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Good City Form
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Download or read book Good City Form written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1984-02-23 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A summation and extension of Lynch's vision for the exploration of city form. With the publication of The Image of the City in 1959, Kevin Lynch embarked upon the process of exploring city form. Good City Form is both a summation and an extension of his vision, a high point from which he views cities past and possible. First published in hardcover under the title A Theory of Good City Form.
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.
Download or read book City Rules written by Emily Talen and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-06-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: City Rules offers a challenge to students and professionals in urban planning, design, and policy to change the rules of city-building, using regulations to reinvigorate, rather than stifle, our communities. Emily Talen demonstrates that regulations are a primary detriment to the creation of a desirable urban form. While many contemporary codes encourage sprawl and even urban blight, that hasn't always been the case-and it shouldn't be in the future. Talen provides a visually rich history, showing how certain eras used rules to produce beautiful, walkable, and sustainable communities, while others created just the opposite. She makes complex regulations understandable, demystifying city rules like zoning and illustrating how written codes translate into real-world consequences. Most importantly, Talen proposes changes to these rules that will actually enhance communities' freedom to develop unique spaces.
Book Synopsis City Form, Economics and Culture by : Pablo Guillen
Download or read book City Form, Economics and Culture written by Pablo Guillen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-30 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about how cities occupy space. We are not interested in architectural masterpieces, but the tools for reinventing city life. We try to provide a framework for the architecture and design of public space without aesthetic considerations. We identify several defining factors. First of all, history as the city today very much depends on how it was yesterday. The geographical location and the technology available at a point of time both play a constraining role in what can be done as well. Culture, in the form of social norms, laws and regulations, also restricts what is possible to do. On the other hand, culture is also important in guiding the ideas and aspirations that together inform what society wants the city to be. The city needs government intervention, or regulation, to ameliorate the problem posed by a tangle of externalities and public goods. We focus on two comparative case studies: the evolution of urban form in the US and how it stands in a sharp contrast with the evolution of urban form in Japan. We emphasise the difference in regulations between both jurisdictions. We study how differences in technological choices driven by culture (i.e. racial segregation), geography (i.e. the availability of land) and history (i.e. the mobility restrictions of the Tokugawa period) result in vast differences in mobility regarding the share of public transport, walking and cycling versus motorised private transport. American cities are constrained by rules that are much further from the neoliberal economic idea of free and competitive markets than the Japanese ones. Japanese planning promotes competition and through a granular, walkable city dotted with small shops, fosters variety in the availability of goods and services. We hypothesise how changing regulations could change the urban form to generate a greater variety of goods and to foster the access to those goods through a more equitable distribution of wealth. Critically, we point out that a desirably denser city must rely on public transport, and we also study how a less-dense city can be made to work with public transport. We conclude by claiming that changes in regulations are very unlikely to happen in the US, as it would require deep cultural changes to move from local to a more universal and less excluding public good provision, but they are both possible and desirable in other jurisdictions.
Book Synopsis City Sense and City Design by : Kevin Lynch
Download or read book City Sense and City Design written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1995-03-27 with total page 876 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kevin Lynch's books are the classic underpinnings of modern urban planning and design, yet they are only a part of his rich legacy of ideas about human purposes and values in built form. City Sense and City Design brings together Lynch's remaining work, including professional design and planning projects that show how he translated many of his ideas and theories into practice. An invaluable sourcebook of design knowledge, City Sense and City Design completes the record of one of the foremost environmental design theorists of our time and leads to a deeper understanding of his distinctively humanistic philosophy. The editors, both former students of Lynch, provide a cogent summary of his career and of the role he played in shaping and transforming the American urban design profession during the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. Each of the seven thematic groupings of writings and projects that follow begins with a short introduction explaining their content and their background. The essays in part I focus on the premises of Lynch's work: his novel reading of large-scale built environments and the notion that the design of an urban landscape should be as meaningful and intimate as the natural landscape. In part II, excerpts from Lynch's travel journals reveal his early ideas on how people perceive and interpret their surroundings—ideas that culminated in his seminal work, The Image of the City. This part of the book also presents Lynch's experiments with children and his assessment of environmental-perception research. The examples of both small-scale and large-scale analysis of visual form in part III are followed by three parts on city design. These include Lynch's more theoretical works on complex planning decisions involving both functional (spatial and structural organization) and normative (how the city works in human terms) approaches, articles discussing the principles that guided Lynch's teaching and practice of city design, and descriptions of Lynch's own projects in the Boston area and elsewhere. The book concludes with essays written late in Lynch's career, fantasy pieces describing utopias and offering new design freedoms and scenarios warning of horrifying "cacotopias."
