a. The book draws attention to the professional awareness challenge of the urban planning discipline. While the profession has been in existence for more than a century, many children, youth, and the general population are not aware of it, those who engage in it, how one can become an urban planner, and their economic prospects. b. The book will also provide practical strategies to confront the enrollment challenge in urban planning schools by drawing attention to the contribution of Design and Planning Language Programs in raising awareness about the profession and how it contributes to attracting students to urban planning programs. c. It will provide Urban Planning Departments and Schools with practical strategies in designing and implementing initiatives to raise awareness about the urban planning professions as well as use it as a way to attract potential students. d. The book will have contributions from all across the world—North America, South America, Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. This will provide cross- and co-learning opportunities to help address the professional awareness challenge globally and on the various continents.

The Companion to Public Space draws together an outstanding multidisciplinary collection of specially commissioned chapters that offer the state of the art in the intellectual discourse, scholarship, research, and principles of understanding in the construction of public space. Thematically, the volume crosses disciplinary boundaries and traverses territories to address the philosophical, political, legal, planning, design, and management issues in the social construction of public space. The Companion uniquely assembles important voices from diverse fields of philosophy, political science, geography, anthropology, sociology, urban design and planning, architecture, art, and many more, under one cover. It addresses the complete ecology of the topic to expose the interrelated issues, challenges, and opportunities of public space in the twenty-first century. The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines that converge in the study of public space. The Companion will also be of use to practitioners and public officials who deal with the planning, design, and management of public spaces.

This trailblazing book outlines a tested interdisciplinary "process model" for urban design. Its goal is not to explain how to design a specific city precinct or public space, but to describe useful steps to approach the transformation of urban spaces. "Urban Ecological Design" illustrates the different stages in which the process is organized, using theories, techniques, images, and case studies. The authors believe that environmental concerns demand that ecological and sustainability issues are addressed in urban design. It is, after all, the urban designer who helps to orchestrate human relationships with other living organisms in the built environment. The overall objective of the book is to reinforce the role of the urban designer as an honest broker and promoter of design processes and as an active agent of social creativity in the production of the public realm.