Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Cities Without Cities
Download Cities Without Cities full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Cities Without Cities ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis Cities Without Cities by : Thomas Sieverts
Download or read book Cities Without Cities written by Thomas Sieverts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-10-09 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the social, economic, environmental and formal characteristics of today's built environment, providing a better understanding of this new type of urban form and argues for a change in planning sytems.
Book Synopsis Order without Design by : Alain Bertaud
Download or read book Order without Design written by Alain Bertaud and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure. Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground—the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative—“sustainable,” “livable,” “resilient”—often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens. Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities' development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this “urban planners' dream” created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities' productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.
Book Synopsis Urbanization Without Cities by : Murray Bookchin
Download or read book Urbanization Without Cities written by Murray Bookchin and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city at its best is an eco-community. Urbanization is not only a social and cultural fact of historic proportions; it is a tremendous ecological fact as well. We must explore modern urbanization and its impact on the natural environment, as well as the changes urbanization has produced in our sensibility towards society and toward the natural world. If ecological thinking is to be relevant to the modern human condition, we need a social ecology of the city.
Book Synopsis Cities Without Ground by : Adam Frampton
Download or read book Cities Without Ground written by Adam Frampton and published by Oro Editions. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hong Kong is a city without ground. This is true both physically (built on steep slopes, the city has no ground plane) and culturally (there is no concept of ground). Density obliterates figure-ground in the city, and in turn re-defines public-private spatial relationships. Without a ground, there can be no figure either. In fact, Hong Kong lacks any of the traditional figure-ground relationships that shape urban space: axis, edge, centre, even fabric. 'Cities without ground' explores this condition by mapping three-dimensional circulation networks that join shopping malls, train stations and public transport interchanges, public parks and private lobbies as a series of spatial models and drawings. These networks form a continuous space of variegated environments that serves as a fundamental public resource for the city. The emergence of the shopping malls as spaces of civil society rather than of global capital as grounds of resistance comes as a surprise. This continuous network and the microclimates of temperature, humidity, noise and smell which differentiate it constitute an entirely new form of urban spatial hierarchy. Air particle concentration is both logical and counterintuitive: outdoor air is more polluted, while the air in the higher-end malls is cleaner than air adjacent to lower value retail programs. Train stations, while significantly cooler than bus terminals, have only moderately cleaner air. Boundaries determined by sound or smell (a street of flower vendors or bird keepers, or an artificially perfumed mall) can ultimately provide more substantive spatial boundaries than a ground. While space in the city may be continuous, plumes of temperature differential or air particle intensity demonstrate that environments are far from equal.
Download or read book City Making written by Gerald E. Frug and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-02-20 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American metropolitan areas today are divided into neighborhoods of privilege and poverty, often along lines of ethnicity and race. City residents traveling through these neighborhoods move from feeling at home to feeling like tourists to feeling so out of place they fear for their security. As Gerald Frug shows, this divided and inhospitable urban landscape is not simply the result of individual choices about where to live or start a business. It is the product of government policies--and, in particular, the policies embedded in legal rules. A Harvard law professor and leading expert on urban affairs, Frug presents the first-ever analysis of how legal rules shape modern cities and outlines a set of alternatives to bring down the walls that now keep city dwellers apart. Frug begins by describing how American law treats cities as subdivisions of states and shows how this arrangement has encouraged the separation of metropolitan residents into different, sometimes hostile groups. He explains in clear, accessible language the divisive impact of rules about zoning, redevelopment, land use, and the organization of such city services as education and policing. He pays special attention to the underlying role of anxiety about strangers, the widespread desire for good schools, and the pervasive fear of crime. Ultimately, Frug calls for replacing the current legal definition of cities with an alternative based on what he calls "community building"--an alternative that gives cities within the same metropolitan region incentives to forge closer links with each other. An incisive study of the legal roots of today's urban problems, City Making is also an optimistic and compelling blueprint for enabling American cities once again to embrace their historic role of helping people reach an accommodation with those who live in the same geographic area, no matter how dissimilar they are.
Book Synopsis Cities Without Capitalism by : Hossein Sadri
Download or read book Cities Without Capitalism written by Hossein Sadri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the interconnections between urbanization and capitalism to examine the current condition of cities due to capitalism. It brings together interdisciplinary insights from leading academics, activists and researchers to envision progressive, anti-capitalist changes for the future of cities. The exploitative nature of capitalist urbanization, as seen in the manifestation of modern cities, has threatened and affected life on Earth in unprecedented ways. This book unravels these threats to ecosystems and biodiversity and addresses the widening gap between the rich and the poor. It considers the future impacts of the capitalist urbanization on the planet and the generations to come and offers directions to imagine and build de-capitalised and de-urbanised cities to promote environmental sustainability. Written in lucid style, the chapters in the book illustrate the current situation of capitalist urbanization and expose how it exploits and consumes the planet. It also looks at alternative habitat practices of building autonomous and ecological human settlements, and how these can lead to a transformation of capitalist urbanization. The book also includes current debates on COVID-19 pandemic to consider post-pandemic challenges in envisioning a de-capitalised, eco-friendly society in the immediate future. It will be useful for academics and professionals in the fields of sociology, urban planning and design and urban studies.
