. This book helps bridge the gap between theory and practice by offering fresh insights and contrasting explanations for variations in transboundary disaster governance regimes among urbanising populations in the Asia-Pacific.

First published in 1973, this two-volume set summarises and structures the contributions by researchers at the Fourth International EDRA Conference, held in April 1973. The first volume focuses on the proceedings of the paper sessions. The second volume focuses on the symposia, invited papers and the workshops. This set will be of interest to students of architecture and design.

This is the Proceedings of the International Workshop Heritagebot 2017 that was held in Cassino, Italy in September 2017. The papers cover a wide range of disciplines connected with Cultural Heritage, from humanistic fields up to engineering designs through legal aspects and financial/economical studies, treating aspects of theory, design, practice and applications. Topics addressed during the conference were: business models and business planning; creative cities and industries; documentation, analysis and survey of cultural heritage; economics of cultural heritage; cultural heritage, business and organizational models; cultural heritage and collaborative digital systems; citizen science for cultural heritage: service robotics for cultural heritage; legal tools for the development and innovation management in cultural heritage; capital budgeting and capital structure of cultural heritage sector; field applications in cultural heritage.

For decades, Milton Santos (1926-2001) has been considered one of the most influential thinkers in Brazilian and Latin American social sciences and geography. Yet his writings, most of which have not been translated into English, are largely unknown to European and North American audiences. This book introduces English-speaking scholars to Professor Santos through critical engagement with his ideas and writings. The chapters presented here reveal the breadth and originality of his critical thought, as well as its ongoing importance to contemporary debates. The book features a biography of Santos and includes an annotated translation of one of his most-cited texts, The Return of the Territory, offered here for the first time in English. This text demonstrates how Santos's provocative insights continue to transform core concepts of political and human geography. The book also includes a number of short chapters written by scholars from Brazil, Spain and France. Through reflections on Santos's work, the various authors demonstrate the value and possibilities of extending the geographer's theories. They explore key geographical themes across political economy, rural studies, territorial planning, environmental crisis, digital networks, indigenous peoples, transportation and public health. This collection invites geographers from around the world to engage with this rich intellectual tradition from Brazil.

This book approaches cultural landscape as a driver for societal challenges, economic development, social inclusion, place assessment and heritage conservation. It explores issues stemming from the relation between conservation and emergencies, and identifies descriptive tools for conveying knowledge and generating new expertise, heritage skills, seismic culture and social resilience. The documentation of landscapes, due in part to new technologies, increasingly involves integrated methodologies and graphic outcomes such as Heritage-BIM, advanced 3D modeling, and immersive environments. According to recent UNESCO recommendations, the process of mapping places is a necessary prerequisite for design action, and also includes the emotional and perceptive dimension, so as to represent space through visual thought and produce graphic materials. The chapters presented here will ultimately support efforts to overcome the emergency phase of reconstruction after natural disasters and, by exploring relevant issues in recent studies, will describe emerging tools that can help inspire practices that concern not only agrarian and urban, but also historic urban landscapes. The work also presents planning tools to help preserve the integrity and authenticity of urban heritages. The book will benefit all scholars and practitioners who are involved in the process of understanding, designing and transforming places, and will foster an international exchange of research, case studies, and best practices to confront the practical challenges involved in keeping cultural landscapes alive.

This book, written by worldwide specialists from Canada, India, Italy, Palestine, Peru, Spain and the Netherlands, is a guide to establishing a city on a sustainable path. It addresses sustainable urban planning issues by breaking the city down to its main components. The authors analyze and discuss such topics as: urban social and economic factors, including immigration and cultural integration, the gender component, the formation of slums, and social indicators; the interaction of the city with the environment, including the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA); urban and regional economics, including specialization and dependency, asset management, and community facilities; the relationship of a city within its region; urban planning, including urban sprawl and core revitalization; housing and relocation, including such concepts as community participation; degradation and measures to reverse this situation, etc.

