This book argues that, paradoxically, at their moment of triumph and fastest growth, cities need nature more than ever. Only if our urban world is full of biophilic cities will the coming urban century truly succeed. Cities are quintessentially human, the perfect forum for interaction, and we are entering what could justly be called the urban century, the fastest period of urban growth in human history. Yet a growing body of scientific literature shows that the constant interaction, the hyper-connectedness, of cities leads to an urban psychological penalty. Nature in cities can be solution to this dilemma, allowing us to have all the benefits of our urban, connected world yet also have that urban home be a place where humanity can thrive. This book presents best practices and case studies from biophilic design, showing how cities around the world are beginning to incorporate nature into their urban fabric. It will be a valuable resource for scholars and professionals working in the area of sustainable cities.

COVID-19 is an invisible threat that has hugely impacted cities and their inhabitants. Yet its impact is very visible, perhaps most so in urban public spaces and spaces of mobility. This international volume explores the transformations of public space and public transport in response to COVID-19 across the world, both those resulting from official governmental regulations and from everyday practices of urban citizens. The contributors discuss how the virus made urban inequalities sharper and clearer, and redefined public spaces in the 'new normal'. Offering crucial insights for reforming cities to be more resilient to future crises, this is an invaluable resource for scholars and policy makers alike.

The COVID-19 pandemic was not a great 'equaliser', but rather an event whose impact intersected with pre-existing inequalities affecting different people, places, and geographic scales. Nowhere is this more apparent than in housing. Written by an international group of experts, this book casts light on how the virus has impacted the experience of home and housing through the lens of wider urban processes around transportation, land use, planning policy, racism, and inequality. Case studies from around the world examine issues around gentrification, housing processes, design, systems, finance and policy. Offering crucial insights for reforming cities to be more resilient to future crises, this is an invaluable resource for scholars and policy makers alike.

This book considers the impact of climate change on cities, advocating that people are the panaceas and antidote to mitigating climate change, by enhancing their involvement in achieving sustainable development Goals (SDGs). This leads to the development of an SDG best practice participation template, which is supported by an extensive checklist of the 'whats' and 'hows' in participatory processes. Using case studies, extensive literature reviews and meta-analysis to make a case for a people-centric and integrated approach to sustainable urban development, it examines the role of governance in climate change, focusing on decision making processes, policies and regulations, as well as focusing on the significance of a people-oriented approach on climate change and cities. Through an extensive global outlook, this book highlights bottom-up methods of implementing and achieving sustainable urban development in the age of climate change. These highlights should help to develop new mindsets, new strategies, new directions and new policies, through which we can see a more sustainable approach to urbanisation and urban development globally, which can start 'equipping future generations with the tools for them to help their future generations'.

This book looks at alternative ways of analyzing traditional and contemporary architectural design and building practices in South Asia with a special focus on India. It showcases how collaborative projects between architects and local communities and drawing from local building traditions can lead to sustainable and equitable practices in architecture. The volume includes an analysis of projects in rural, tribal, and urban areas of India and Nepal and first-hand accounts of architects, teachers, and professionals engaged in the theory and practice of design and architecture. It examines the differences between the individualistic and the collective approach and explores the meaning of architecture as a process and as a product and as a decentralized, ecologically, and locally sensitive way of designing. While comparing traditional and modern methods of building, it also examines the impact of each method on the community, the economy and the surrounding environment. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, urban studies, urban planning, urban ecology, urban geography, and sustainable development. It will also be useful for architects, planners, urban designers, and professionals associated with these disciplines.

This book explores the relationship between the production of new urban spaces and illiberal community-making in contemporary India. It is based on an ethnographic study in Noida, a city at the eastern fringe of the state of Uttar Pradesh, bordering national capital Delhi. The book demonstrates a flexible planning approach being central to the entrepreneurial turn in India's post-liberalisation urbanisation, whereby a small-scale industrial township is transformed into a real-estate driven modern city. Its real point of departure, however, is in the argument that this turn can enable a form of illiberal community-making in new cities that are quite different from older metropolises. Exclusivist forms of solidarity and symbolic boundary construction - stemming from the differences across communities as well as their internal heterogeneities - form the crux of this process, which is examined in three distinct but often interspersed socio-spatial forms: planned middle-class residential quarters, 'urban villages' and migrant squatter colonies. The book combines radical geographical conceptualisations of social production of space and neoliberal urbanism with sociological and anthropological approaches to urban community-making. It will be of interest to researchers in development studies, sociology, urban studies, as well as readers interested in society and politics of contemporary India/South Asia.