Book Synopsis Designing the City by : Hildebrand Frey
Download or read book Designing the City written by Hildebrand Frey and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designing the City looks at current urban problems in cities and demonstrates how effective urban design can address social, economic and environmental issues as well as the physical planning at local level. The book is highly visual and illustrates the topic with a variety of sketches, line drawings, axonometrics and models. The author draws upon the valuable experience gained by the City of Glasgow and compares its solutions - successful and less successful - with projects in a variety of European countries.
Book Synopsis Urban Transformation by : Peter Bosselmann
Download or read book Urban Transformation written by Peter Bosselmann and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do cities transform over time? And why do some cities change for the better while others deteriorate? In articulating new ways of viewing urban areas and how they develop over time, Peter Bosselmann offers a stimulating guidebook for students and professionals engaged in urban design, planning, and architecture. By looking through Bosselmann’s eyes (aided by his analysis of numerous color photos and illustrations) readers will learn to “see” cities anew. Bosselmann organizes the book around seven “activities”: comparing, observing, transforming, measuring, defining, modeling, and interpreting. He introduces readers to his way of seeing by comparing satellite-produced “maps” of the world’s twenty largest cities. With Bosselmann’s guidance, we begin to understand the key elements of urban design. Using Copenhagen, Denmark, as an example, he teaches us to observe without prejudice or bias. He demonstrates how cities transform by introducing the idea of “urban morphology” through an examination of more than a century of transformations in downtown Oakland, California. We learn how to measure quality-of-life parameters that are often considered immeasurable, including “vitality,” “livability,” and “belonging.” Utilizing the street grids of San Francisco as examples, Bosselmann explains how to define urban spaces. Modeling, he reveals, is not so much about creating models as it is about bringing others into public, democratic discussions. Finally, we find out how to interpret essential aspects of “life and place” by evaluating aerial images of the San Francisco Bay Area taken in 1962 and those taken forty-three years later. Bosselmann has a unique understanding of cities and how they “work.” His hope is that, with the fresh vision he offers, readers will be empowered to offer inventive new solutions to familiar urban problems.
Book Synopsis A Theory of Good City Form by : Kevin Lynch
Download or read book A Theory of Good City Form written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1981-01 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available in paperback under the title "Good City Form"With the publication of "The Image of the City, " Kevin Lynch embarked on the process of exploration of city form. "A Theory of Good City Form, " his most important book, is both a summation and an extension of his vision, a high point from which he views cities past and possible.The central section of the book develops a new normative theory of city form--an identification of the characteristics that good human settlements "should" possess. This follows an examination of three existing normative theories--those which see the city as a model of the cosmos, as a machine, and as a living organism--which are shown to be finally inadequate and unable to hold up under sustained analysis. In addition, an appendix demonstrates the inadequacies of a number of functional theories--those whose aim is simply to describe "how" settlements work rather than to evaluate how they ought to work. Among these theories are models of cities as ecological systems, as fields of force, as systems of linked decisions, or as areas of class conflict.Lynch puts forth his own theory by searching out the qualities that produce good settlements, qualities that allow "development, within continuity, via openness and connection." He identifies five interrelated dimensions of performance--vitality, sense, fit, access, and control--and two "meta-criteria," efficiency and justice. As in all of Lynch's writing, the theory flows from and leads back to specific examples and everyday realities. The final section of the book is concerned with applications of the theory.
Book Synopsis What Time Is This Place? by : Kevin Lynch
Download or read book What Time Is This Place? written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1976-10-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the human sense of time, a biological rhythm that may follow a different beat from that dictated by external, "official," "objective" timepieces. Time and Place—Timeplace—is a continuum of the mind, as fundamental as the spacetime that may be the ultimate reality of the material world.Kevin Lynch's book deals with this human sense of time, a biological rhythm that may follow a different beat from that dictated by external, "official," "objective" timepieces. The center of his interest is on how this innate sense affects the ways we view and change—or conserve, or destroy—our physical environment, especially in the cities.
Book Synopsis Designing Urban Transformation by : Aseem Inam
Download or read book Designing Urban Transformation written by Aseem Inam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While designers possess the creative capabilities of shaping cities, their often-singular obsession with form and aesthetics actually reduces their effectiveness as they are at the mercy of more powerful generators of urban form. In response to this paradox, Designing Urban Transformation addresses the incredible potential of urban practice to radically change cities for the better. The book focuses on a powerful question, "What can urbanism be?" by arguing that the most significant transformations occur by fundamentally rethinking concepts, practices, and outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, the book proposes three conceptual shifts for transformative urban practice: (a) beyond material objects: city as flux, (b) beyond intentions: consequences of design, and (c) beyond practice: urbanism as creative political act. Pragmatism encourages us to consider how we can make deeper and more systemic changes and how urbanism itself can be a design strategy for such transformations. To illuminate how these conceptual shifts operate in vastly different contexts through analysis of transformative urban initiatives and projects in Belo Horizonte, Boston, Cairo, Karachi, Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Paris. The book is a rare integration of theory and practice that proposes essential ways of rethinking city-design-and-building processes, while drawing critical lessons from actual examples of such processes.