Achieving Sustainable Urban Form represents a major advance in the sustainable development debate. It presents research which defines elements of sustainable urban form - density, size, configuration, detailed design and quality - from macro to micro scale. Case studies from Europe, the USA and Australia are used to illustrate good practice within the fields of planning, urban design and architecture.

Energy security, rising energy prices (oil, gas, electricity), 'peak oil', environmental pollution, nuclear energy, climate change and sustainable living are hot topics across the globe. Meanwhile, abundant and perpetual wind resources offer opportunities, via recent technological developments, to provide part of the solution to address these key issues. The rapid growth of large-scale wind farm installations has now led to the generation of clean electricity for tens of millions of homes around the world. However, despite the potential to reduce the losses and costs associated with transmission and to use local wind acceleration techniques to improve energy yields, the potential for urban wind energy has yet to be realised. Although there is increasing public interest, the uptake of urban wind energy in suitable areas has been slow. This is in part due to a lack of understanding of key issues such as: available wind resources; technology integration; planning processes (include assessment of environmental impacts and public safety due to close proximity to people and property); energy consumption in buildings versus energy production from turbines; economics (including grants, subsidies, maintenance); and the effect of complex urban windscapes on performance. Urban Wind Energy attempts to illuminate these areas, addressing common concerns highlighting pitfalls, offering real world examples and providing a framework to assess viability in energy, environmental and economic terms. It is a comprehensive guide to urban wind energy for architects, engineers, planners, developers, investors, policy-makers, manufacturers and students as well as community organisations and home-owners interested in generating their own clean electricity.

The supportive role of urban spaces in active aging is explored on a world scale in this unique resource, using the WHO's Age-Friendly Cities and Community model. Case studies from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and elsewhere demonstrate how the model translates to fit diverse social, political, and economic realities across cultures and continents, ways age-friendly programs promote senior empowerment, and how their value can be effectively assessed. Age-friendly criteria for communities are defined and critiqued while extensive empirical data describe challenges as they affect elders globally and how environmental support can help meet them. These chapters offer age-friendly cities as a corrective to the overemphasis on the medical aspects of elders' lives, and should inspire new research, practice, and public policy. Included in the coverage: A critical review of the WHO Age-Friendly Cities Methodology and its implementation. Seniors' perspectives on age-friendly communities. The implementation of age-friendly cities in three districts of Argentina. Age-friendly New York City: a case study. Toward an age-friendly European Union. Age-friendliness, childhood, and dementia: toward generationally intelligent environments. With its balance of attention to universal and culture-specific concerns, Age-Friendly Cities and Communities in International Comparison will be of particular interest to sociologists, gerontologists, and policymakers. "Given the rapid adoption of the age-friendly perspective, following its development by the World Health Organization, the critical assessment offered in this volume is especially welcome". Professor Chris Phillipson, University of Manchester

By examining the metropolitan fringes of Houston in Montgomery County, Texas, and Washington, D.C., in Loudoun County, Virginia, this book combines rural, environmental, and agricultural history to disrupt our view of the southern metropolis. Andrew C. Baker examines the local boosters, gentlemen farmers, historical preservationists, and nature-seeking suburbanites who abandoned the city to live in the metropolitan countryside during the twentieth century. These property owners formed the vanguard of the antigrowth movement that has defined metropolitan fringe politics across the nation. In the rural South, subdivisions, reservoirs, homesteads, and historical villages each obscured the troubling legacies of racism and rural poverty and celebrated a refashioned landscape. That landscape's historical and environmental "authenticity" served as a foil to the alienation and ugliness of suburbia. Using a source base that includes the records of preservation organizations and local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as oral histories, Baker explores the distinct roots of the environmental politics and the shifting relationship between city and country within these metropolitan fringe regions.

New urban developments such as office blocks, warehouses and retail complexes are increasingly common in outer city regions across the world. This book examines the processes of post-suburbanization in international perspective, exploring how developments across the world might be considered post-suburban.

