Cities In Flux

Author : Timothy Beatley
Publisher : Island Press
ISBN 13 : 1597267155
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Biophilic Cities written by Timothy Beatley and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tim Beatley has long been a leader in advocating for the "greening" of cities. But too often, he notes, urban greening efforts focus on everything except nature, emphasizing such elements as public transit, renewable energy production, and energy efficient building systems. While these are important aspects of reimagining urban living, they are not enough, says Beatley. We must remember that human beings have an innate need to connect with the natural world (the biophilia hypothesis). And any vision of a sustainable urban future must place its focus squarely on nature, on the presence, conservation, and celebration of the actual green features and natural life forms. A biophilic city is more than simply a biodiverse city, says Beatley. It is a place that learns from nature and emulates natural systems, incorporates natural forms and images into its buildings and cityscapes, and designs and plans in conjunction with nature. A biophilic city cherishes the natural features that already exist but also works to restore and repair what has been lost or degraded. In Biophilic Cities Beatley not only outlines the essential elements of a biophilic city, but provides examples and stories about cities that have successfully integrated biophilic elements--from the building to the regional level--around the world. From urban ecological networks and connected systems of urban greenspace, to green rooftops and green walls and sidewalk gardens, Beatley reviews the emerging practice of biophilic urban design and planning, and tells many compelling stories of individuals and groups working hard to transform cities from grey and lifeless to green and biodiverse.

Author : Aseem Inam
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135006393
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Michael Pacione
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 0415462010
Total Pages : 745 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Urban Geography written by Michael Pacione and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2009 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most comprehensive and readable book on urban geography in the array of contemporary literature on the subject.

Author : Rahul Mehrotra
Publisher : Architangle
ISBN 13 : 9783966800136
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Kinetic City and Other Essays written by Rahul Mehrotra and published by Architangle. This book was released on 2021-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rahul Mehrotra is the founder of RMA Architects, which emerged in Mumbai in 1990 and has studios in Mumbai and Boston. Currently he is the chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Havard GSD and has had a long-term engagement with and analyses of urbanism in India which has given rise to a new conceptualization of the city. The Kinetic City, the counterpart to the Static City familiar to most of us from conventional city maps, is perceived in terms of patterns of occupation and associative values attributed to space. The framework is established in this publication by Rahul Mehrotra's anchor essay, which draws out its potential to "allow a better understanding of the blurred lines of contemporary urbanism and the changing roles of people and spaces in urban society." The emerging urban Indian condition, of which the Kinetic City is symbolic, is examined in this publication through this anchor essay as well as an expansive complimentary photo essay. The theory is solidified by a series of essays from different points of Rahul Mehrotra's career as an architect, urban designer and educator. From case studies such as 'Evolution, Involution and the City's Future; A Perspective on Bombay's Urban Form', to more generally appliable ruminations such as 'Our Home in the World', the book will offer an in-depth look at the last thirty years of theory behind Mehrotra's work.

Author : Manish Chalana
Publisher : Hong Kong University Press
ISBN 13 : 9888208330
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Messy Urbanism written by Manish Chalana and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seemingly messy and chaotic, the landscapes and urban life of cities in Asia possess an order and hierarchy that often challenges understanding and appreciation. With contributions by a cross-disciplinary group of authors, Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia examines a range of cases in Asia to explore the social and institutional politics of urban informality and the contexts in which this “messiness” emerges or is constructed. The book brings a distinct perspective to the broader patterns of informal urban orders and processes as well as their interplay with formalized systems and mechanisms. It also raises questions about the production of cities, cityscapes, and citizenship. Messy Urbanism will appeal to professionals, students, and scholars in the fields of urban studies, architecture, landscape architecture, planning and policy, as well as Asian studies. “The rubric of ‘messy urbanism’ is a productive antidote to the binaries that have limited a productive discussion about urbanism in Asia. This book is a significant contribution in understanding the inherent nature of the built environments in aspiring democracies—an emergent urbanism that seamlessly embraces the incremental, temporal, and ephemeral as given conditions in the formation of Asian cities.” —Rahul Mehrotra, Architect / Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Harvard University “This book is of a high quality, with multiple examples from Hong Kong and China. The authors have covered the topic admirably and I expect the book to attract a wide readership.” —Vinit Mukhija, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Urban Planning, UCLA