Download or read book Site Planning written by Gary Hack and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive, state-of-the-art guide to site planning, covering planning processes, new technologies, and sustainability, with extensive treatment of practices in rapidly urbanizing countries. Cities are built site by site. Site planning—the art and science of designing settlements on the land—encompasses a range of activities undertaken by architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and engineers. This book offers a comprehensive, up-to-date guide to site planning that is global in scope. It covers planning processes and standards, new technologies, sustainability, and cultural context, addressing the roles of all participants and stakeholders and offering extensive treatment of practices in rapidly urbanizing countries. Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack wrote the classic text on the subject, and this book takes up where the earlier book left off. It can be used as a textbook and will be an essential reference for practitioners. Site Planning consists of forty self-contained modules, organized into five parts: The Art of Site Planning, which presents site planning as a shared enterprise; Understanding Sites, covering the components of site analysis; Planning Sites, covering the processes involved; Site Infrastructure, from transit to waste systems; and Site Prototypes, including housing, recreation, and mixed use. Each module offers a brief introduction, covers standards or approaches, provides examples, and presents innovative practices in sidebars. The book is lavishly illustrated with 1350 photographs, diagrams, and examples of practice.
Book Synopsis The City Assembled by : Spiro Kostof
Download or read book The City Assembled written by Spiro Kostof and published by Bulfinch Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving from the historical and cultural overviews of the city, Kostof descends into the streets, sidewalks, squares, markets, and waterfronts and presents a detailed urban anatomy. The book is organized thematically around the structural phenomena of cities, the city edge, the street, public space, the marketplace, and the realities of cultural and economic segregation.
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 2024-08-06 with total page 429 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.
Download or read book Cities by Design written by Fran Tonkiss and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who makes our cities, and what part do everyday users have in the design of cities? This book powerfully shows that city-making is a social process and examines the close relationship between the social and physical shaping of urban environments. With cities taking a growing share of the global population, urban forms and urban experience are crucial for understanding social injustice, economic inequality and environmental challenges. Current processes of urbanization too often contribute to intensifying these problems; cities, likewise, will be central to the solutions to such problems. Focusing on a range of cities in developed and developing contexts, Cities by Design highlights major aspects of contemporary urbanization: urban growth, density and sustainability; inequality, segregation and diversity; informality, environment and infrastructure. Offering keen insights into how the shaping of our cities is shaping our lives, Cities by Design provides a critical exploration of key issues and debates that will be invaluable to students and scholars in sociology and geography, environmental and urban studies, architecture, urban design and planning.
Book Synopsis The City at Eye Level by : Meredith Glaser
Download or read book The City at Eye Level written by Meredith Glaser and published by Eburon Uitgeverij B.V.. This book was released on 2012 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although rarely explored in academic literature, most inhabitants and visitors interact with an urban landscape on a day-to-day basis is on the street level. Storefronts, first floor apartments, and sidewalks are the most immediate and common experience of a city. These "plinths" are the ground floors that negotiate between inside and outside, the public and private spheres. The City at Eye Level qualitatively evaluates plinths by exploring specific examples from all over the world. Over twenty-five experts investigate the design, land use, and road and foot traffic in rigorously researched essays, case studies, and interviews. These pieces are supplemented by over two hundred beautiful color images and engage not only with issues in design, but also the concerns of urban communities. The editors have put together a comprehensive guide for anyone concerned with improving or building plinths, including planners, building owners, property and shop managers, designers, and architects.
Book Synopsis The Compact City by : Elizabeth Burton
Download or read book The Compact City written by Elizabeth Burton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: provides forum for progressing the urban debate demonstrates good design and practice through a variety of case studies offers cross-disciplinary view points
Book Synopsis The Landscape Urbanism Reader by : Charles Waldheim
Download or read book The Landscape Urbanism Reader written by Charles Waldheim and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2012-03-20 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim—who is at the forefront of this new movement—has assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the field's top practitioners. Fourteen essays written by leading figures across a range of disciplines and from around the world—including James Corner, Linda Pollak, Alan Berger, Pierre Bolanger, Julia Czerniak, and more—capture the origins, the contemporary milieu, and the aspirations of this relatively new field. The Landscape Urbanism Reader is an inspiring signal to the future of city making as well as an indispensable reference for students, teachers, architects, and urban planners.