The Pedestrian and the City provides an overview and insight into the development, politics and policies on walking and pedestrians: it includes the evolution of pedestrian-friendly housing estates in the 19th century up to the present day. Key issues addressed include the struggle of pedestrianization in town centers, the attempts to create independent pedestrian footpaths and the popularity of traffic calming as a powerful policy for reducing pedestrian accidents.

Hass-Klau also covers the wider aspects of urban and transport planning, especially public transport, since these are important for promoting a pedestrian-friendly environment. The book includes pedestrian-friendly policies and guidelines from a number of European countries and includes case studies from the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, the US and Canada, with further examples from ten additional countries. It also contains a unique collection of original photographs; including before and after photos of newly introduced pedestrian-friendly transport policies.

As the pedestrian environment has become ever more crucial for the future of our cities, the book will be invaluable to students and practicing planners, geographers, transport engineers and local government officers. "

How should regional cities develop regional development strategies for their sustainable future? How can such strategies work effectively? Regional cities are now at a crossroads: will they decline or be regenerated under the impacts of globalization? Their sustainable regeneration as creative regional centers will play a decisive role in their sustainable development as a whole, but only with viable regional spatial strategies that strengthen the network of cities and their hinterlands. The concern here lies in urban regeneration and strategic spatial planning at the city-region level. This book records observations of 12 dynamically changing regional cities in Asia, Europe and the United States. The form of the city region, urban regeneration and strategic spatial planning as well as the local and regional governance of each city are examined. Through this empirical and comparative analysis, essential lessons are drawn, which will add a new perspective to discussions on the sustainable future of regional cities in an age of globalization.

The use of land changes over time as both natural and man-made environments are influenced by the pressures associated with the processes of development. The demand for land for new residential housing has been a huge challenge for governments striving to protect greenfield sites across Europe in recent years, whilst regeneration has been a common response to the decline of manufacturing in the old industrial heartlands. The variety of forces that drive change in the use of land are extensive and complex, including spatial planning policies designed at local, regional, national and supra-national levels.

In order to understand the mechanisms of change and the impact of policies, the formulation, calibration and testing of models is required. Land-use change models help us to understand the complexities and interdependencies of the components that constitute spatial systems and can provide valuable insights into possible land-use configurations in the future. Models of land-use change incorporate a vast amount of knowledge from a wide range of disciplines. Geography contributes to the understanding of land-use change whilst demography and economics help explain underlying trends. Model building relies heavily on mathematics and (geographical) information systems, but also includes many elements from the softer sciences, such as management studies and environmental science. This book offers a cross-sectional overview of current research progress that allows the construction of successful land-use models. The contributions range from methodology and calibration to actual applications in studies of recent policy implementation and evaluation. The contributors originate from academicand applied research institutes around the world and thus offer an interesting mix of theory and practice in different case study contexts.

Several years have passed since John Stillwell and Henk Scholten published "Land Use Simulation for Europe" in 2001, and the subject has moved on since then. The current volume, "Modelling Land-use Change," is an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the state-of-the-art of land-use modelling, its background and its application. In summary, land-use change simulation modelling is a relatively new and dynamic field of study and this book provides a full overview of the topic, a wide range of applications (both geographically and thematically), a mix of theory and practice, a synthesis of recent research progress, and educational material for students and teachers.

Definitions of urban entities and urban typologies are changing constantly to reflect the growing physical extent of cities and their hinterlands. These include suburbs, sprawl, edge cities, gated communities, conurbations and networks of places and such transformations cause conflict between central and peripheral areas at a range of spatial scales. This book explores the role of cities, their influence and the transformations they have undertaken in the recent past. Ways in which cities regenerate, how plans change, how they are governed and how they react to the economic realities of the day are all explored. Concepts such as polycentricity are explored to highlight the fact that cities are part of wider regions and the study of urban geography in the future needs to be cognisant of changing relationships within and between cities. Bringing together studies from around the world at different scales, from small town to megacity, this volume captures a snapshot of some of the changes in city centres, suburbs, and the wider urban region. In doing so, it provides a deeper understanding of the evolving form and function of cities and their associated peripheral regions as well as their impact on modern twenty-first century landscapes.