Download or read book City Without End written by Kay Kenyon and published by Pyr. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this series Kay Kenyon has created her most vivid and compelling society yet, the universe Entire. Reviewers have called this "a grand world," "an enormous stage," and "a bravura concept." On this stage unfolds a mighty struggle for dominance between two universes. Titus Quinn has forged an unstable peace with the Tarig lords. The ruinous capability of the nanotech surge weapon he possesses ensures détente. But it is a sham. In what the godwoman Zhiya calls "a fit of moral goodness," he’s thrown the weapon into the space-folding waters of the Nigh. This clears the way for an enemy he could have never foreseen: the people of the Rose. A small cadre led by Helice Maki is determined to take the Entire for itself and leave the earth in ruins. The transform of earth will begin deep in a western desert and will sweep over the lives of ordinary people, entangling Quinn’s sister-in-law Caitlin in a deepening and ultimate conspiracy. In the Entire, Quinn stalks Helice to the fabled Rim City, encircling the heart of the Entire. Here he at last finds his daughter, now called Sen Ni, in the Chalin style. Outside of earth-based time, she has grown to adulthood. He hardly knows her, and finds her the mistress of a remarkable dream-time insurgency against the Tarig lords—and more, a woman risen high in the Entire’s meritocracy. Quinn needs his daughter’s help against the woman who would destroy the earth. But Sen Ni has her own plans and allies, among them a boy-navitar unlike any other pilot of the River Nigh—a navitar willing and supremely able to break his vows and bend the world. Quinn casts his fate with the beautiful and resourceful Ji Anzi who—sent on a journey to other realms—holds the key to Quinn’s heart and his overarching mission. But as he approaches the innermost sanctuary of the Tarig, he is alone. Waiting for him are powerful adversaries, including a lady who both hates and loves him, the high prefect of the dragon court, and Quinn’s most implacable enemy, a warrior whose chaotic mind will soon be roused from an eternal slumber. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Book Synopsis Ghost Cities of China by : Wade Shepard
Download or read book Ghost Cities of China written by Wade Shepard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring everything from sports stadiums to shopping malls, hundreds of new cities in China stand empty, with hundreds more set to be built by 2030. Between now and then, the country's urban population will leap to over one billion, as the central government kicks its urbanization initiative into overdrive. In the process, traditional social structures are being torn apart, and a rootless, semi-displaced, consumption orientated culture rapidly taking their place. Ghost Cities of China is an enthralling dialogue driven, on-location search for an understanding of China's new cities and the reasons why many currently stand empty.
Download or read book Arbitrary Lines written by M. Nolan Gray and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up
Book Synopsis Urbanism Without Effort by : Charles R. Wolfe
Download or read book Urbanism Without Effort written by Charles R. Wolfe and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A plea for a renewed commitment to authentic urbanism and an invitation to learn from history as our cities enter a future of unprecedented change." Alex Steffen, author of "Carbon Zero: Imagining Cities that Can Save the Planet" "One of Chuck Wolfe's great gifts is an extraordinary photographer's eye for capturing visual images of everyday, but evocative, city life. Another is an uncommonly strong intellectual grounding in urban planning theory. In Urbanism Without Effort, he combines the two in unique fashion to show us how unplanned places can often teach us more about great placemaking than planned ones." Kaid Benfield, senior counsel, environmental strategies at PlaceMakers, LLC, and former director for sustainable communities, NRDC "Chuck's work is what happens when art meets science in placemaking. His talent for capturing places being themselves is so important in the placemaker's toolkit, yet can be missed if we are not paying attention. Lucky for us, Chuck is always paying attention and this book is the proof." Dr. Katherine Loflin, The City Doctor "This is a must read for those who want to understand in words and pictures what stands behind great cities. We're proud to see a Seattle native son helping to show the way." Mike McGinn, Mayor of Seattle, founding Executive Director, Seattle Great City Initiative "Wolfe provides something rare in contemporary urbanist writing--rich illustrations and examples from real life--both historical and current. His writing about the past and the future of urban form offers readers inspiration, historical context, and a better understanding of how a sustainable, inviting urban environment is created." Eco-Libris "Nicely put. If you like thinking about the intersection of people and place, you may like this attractively priced book a great deal." NRDC's The Switchboard blog "Readers will come away motivated to find, experience and document their own favourite places and find ways to apply effortless urbanism in their o wn neighbourhood." Spacing " ... a book of inspiration and aspiration. It makes the reader yearn for places with soul." Better Cities & Towns " ... a great ground-level look at how neighborhoods and communities can foster flourishing life in the city." Can't Catch My Breath "The jargon-free text makes this book a good option for anyone, but the substance of the message could make for academic reading as well. I enjoyed reading this book for its vignettes of urban living from around the world." Global Site Plans.
