Territory

Territory
Author: ETH Studio Basel, Contemporary City Institute
Publisher: Park Publishing (WI)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Cities and towns
ISBN: 9783038600237

Between 2008 and 2014, ETH Studio Basel, under the guidance of Roger Diener and Marcel Meili, has been investigating the process of urbanisation taking place outside cities. Territory - in the context of this investigation denotes both: the surroundings that a city subsumes into its own structure and the core city itself, which is the centre of this process of urbanisation, or "confiscation". Investigated were six regions on six continents: The Nile Valley with the dense corset of natural landscape surrounding a linear city; Rome-Adria, where territorial cells have formed within the territory, spawning an urban type of tremendous dynamism; Florida, presenting highly complex patterns of territorial organisation; Vietnam's Red River Delta, where recent reform exposed traditional settlement and cultivation of the delta to freer forces; Oman, where urbanisation of a territory essentially means reclaiming the desert with the immediate necessity to develop a system for water distribution; and Belo Horizonte, where natural conditions likewise play a major role in organising the territory as surface mining entails huge transformations of the natural terrain. The new book features two introductory essays on ETH Studio Basel's research approach and on terminology, concise illustrated reports on the six regions, and four concluding topical essays.

London’s Urban Landscape

London’s Urban Landscape
Author: Christopher Tilley
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1787355608

London’s Urban Landscape is the first major study of a global city to adopt a materialist perspective and stress the significance of place and the built environment to the urban landscape. Edited by Christopher Tilley, the volume is inspired by phenomenological thinking and presents fine-grained ethnographies of the practices of everyday life in London. In doing so, it charts a unique perspective on the city that integrates ethnographies of daily life with an analysis of material culture. The first part of the volume considers the residential sphere of urban life, discussing in detailed case studies ordinary residential streets, housing estates, suburbia and London’s mobile ‘linear village’ of houseboats. The second part analyses the public sphere, including ethnographies of markets, a park, the social rhythms of a taxi rank, and graffiti and street art. London’s Urban Landscape returns us to the everyday lives of people and the manner in which they understand their lives. The deeply sensuous character of the embodied experience of the city is invoked in the thick descriptions of entangled relationships between people and places, and the paths of movement between them. What stories do door bells and house facades tell us about contemporary life in a Victorian terrace? How do antiques acquire value and significance in a market? How does living in a concrete megastructure relate to the lives of the people who dwell there? These and a host of other questions are addressed in this fascinating book that will appeal widely to all readers interested in London or contemporary urban life.

The Image of the City

The Image of the City
Author: Kevin Lynch
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1964-06-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262620017

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.

Jerusalem and Its Environs

Jerusalem and Its Environs
Author: Ruth Kark
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780814329092

It covers the construction of institutional complexes, the introduction of significant changes in Jerusalem's administration, the creation of new planning frameworks, the planning of new settlements around the city, the concentration of large tracts of agricultural land by Jerusalem's Arab effendis, and the development of the Arab and Jewish villages in the rural hinterland."--BOOK JACKET.

A City for Children

A City for Children
Author: Marta Gutman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0226311287

We like to say that our cities have been shaped by creative destruction the vast powers of capitalism to remake cities. But Marta Gutman shows that other forces played roles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as cities responded to industrialization and the onset of modernity. Gutman focuses on the use and adaptive reuse of everyday buildings, and most tellingly she reveals the determinative roles of women and charitable institutions. In Oakland, Gutman shows, private houses were often adapted for charity work and the betterment of children, in the process becoming critical sites for public life and for the development of sustainable social environments. Gutman makes a strong argument for the centrality of incremental construction and the power of women-run organizations to our understanding of modern cities. "

The Noise Landscape

The Noise Landscape
Author: Benedikt Boucsein
Publisher:
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2017
Genre: Airport noise
ISBN: 9789462083554

"The expansive areas around large airports, affected by noise, infrastructure, and transient forms of architecture, have until now not been researched as a phenomenon. But these noise landscapes are emerging worldwide, often surpassing the neighbouring city in size, and sometimes rivalling it in economic importance. On the basis of eight European case studies (Amsterdam, Zurich, London-Heathrow, Frankfurt, Munich, Madrid and the two Paris airports) this book provides the first account of how these landscapes emerged as the result of technical determinations, what is taking place in them, and how they can be interpreted."--Back cover.

The Struggle for Jerusalem's Holy Places

The Struggle for Jerusalem's Holy Places
Author: Wendy Pullan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-11-20
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317975561

The Struggle for Jerusalem’s Holy Places investigates the role of architecture and urban identity in relation to the political economy of the city and its wider state context seen through the lens of the holy places. Reflecting the broad disciplinary backgrounds of the authors, this book provides perspectives from architecture, urbanism, and politics, and provides in-depth investigations of historical, ethnographic and policy-related case studies. The research is substantiated by fieldwork carried out in Jerusalem over the past ten years as part of the ESRC Large Grants project ‘Conflict in Cities’. By analysing new dynamics of radicalisation through land seizure, the politicisation of parklands and tourism, the strategic manipulation of archaeological and historical narratives and material culture, and through examination of general appropriation of Jerusalem’s varied rituals, memories and symbolism for factional uses, the book reveals how possibilities of co- existence are seriously threatened in Jerusalem. Shedding new light on the key role played by everyday urban life and its spatial settings for any future political agreements about the city and its religious sites, this book is a useful reference work for students and scholars of Middle East Studies, Architecture, Religion and Urban Studies.

A Greene Country Towne

A Greene Country Towne
Author: Alan C. Braddock
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2016-12-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0271078928

An unconventional history of Philadelphia that operates at the threshold of cultural and environmental studies, A Greene Country Towne expands the meaning of community beyond people to encompass nonhuman beings, things, and forces. By examining a diverse range of cultural acts and material objects created in Philadelphia—from Native American artifacts, early stoves, and literary works to public parks, photographs, and paintings—through the lens of new materialism, the essays in A Greene Country Towne ask us to consider an urban environmental history in which humans are not the only protagonists. This collection reimagines the city as a system of constantly evolving constituents and agencies that have interacted over time, a system powerfully captured by Philadelphia artists, writers, architects, and planners since the seventeenth century. In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Maria Farland, Nate Gabriel, Andrea L. M. Hansen, Scott Hicks, Michael Dean Mackintosh, Amy E. Menzer, Stephen Nepa, John Ott, Sue Ann Prince, and Mary I. Unger.

South Carolina

South Carolina
Author: Charles F Kovacik
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2019-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000312275

Although small in land area, South Carolina boasts rich geographical diversity. From the mountains to the sea, from the Savannah River to the Pee Dee River, the state features an array of settings and habitats, all formed over long periods of geologic time and human history. Each stage of the state's history has witnessed the creation of a distinctive environment, and this book explores those changing landscapes and the effect they have on South Carolina today. The authors emphasize the spatial patterns of South Carolina's economic and cultural geography since the first humans occupied the area. The book is divided into three parts–the physical setting, the historical setting, and contemporary South Carolina–and concludes with the identification of ten regional subdivisions based on the state's human geography. In this manner, the book provides a panorama of a distinctive region, an area where Old South meets New South and where the landscape is a product of the state's long history.