This title was first published in 1986 during a recession much like that faced in recent years, which placed immense pressure on the British planning system and led to social unrest in the inner cities and in many disadvantaged areas. Within this context, Peter Ambrose outlines the features of land development and explores the circumstances of post-war planning. The central section of the book deals with the key forces at work in land development - finance, the construction industry and the local and central state - and explains how they interact. Using a number of case-studies, including the greenfield urban fringe and London's docklands, as well as examples drawn from other countries, Ambrose provides an essential background to the British planning system and the problems still faced by it today.

This book collects a selection of the best articles presented at the CUPUM (Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management) conference, held in the second week of July 2013 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The articles included were selected by external reviewers using a double blind process.

This book concludes a trilogy that began with "Intelligent Cities: Innovation, Knowledge Systems and digital spaces "(Routledge 2002) and "Intelligent Cities and Globalisation of Innovation Networks "(Routledge 2008). Together these books examine intelligent cities as environments of innovation and collaborative problem-solving. In this final book, the focus is on planning, strategy and governance of intelligent cities.

Divided into three parts, each section elaborates upon complementary aspects of intelligent city strategy and planning. Part I is about the drivers and architectures of the spatial intelligence of cities, while Part II turns to planning processes and discusses top-down and bottom-up planning for intelligent cities. Cities such as Amsterdam, Manchester, Stockholm and Helsinki are examples of cities that have used bottom-up planning through the gradual implementation of successive initiatives for regeneration. On the other hand, Living PlanIT, Neapolis in Cyprus, and Saudi Arabia intelligent cities have started with the top-down approach, setting up urban operating systems and common central platforms. Part III focuses on intelligent city strategies; how cities should manage the drivers of spatial intelligence, create smart environments, mobilise communities, and offer new solutions to address city problems.

Main findings of the book are related to a series of models which capture fundamental aspects of intelligent cities making and operation. These models consider structure, function, planning, strategies toward intelligent environments and a model of governance based on mobilisation of communities, knowledge architectures, and innovation cycles.

Compatibility, ethics, hearings, record keeping, variances, and appeals. There are so many things board of adjustment members must consider-and so few sources to guide them. This book explains them all. Novice members will gain insight into the board's unique role, while veterans can turn to the tips and strategies that will make their work smoother. With checklists, sample reports, real-world examples, and easy-to-understand prose, the book demystifies waivers, conditional uses, legal issues, and more. It also covers bylaws, record keeping, and day-to-day operations. This is a must-have reference for all board of adjustment members.

This book examines immigration to small cities throughout Canada. It explores the distinct challenges brought about by the influx of people to urban communities which typically have less than 100,000 residents. The essays are organized into four main sections: partnerships, resources, and capacities; identities, belonging, and social networks; health, politics, and diversity, and Francophone minority communities. Taken together, they provide a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary perspective on the contemporary realities of immigration to small urban locations. Readers will discover how different groups of migrants, immigrants, and Francophone minorities confront systemic discrimination; how settlement agencies and organizations develop unique strategies for negotiating limited resources and embracing opportunities brought about by changing demographics; and how small cities work hard to develop inclusive communities and respond to social exclusions. In addition, each essay includes a case study that highlights the topic under discussion in a particular city or region, from Brandon, Manitoba to the Thompson-Nicola Region in British Columbia, from Peterborough, Ontario to the Niagara Region. As a complement to metropolitan-based works on immigration in Canada, this collection offers an important dimension in migration studies that will be of interest to academics, researchers, as well as policymakers and practitioners working on immigrant integration and settlement.