Contemporary megaprojects have evolved from the discreet, modernist projects undertaken in the past by centralized authorities to encompass everything from large-scale construction to space exploration. Contemporary Megaprojects explores how these projects have been impacted by cutting-edge technology, the private sector, and the processes of decentralization and dematerialization. With case studies ranging from mega-plantations in Southeast Asia to ocean mapping to sports events, the contributions in this collected volume demonstrate the increasing ambition and pervasiveness of these projects, as well as their significant impact on both society and the environment.

This book presents a new paradigm of knowledge and action with respect to urban waterfronts and the "fluid city paradigm," explaining its methodological framework and describing an integrated and creative planning approach in which waterfront regeneration is pursued as a key urban-renewal strategy. It focuses especially on the WATERFRONT project ("Water And Territorial policiEs for integRation oF multisectoRial develOpmeNT"), which was funded jointly by Italy and Malta with the goal of developing common guidelines, strategies, and operational tools for the planning of coastal areas, based on cross-border exchange of experiences. In the described approach, the waterfront is recognized as having a broad identity, acknowledging the complexity of the relationship between seaport and town and taking into account the physical and environmental components of human settlement, infrastructure, and productive and recreational activities. It highlights details of the process of renewal in the port city of Trapani, with discussion of the implemented actions, plans, and programs. The book also examines the practices adopted to transform city-port relationships across Europe in pursuit of innovative and sustainable development.

This book argues that accelerating action toward sustainability for and by cities and their inhabitants can make a huge difference to humanity's endeavor to recover from current crises and build a sustainable future. It sheds light on cutting-edge concepts and actions toward sustainability that can taken by and for cities and with citizens. In this book, author Voula Mega takes the reader on a journey inside and across cities and highlights efforts toward a paradigmatic shift that reconciles human systems with nature. Leadership, education, innovation, trust and citizen empowerment all play a crucial role for the co-invention of a new model that balances human well-being, sustainable prosperity and the future of the planet. Building on robust evidence and inspired by best practices, Human Sustainable Cities offers compelling messages and convincing advice to all stakeholders who are striving to overcome crises, speed up the path toward resilience and preparedness and bounce forward better.

Mounting scientific evidence generated over the past decade highlights the significant role of our cities' built environments in shaping our health and well-being. In this book, the authors conceptualize the 'urban health niche' as a novel approach to public health and healthy-city planning that integrates the diverse and multi-level health determinants present in a city system.The authors trace the origins of public health and city planning, drawing upon the shifting paradigms of epidemiology. Advanced network analysis techniques are employed to examine multi-scale associations between individual-level health outcomes and built environment features such as density, land-use mix and road network configuration. Healthy Cities will prove a fascinating read for an interdisciplinary body of scholars, practitioners and policy makers within the domains of public policy, regional and urban studies, urban planning, spatial epidemiology, health geography, sociology, public health and psychology.

This edited volume provides an essential resource for urban morphology, the study of urban forms and structures, offering a much-needed mathematical perspective. Experts on a variety of mathematical modeling techniques provide new insights into specific aspects of the field, such as street networks, sustainability, and urban growth. The chapters collected here make a clear case for the importance of tools and methods to understand, model, and simulate the formation and evolution of cities. The chapters cover a wide variety of topics in urban morphology, and are conveniently organized by their mathematical principles. The first part covers fractals and focuses on how self-similar structures sort themselves out through competition. This is followed by a section on cellular automata, and includes chapters exploring how they generate fractal forms. Networks are the focus of the third part, which includes street networks and other forms as well. Chapters that examine complexity and its relation to urban structures are in part four.The fifth part introduces a variety of other quantitative models that can be used to study urban morphology. In the book's final section, a series of multidisciplinary commentaries offers readers new ways of looking at the relationship between mathematics and urban forms. Being the first book on this topic, Mathematics of Urban Morphology will be an invaluable resource for applied mathematicians and anyone studying urban morphology. Additionally, anyone who is interested in cities from the angle of economics, sociology, architecture, or geography will also find it useful. "This book provides a useful perspective on the state of the art with respect to urban morphology in general and mathematics as tools and frames to disentangle the ideas that pervade arguments about form and function in particular. There is much to absorb in the pages that follow and there are many pointers to ways in which these ideas can be linked to related theories of cities, urban design and urban policy analysis as well as new movements such as the role of computation in cities and the idea of the smart city. Much food for thought. Read on, digest, enjoy." From the foreword by Michael Batty

This book gathers selected papers from the International Conference on Sustainable Design, Engineering, Management and Sciences (ICSDEMS 2019), held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It highlights recent advances in civil engineering and sustainability, bringing together researchers and professionals to address the latest, most relevant issues in these areas.