Book Synopsis Cities Without Palms by : طيب، طارق،
Download or read book Cities Without Palms written by طيب، طارق، and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a desperate attempt to save his mother and two sisters from famine and disease, a young man leaves his native village in Sudan and sets out alone to seek work in the city. This is the beginning of Hamza's long journey. Hunger and destitution lead him ever farther from his home: first from Sudan to Egypt, where the lack of work forces him to join a band of smugglers, and finally from Egypt to Europe--Italy, France, Holland--where he experiences first-hand the harsh world of migrant laborers and the bitter realities of life as an illegal immigrant. Tarek Eltayeb's first novel offers an uncompromising depiction of poverty in both the developed and the developing world. With its simple yet elegant style, Cities without Palms tells of a tragic human life punctuated by moments of true joy. "Once started it is difficult to put down. It is sensational, original, and altogether a magnificent literary debut." --James Kirkup, Banipal
Book Synopsis The Image of the City by : Kevin Lynch
Download or read book The Image of the City written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1964-06-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.
Book Synopsis A City Is Not a Computer by : Shannon Mattern
Download or read book A City Is Not a Computer written by Shannon Mattern and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold reassessment of "smart cities" that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers Computational models of urbanism—smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration—promise to deliver new urban efficiencies and conveniences. Yet these models limit our understanding of what we can know about a city. A City Is Not a Computer reveals how cities encompass myriad forms of local and indigenous intelligences and knowledge institutions, arguing that these resources are a vital supplement and corrective to increasingly prevalent algorithmic models. Shannon Mattern begins by examining the ethical and ontological implications of urban technologies and computational models, discussing how they shape and in many cases profoundly limit our engagement with cities. She looks at the methods and underlying assumptions of data-driven urbanism, and demonstrates how the "city-as-computer" metaphor, which undergirds much of today's urban policy and design, reduces place-based knowledge to information processing. Mattern then imagines how we might sustain institutions and infrastructures that constitute more diverse, open, inclusive urban forms. She shows how the public library functions as a steward of urban intelligence, and describes the scales of upkeep needed to sustain a city's many moving parts, from spinning hard drives to bridge repairs. Incorporating insights from urban studies, data science, and media and information studies, A City Is Not a Computer offers a visionary new approach to urban planning and design.
Book Synopsis Cities Without Suburbs by : David Rusk
Download or read book Cities Without Suburbs written by David Rusk and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1993, this analysis of America's cities should be of interest to city planners, scholars, and citizens alike. It argues that America must end the isolation of the central city from its suburbs in order to attack its urban problems.
Book Synopsis The City & The City by : China Miéville
Download or read book The City & The City written by China Miéville and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE SEATTLE TIMES, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. To investigate, Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to its equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the vibrant city of Ul Qoma. But this is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a seeing of the unseen. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them more than their lives. What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities. BONUS: This edition contains a The City & The City discussion guide and excerpts from China Miéville's Kraken and Embassytown.
Book Synopsis The Smart Enough City by : Ben Green
Download or read book The Smart Enough City written by Ben Green and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-04-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.
Book Synopsis Cities in the Urban Age by : Robert A. Beauregard
Download or read book Cities in the Urban Age written by Robert A. Beauregard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a self-proclaimed Urban Age, where we celebrate the city as the source of economic prosperity, a nurturer of social and cultural diversity, and a place primed for democracy. We proclaim the city as the fertile ground from which progress will arise. Without cities, we tell ourselves, human civilization would falter and decay. In Cities in the Urban Age, Robert A. Beauregard argues that this line of thinking is not only hyperbolic—it is too celebratory by half. For Beauregard, the city is a cauldron for four haunting contradictions. First, cities are equally defined by both their wealth and their poverty. Second, cities are simultaneously environmentally destructive and yet promise sustainability. Third, cities encourage rule by political machines and oligarchies, even as they are essentially democratic and at least nominally open to all. And fourth, city life promotes tolerance among disparate groups, even as the friction among them often erupts into violence. Beauregard offers no simple solutions or proposed remedies for these contradictions; indeed, he doesn’t necessarily hold that they need to be resolved, since they are generative of city life. Without these four tensions, cities wouldn’t be cities. Rather, Beauregard argues that only by recognizing these ambiguities and contradictions can we even begin to understand our moral obligations, as well as the clearest paths toward equality, justice, and peace in urban settings.
