Urban Dynamics, Environment and Health

Urban Dynamics, Environment and Health
Author: Braj Raj Kumar Sinha
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 763
Release: 2024-01-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9819957443

The comprehensive volume focuses on spatial, temporal, conceptual and empirical approaches to various elements of urban dynamics, environment and urban health. It demonstrates a multidisciplinary account of the significant dimensions of urbanization and urban life. Chapters by leading international experts are presented in sections on urban dynamics, Urban Environmental Issues, Urban Health Problems and Urban Development, Planning and Policies. Each chapter provides a breadth of information on conceptual and empirical studies of urban issues. It enables the readers to understand the interconnections of various vital elements of each urban-related topical issue locally, regionally and globally. Extensive maps, charts, diagrams and tables as cartographic tools facilitate the reader’s understanding. It also outlines an action plan for policy program change in both the developed and less developed countries toward sustainable urban development and environment for better health, prosperity and quality of life of the present and future urban population. It is an indispensable reference for students, research scholars of geography and environmental, medical, and social sciences at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The Spanish Coastal Systems

The Spanish Coastal Systems
Author: Juan A. Morales
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 809
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319931695

This monograph presents the state of art of the geologic knowledge about the Spanish coast obtained through scientific research in the last 30 years.From a general point of view, coasts are the most quickly changing systems of the Earth. This is critical, since many human resources, such as the main part of economic and social activities, are located in the coastal areas. Especially in the case of Spain these coasts include cities, wide industrial areas (including harbor complexes), important ecologic systems, and our main economic resource: tourism. Understanding the dynamic functioning of each element of this coast is vital for correct future coastal management, so as to solve problems derived from bad plans developed in the last decades of the twentieth century. This is a valuable text for advanced graduate students and coastal researchers, which connects the specific dynamic functioning of the main Spanish coastal environments and their relationships with human activities.

Construction and Building Research

Construction and Building Research
Author: Carmen Llinares-Millán
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2014-01-31
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9400777906

Many areas of knowledge converge in the building industry and therefore research in this field necessarily involves an interdisciplinary approach. Effective research requires strong relation between a broad variety of scientific and technological domains and more conventional construction or craft processes, while also considering advanced management processes, where all the main actors permanently interact. This publication takes an interdisciplinary approach grouping various studies on the building industry chosen from among the works presented for the 2nd International Conference on Construction and Building Research. The papers examine aspects of materials and building systems; construction technology; energy and sustainability; construction management; heritage, refurbishment and conservation. The information contained within these pages may be of interest to researchers and practitioners in construction and building activities from the academic sphere, as well as public and private sectors.

Temporary Appropriation in Cities

Temporary Appropriation in Cities
Author: Alessandro Melis
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-12-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030321207

This book conceptualises and illustrates temporary appropriation as an urban phenomenon, exploring its contributions to citizenship, urban social sustainability and urban health. It explains how some forms of appropriation can be subversive, existing in a grey area between legal and illegal activities in the city. The book explores the complex and the multi-scalar nature of temporary appropriation, and touches on its relationship to issues such as: sustainability and building re-use; culture; inclusivity, including socio-spatial inclusion; streetscape design; homelessness; and regulations controlling the use of public spaces. The book focuses on temporary appropriation as a necessity of adapting human needs in a city, highlighting the flexibility that is needed within urban planning and the further research that should be undertaken in this area. The book utilises case studies of Auckland, Algiers and Mexico City, and other cities with diverse cultural and historical backgrounds, to explore how planning, design and development can occur whilst maintaining community diversity and resilience. Since urban populations are certain to grow further, this is a key topic for understanding urban dynamics, and this book will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike.

What Was the Islamic Conquest of Iberia?

What Was the Islamic Conquest of Iberia?
Author: Hussein Fancy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2021-05-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000385086

What Was the Islamic Conquest of Iberia? Understanding the New Debate brings together leading scholars to offer an introduction to a recent debate with far-reaching implications for the study of history, as well as our understanding of the present. In the year 711 CE, Islamic armies conquered the Iberian Peninsula. This seemingly uncontroversial claim has in fact been questioned, becoming an object of intense scholarly debate, debate that has reached a fevered pitch in recent decades within Spain. This volume introduces an anglophone audience to the terms and contours of this controversy, from its emergence in the late nineteenth century to its contemporary recrudescence. It suggests that far from an abstract discussion, this dispute reveals methodological and moral questions that remain vital to the study of the distant past, questions than cannot be easily resolved and have far-reaching consequences for the present. This volume offers novel perspectives on, not only the controversy, but also the latest research on the events of 711. These exemplary studies of historical, literary, and material cultural evidence demonstrate the promise and challenges for a new generation of scholarship. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies.