This book applies both industrial engineering and computational intelligence to demonstrate intelligent machines that solve real-world problems in various smart environments. The title presents fundamental concepts and the latest advances in Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques and their application to smart environments. Though managers and engineers often use multi-criteria analysis in making complex decisions, many core problems are too difficult to model mathematically or have simply not yet been modelled. In response, as well as AI-based approaches, this book covers various optimization techniques, decision analytics and data science in applying soft computing techniques to a defined set of smart environments, including smart and sustainable cities, disaster response systems and smart campuses. This state-of-the-art book will be essential reading for both undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, practitioners and decision makers interested in advanced MCDM techniques for management and engineering in relation to smart environments.

The fully updated Short Guide to Town and Country Planning provides an concise introductory overview of the practice of planning for those with little or no prior knowledge. This second edition considers who planners are and what they do, showing how planning - as an art, science and system - has evolved as an organised action of the state. The book discusses the planning system, processes, legal constructs and approaches, taking into account the recent regulatory changes within the UK nations. Restructured to improve readability, it explores the interactions of government and society with the planning system, and the relationship between urban planning, the environment, and placemaking. It encourages the reader to adopt a reflective and inquisitive outlook, and features: * case study boxes; * further reading and resources; * guidance on the recent policy and system updates, including those through devolution.

Understanding Soils in Urban Environments is a concise book explaining how urban soils develop, change and erode. Soils provide the foundation for buildings and infrastructure, and the medium for plant growth in fields, parks and gardens. They can act as a sink for waste, and can be contaminated in urban areas by heavy metals, organic chemicals and other contaminants. Soil properties such as water retention, salinity and acidity can cause environmental and structural problems for buildings and other engineering works. This text recognises and draws attention to the particular nature of soils in urban environments and discusses their distinctive management needs. Since the first edition was published in 2011, it has been used across a wide range of disciplines, many of which require an understanding of urban soil and specific soil properties that cause environmental concern. Urban soils are now recognised as much more important now than they were ten years ago, when they were seen as a poor relation to agriculture. The need for better understanding of all aspects of this topic has become evident especially at conferences in the last 5 years in Australia and internationally, where urban soils are now included as specific sections, not just as subsets such as contamination. This new edition updates and expands on the original text, including a specific chapter on the use of manufactured soil for rehabilitation and recreation, and additional case studies in other chapters, particularly contamination. The text is updated throughout to address the increasing importance of soil health for seed banks and parklands, and its implications for planning developments, the legal determination of bioregions, and addressing environmental issues that can arise from mismanagement of urban soils.

Rapid urbanisation presents challenges such as inequality, informalisation and diversified, social needs for emerging cities. Informal and formal institutions and their impact on urban development and well-being vary across social classes and cities. Endo, Shibuya, and their contributors provide a systematic and multifaceted overview of urban well-being. It explores the characteristics and complexities of urban well-being of lower and middle classes in Asian megacities. The book explains that social setting and socioeconomic condition of individuals and households play a critical role in urban well-being. It offers insights on the vulnerabilities and resilience of urban populations and the intertwined dynamics of social networks and what they mean for individual well-being. This book will be a useful reference for students, researchers and academics in urban studies, Asian studies or development studies.

This book provides new dimensions and a contemporary focus on sustainable transport, urban regeneration and development in eight countries spanning four continents at different stages of development. It examines the role of transit oriented development (TOD) in improving urban sustainability and providing different transport choices, exploring how these can be implemented in modern cities. Establishing a new agenda for TOD, experts in the field critically evaluate the links between urban transport investment and economic, social and environmental sustainability, introducing new methods of analysis. Chapters explore international dimensions of TOD, providing crucial insight to issues such as uneven development, transport emissions, global warming, car dependence and the challenge of powering vehicles with sustainable fuels. Urban and regional planning, transport studies and environmental management scholars seeking to understand urban sustainability issues will benefit from this timely book. It will also prove to be a valuable read for urban planners and research consultants looking to widen their knowledge of the role of TOD in enhancing urban sustainability.

This book is an empirically rich case-study of what is currently the most popular alternative-fuel vehicle in the history of motorization - the electric two-wheeler (e-bike). The book provides sociological insights into e-bike mobility in China and discusses politics, social practices and larger issues of mobility transition in urban China. Taking an accessible approach to the subject, the book identifies the main sociospatial conflicts regarding the use of e-bikes and discusses why electric two-wheeler mobility is important for the future of urban China and urban transportation globally. This book will be an invaluable read for urban geographers and transportation researchers, but also for academics and general readers interested in Chinese Studies, specifically in the area of urban mobility in China.

