Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and formerly part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, is a city built on and with oil. In fact, oil and urbanism in Baku have been completely intertwined, economically, politically, and physically in the spaces of the city. Its first oil boom in the late 19th century was driven by the Russian branch of the Nobel family modernising the exploitation of oil fields around Baku, and local oil barons pouring their new wealth into building a cosmopolitan city centre. During the Soviet period, Baku became the site of an urban experiment: the shaping an oil city of socialist man. This project included Neft Dashlari, a city built on trestles in the Caspian Sea, housing thousands of workers, schools, shops, gardens, clinics, cinemas and more. This first off-shore rig in the world became the emblem of Baku's second oil boom. Today, Baku is experiencing its third oil boom. For Baku's city planners and business elites, that future is based on a careful reading of Baku as a project in which urbanism and oil are inextricably linked. This new book investigates how oil stimulated urban development in Baku, and explores in detail the more complex and important question of how the disparate spatial logics, knowledge bases, and practices of oil production and urban production intersected, impacted and transformed one another. Based on a vast research project and drawing on rich and previously unpublished material, Baku - Oil and Urbanism is organised into three broadly conceived historical periods defined by the political, economic, technological conditions in which the interwoven evolution of oil and urban production unfolded. The book also features a new photo essay by celebrated photographer Iwan Baan.

1919 initiierte die sozialdemokratische Wiener Stadtregierung ein Reformprogramm um die Infrastruktur nach sozialistischen Vorstellungen zu formen. Das Herzstuck des "Roten Wien" waren die Wiener Gemeindebauten, 400 stadtische Hauserbloecke, die, verteilt uber die ganze Stadt, Wohnraum fur ein Zehntel der Stadtbevoelkerung bot. Wahrend der Baukampagne wurde OEsterreich jedoch von einer konservativ-klerikalen, antisozialistischen Mehrheit regiert. In ihrem Buch zeigt Eve Blau wie dieser ideologische Konflikt die Bauten des Roten Wien formte, wie sich die Architektur ihrer eigenen Codes, Praktiken und Geschichte bediente um ihre Position gegenuber den politischen Rahmenbedingungen abzugrenzen. Das Buch, langst Standardwerk in der Architektur- und Kunsthistorikerausbildung, liegt nun erstmals in deutscher UEbersetzung vor.

The restoration of the Cheonggyecheon River that runs through Seoul, Korea, in a mere twenty-nine months--transitioning from an outmoded highway into a multipurpose performative infrastructure piece of unprecedented size--merits recognition as a seminal project in contemporary urban design. This remarkable achievement recovers the biological and social ecology of the city and demonstrates the profound ability of design at the urban scale to provoke positive transformation effectively over large territories. The project also signifies a broader sea change in Asian attitudes toward city design, from a quantitative model concerned primarily with growth to a more qualitative program that incorporates quality of life and environmental sustainability into strategies for economic development.

In this well-illustrated volume, contributors consider the ecological, infrastructural, and urban impacts of this exceptional project at the heart of the city. For its many merits, the Cheonggyecheon restoration was awarded the Tenth Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design by the Harvard Graduate School of Design.