Urban Social Sustainability

Urban Social Sustainability
Author: M. Reza Shirazi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2019-01-22
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1351631527

This ground breaking volume raises radical critiques and proposes innovative solutions for social sustainability in the built environment. Urban Social Sustainability provides an in-depth insight into the discourse and argues that every urban intervention has a social sustainability dimension that needs to be taken into consideration, and incorporated into a comprehensive and cohesive ‘urban agenda’ that is built on three principles of recognition, integration, and monitoring. This should be achieved through a dialogical and reflexive process of decision-making. To achieve sustainable communities, social sustainability should form the basis of a constructive dialogue and be interlinked with other areas of sustainable development. This book underlines the urgency of approaching social sustainability as an urban agenda and goes on to make suggestions about its formulation. Urban Social Sustainability consists of original contributions from academics and experts within the field and explores the significance of social sustainability from different perspectives. Areas covered include urban policy, transportation and mobility, urban space and architectural form, housing, urban heritage, neighbourhood development, and urban governance. Drawing on case studies from a number of countries and world regions the book presents a multifaceted and interdisciplinary understanding from social sustainability in urban settings, and provides practitioners and policy makers with innovative recommendations to achieve more socially sustainable urban environment.

The City of Collective Memory

The City of Collective Memory
Author: M. Christine Boyer
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 580
Release: 1994
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262522113

Describes the visual and mental models by which urban environment has been recognized, depicted and planned. This analysis draws from geography, critical theory, architecture, literature and painting to identify these maps of the city - as a work of art, as panorama and as spectacle.

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 145294198X

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment is the first publication in any language of the only book devoted to architecture by Henri Lefebvre. Written in 1973 but only recently discovered in a private archive, this work extends Lefebvre’s influential theory of urban space to the question of architecture. Taking the practices and perspective of habitation as his starting place, Lefebvre redefines architecture as a mode of imagination rather than a specialized process or a collection of monuments. He calls for an architecture of jouissance—of pleasure or enjoyment—centered on the body and its rhythms and based on the possibilities of the senses. Examining architectural examples from the Renaissance to the postwar period, Lefebvre investigates the bodily pleasures of moving in and around buildings and monuments, urban spaces, and gardens and landscapes. He argues that areas dedicated to enjoyment, sensuality, and desire are important sites for a society passing beyond industrial modernization. Lefebvre’s theories on space and urbanization fundamentally reshaped the way we understand cities. Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment promises a similar impact on how we think about, and live within, architecture.

Seville: Through the Urban Void

Seville: Through the Urban Void
Author: Miguel Torres
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317242408

Recent years have seen a growing interest in undetermined and unqualified urban spaces. Understanding cities as spaces for encounter, conflict and otherness, this book argues that this indeterminacy is not marginal but a key characteristic of urban space, and degrees of liberty foster change, creativity, and political action. The urban void is a conceptual construct that aims to render a principle of absence apprehensible, and to describe how it intervenes in place-making in the city. Seville: Through the Urban Void build mostly upon Henri Lefebvre’s work using concepts drawn on the social sciences, in order to articulate a biographic narrative of the Alameda de Hércules in Seville, Spain, which stands both as an outstanding instance of urban space and a very influential urban type. During its long historical span the Alameda has undergone alternating periods of decline and development, revealing the relations between successive urban paradigms and ideas of nature, territory, and the people. For the first time its whole history is told in a single account, which adds new perspectives to its understanding, and brings forward formerly disregarded aspects. This book shows how its liminal nature, which stubbornly persists over time, creates the conditions for creative processes.

History of Urban Form Before the Industrial Revolution

History of Urban Form Before the Industrial Revolution
Author: A.E.J. Morris
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1345
Release: 2013-12-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317885139

Provides an international history of urban development, from its origins to the industrial revolution. This well established book maintains the high standard of information found in the previous two editions, describing the physical results of some 5000 years of urban activity. It explains and develops the concept of 'unplanned' cities that grow organically, in contrast with 'planned' cities that were shaped in response to urban form determinants. Spread throughout the texts are copious illustrations from a wealth of sources, including cartographic urban records, aerial and other photographs, original drawings and the author's numerous analytical line drawings.