As the world continues to see an expansion of technological innovations, highly populated areas are starting to adopt sustainable solutions to become more energy efficient. The concept of circular cities is a new economic model that reconfigures products and services in such ways as to eliminate the issues of waste and harmful influences and uses alternative energy resources and materials. Many of these principles are currently being implemented in various regions' policies; however, research is still lacking on the implementation of circular economics in urban areas. Developing and Designing Circular Cities: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a collection of innovative research on the methods, framework, and implementation of a circular economy within urbanized areas. This book analyzes the various disciplines of circularity within modern cities while also comparing past and future approaches to urban development. While highlighting topics including sustainable development, renewable energy systems, and urban planning, this book is ideally designed for architects, urban planners, contractors, investors, government officials, civil engineers, educators, academicians, researchers, and students.

Time, the City, and the Literary Imagination explores the relationship between the constructions and representations of the relationship between time and the city in literature published between the late eighteenth century and the present. This collection offers a new way of reading the literary city by tracing the ways in which the relationship between time and urban space can shape literary narratives and forms. The essays consider the representation of a range of literary cities from across the world and consider how an understanding of time, and time passing, can impact on our understanding of the primary texts. Literature necessarily deals with time, both as a function of storytelling and as an experience of reading. In this volume, the contributions demonstrate how literature about cities brings to the forefront the relationship between individual and communal experience and time.

Most African cities are human settlements that lack the systems needed for effective land use planning. In fact, the disorganization that prevails has become so complex that the concept of urbanism itself has been called into question. This book highlights the need to restore urban planning in African cities through sustainable development and interculturality. Furthermore, it addresses the balance of power between urban planning and sustainable development and explores the historical and postcolonial aspects of urban planning in African cities. A case study focusing on the development of sustainable cities and neighborhoods in the M'Zab Valley is also included, as well as topics such as urban greening, climatic threats and the problem of state agro-industrial land transactions, which compete with sustainable urban planning. Sustainable Intercultural Urbanism at the Service of the African City of Tomorrow is a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners interested in urban issues in African cities. These cities, in particular sub Saharan cities, have long been excluded from any discourse on sustainable cities and urban planning; this book places the focus on these cities and acknowledges their varied urban realities. The intention is to spark a new debate on sustainable urban planning in African cities based on intercultural sustainable urbanism, which is key to thinking about and building ecological, intercultural, compact, intelligent and postcolonial cities.

This book on urban water bodies, catchment areas and drainage pattern is set against the backdrop of the unprecedented heavy rainfall that severely deluged metropolitan cities and other parts of India in recent years. It discusses how the processes and implementation of colonial urban development policies and projects have radically transformed the water bodies and their catchment areas - traditional water holding systems of Varanasi city. In this imperative colonial process, through the case study of Varanasi, the book mainly engages with the reasons behind the elimination of the temple tanks and ponds after the annexation of Varanasi by the British from 1775 till 1947. The book investigates the colonial notion of 'dry city', and how this notion crafted the process of separating land and water bodies, which arguably resulted in the reclamation and draining of water bodies, and also gave rise to water pollution. Additionally, the book analyzes the elimination of water bodies and loss of catchment areas through the ongoing processes of restoring the ancient city's natural and cultural heritage. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This book investigates changing geographies of fast growing Asian metropolitan regions, in particular their peripheral areas. Through examining the intersection of global suburbanisation and Asian urbanism, the book depicts a complex (sub)urban world in Asia. It explains how the forces of globalisation, the logic of capital accumulation, and the history of rural-urban divide and interaction, path-dependent local institutions, and government policies work together to reshape the geographies of Asian urbanism. Touching on social, environmental, governance and planning aspects of contemporary urban Asia, the chapters in this volume provide grounded studies of residential relocation and changing rural settlements, property development by a congregation of developers, political ecologies of water provision, middle-class consumers, and local state agencies, transit-oriented development and infrastructure finance in peri-urban areas. It demonstrates an assemblage of actors and coexistence of multiple urban governance regimes with everyday negotiations. Changing Asian Urban Geographies will be interesting not only to those who wish to know more about Asian urban geographies but also to scholars and students wishing to see Asian metropolises in a comparative perspective of (sub)urban dynamics. The chapters in this book were originally published in Urban Geography.

This book presents recent innovative trends in land, water and energy management in Vietnam. Presenting the main projects and outcomes of a close collaboration between Italian and Vietnamese researchers in the last three years, the book is divided into three main sections: environment, climate change and land management in Vietnam; energy for Vietnam; and cities and utilities in Vietnam. The first section focuses on water systems, including rivers and seacoasts, and on new growing methods for more sustainable agriculture. The second section addresses energy and wastewater. The country's rapid growth is a major challenge in terms of reinforcing the electrical infrastructures, and as such this section offers an overview of the government's planned measures and their impact on the Vietnamese power system. The third section highlights cities and utilities in the context of increasing urbanization, exploring the urban morphology of the Vietnamese metropolis, particularly Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.