Author : Richard J. Williams
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745691846
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why Cities Look the Way They Do written by Richard J. Williams and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We tend to think cities look the way they do because of the conscious work of architects, planners and builders. But what if the look of cities had less to do with design, and more to do with social, cultural, financial and political processes, and the way ordinary citizens interact with them? What if the city is a process as much as a design? Richard J. Williams takes the moment construction is finished as a beginning, tracing the myriad processes that produce the look of the contemporary global city. This book is the story of dramatic but unforeseen urban sights: how financial capital spawns empty towering skyscrapers and hollowed-out ghettoes; how the zoning of once-illicit sexual practices in marginal areas of the city results in the reinvention of culturally vibrant gay villages; how abandoned factories have been repurposed as creative hubs in a precarious postindustrial economy. It is also the story of how popular urban clichés and the fictional portrayal of cities powerfully shape the way we read and see the bricks, concrete and glass that surround us. Thought-provoking and original, Why Cities Look the Way They Do will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the contemporary city, shedding new light on humanity’s greatest collective invention.

Author : Walter Leal Filho
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319285912
Total Pages : 405 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Implementing Climate Change Adaptation in Cities and Communities written by Walter Leal Filho and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-13 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes how climate change adaptation can be implemented at the community, regional and national level. Featuring a variety of case studies, it illustrates strategies, initiatives and projects currently being implemented across the world. In addition to the challenges faced by communities, cities and regions seeking to cope with climate change phenomena like floods, droughts and other extreme events, the respective chapters cover topics such as the adaptive capacities of water management organizations, biodiversity conservation, and indigenous and climate change adaptation strategies. The book will appeal to a broad readership, from scholars to policymakers, interested in developing strategies for effectively addressing the impacts of climate change.

Author : Suzanne Hall
Publisher : SAGE
ISBN 13 : 1473987865
Total Pages : 969 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City written by Suzanne Hall and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 969 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City focuses on the dynamics and disruptions of the contemporary city in relation to capricious processes of global urbanisation, mutation and resistance. An international range of scholars engage with emerging urban conditions and inequalities in experimental ways, speaking to new ideas of what constitutes the urban, highlighting empirical explorations and expanding on contributions to policy and design. The handbook is organised around nine key themes, through which familiar analytic categories of race, gender and class, as well as binaries such as the urban/rural, are readdressed. These thematic sections together capture the volatile processes and intricacies of urbanisation that reveal the turbulent nature of our early twenty-first century: Hierarchy: Elites and Evictions Productivity: Over-investment and Abandonment Authority: Governance and Mobilisations Volatility: Disruption and Adaptation Conflict: Vulnerability and Insurgency Provisionality: Infrastructure and Incrementalism Mobility: Re-bordering and De-bordering Civility: Contestation and Encounter Design: Speculation and Imagination This is a provocative, inter-disciplinary handbook for all academics and researchers interested in contemporary urban studies.

Author : Cynthia Rosenzweig
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316944565
Total Pages : 856 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Climate Change and Cities written by Cynthia Rosenzweig and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Urban Climate Change Research Network's Second Assessment Report on Climate Change in Cities (ARC3.2) is the second in a series of global, science-based reports to examine climate risk, adaptation, and mitigation efforts in cities. The book explicitly seeks to explore the implications of changing climatic conditions on critical urban physical and social infrastructure sectors and intersectoral concerns. The primary purpose of ARC3.2 is to inform the development and implementation of effective urban climate change policies, leveraging ongoing and planned investments for populations in cities of developing, emerging, and developed countries. This volume, like its predecessor, will be invaluable for a range of audiences involved with climate change and cities: mayors, city officials and policymakers; urban planners; policymakers charged with developing climate change mitigation and adaptation programs; and a broad spectrum of researchers and advanced students in the environmental sciences.

Author : Tan Yigitcanlar
Publisher : MDPI
ISBN 13 : 3039280120
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Approaches, Advances and Applications in Sustainable Development of Smart Cities written by Tan Yigitcanlar and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to contribute to the conceptual and practical knowledge pools in order to improve the research and practice on the sustainable development of smart cities by bringing an informed understanding of the subject to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. This book seeks articles offering insights into the sustainable development of smart cities by providing in-depth conceptual analyses and detailed case study descriptions and empirical investigations. This way, the book will form a repository of relevant information, material, and knowledge to support research, policymaking, practice, and transferability of experiences to address aforementioned challenges. The scope of the book includes the following broad areas, with a particular focus on the approaches, advances, and applications in the sustainable development of smart cities: • Theoretical underpinnings and analytical and policy frameworks; • Methodological approaches for the evaluation of smart and sustainable cities; • Technological developments in the techno-enviro nexus; • Global best practice smart city case investigations and reports; • Geo-design and applications concerning desired urban outcomes; • Prospects, implications, and impacts concerning the future of smart and sustainable cities.