Rebuilding Europe's Bombed Cities

Rebuilding Europe's Bombed Cities
Author: Jeffry M. Diefendorf
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2015-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1349104582

An exploration of Europe's urban reconstruction after World War II, this volume contains 12 essays, based on new research which examine the significant architectural continuities in pre-war and post-war building. They highlight the unusual character of rebuilding in several case studies.

Ashes and Granite

Ashes and Granite
Author: Olivia Muñoz-Rojas
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2011
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781845194369

Examines the wartime destruction and post-war rebuilding of three prominent sites in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. This title reveals aspects of the Spanish Civil War and the evolution of the Franco regime from an original and fruitful angle.

Preserving the World's Great Cities

Preserving the World's Great Cities
Author: Anthony M. Tung
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2001
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

Both epic and intimate, this is the story of the fight to save the world’s architectural and cultural heritage as it is embodied in the extraordinary buildings and urban spaces of the great cities of Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Never before have the complexities and dramas of urban preservation been as keenly documented as inPreserving the World’s Great Cities. In researching this important work, Anthony Tung traveled throughout the world to visit remarkable buildings and districts in China, Italy, Greece, the U.S., Japan, and elsewhere. Everywhere he found both the devastating legacy of war, economics, and indifference and the accomplishments of people who have worked and sometimes risked their lives to preserve and renew the most meaningful urban expressions of the human spirit. From Singapore’s blind rush to become the most modern city of the East to Warsaw’s poignant and heroic effort to resurrect itself from the Nazis’ systematic campaign of physical and cultural obliteration, from New York and Rome to Kyoto and Cairo, we see the city as an expression of the best and worst within us. This is essential reading for fans of Jane Jacobs and Witold Rybczynski and everyone who is concerned about urban preservation.

The Blitz and Its Legacy

The Blitz and Its Legacy
Author: Mark Clapson
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2013
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781409436980

The Blitz and Its Legacy is a fascinating volume which includes war experiences of destruction, architecture, urban design, the political process of planning and reconstruction, and also popular perceptions of rebuilding. Its findings provide very timely lessons which highlight the value of learning from historical precedent. Drawing together leading scholars and new researchers from across the fields of planning, history, architecture and geography, this volume presents an historical and cultural commentary on the immediate and longer-term impacts of wartime destruction.

In the Wake of War

In the Wake of War
Author: Jeffry M. Diefendorf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 1993-06-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195361091

In 1945 Germany's cities lay in ruins, destroyed by Allied bombers `hat left major architectural monuments badly damaged and much of the housing stock reduced to rubble. At the war's end, observers thought that it would take forty years to rebuild, but by the late 1950s West Germany's cities had risen anew. The housing crisis had been overcome and virtually all important monuments reconstructed, and the cities had reclaimed their characteristic identities. Everywhere there was a mixture of old and new: historic churches and town halls stood alongside new housing and department stores; ancient street layouts were crossed or encircled by wide arteries; old city centers were balanced by garden suburbs laid out according to modern planning principles. In this book, Diefendorf examines the questions raised by this remarkable feat of urban reconstruction. He explains who was primarily responsible, what accounted for the speed of rebuilding, and how priorities were set and decisions acted upon. He argues that in such crucial areas as architectural style, urban planning, historic preservation, and housing policy, the Germans drew upon personnel, ideas, institutions, and practical experiences from the Nazi and pre-Nazi periods. Diefendorf shows how the rebuilding of West Germany's cities after 1945 can only be understood in terms of long-term continuities in urban development.

Wounded Cities: The Representation of Urban Disasters in European Art (14th-20th Centuries)

Wounded Cities: The Representation of Urban Disasters in European Art (14th-20th Centuries)
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2015-05-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004300686

Natural hazards punctuate the history of European towns, moulding their shape and identity: this book is devoted to the artistic representation of those calamities, from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. It contains nine case studies which discuss, among others, the relationship between biblical imagery and the realistic depiction of urban disasters; the religious, political and ritual meanings of “destruction subjects” in early modern painting; the image of fire in Renaissance treatises on architecture; the first photographic campaigns documenting earthquakes’ damages; the role of contemporary art in the elaboration of a cultural memory of urban destructions. Thus, this book intends to address one of the main issues of Western civilization: the relationship of European towns with their own past and its discontinuities. Contributors are Alessandro Del Puppo, Isabella di Lenardo, Marco Folin, Sophie Goetzmann, Emanuela Guidoboni, Philippe Malgouyres, Olga Medvedkova, Fabrizio Nevola, Monica Preti and Tiziana Serena.

Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities

Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities
Author: Olivier Coutard
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2024-04-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1800889151

Contributing towards a thriving research area, this comprehensive Handbook presents a broad discussion of infrastructure as social phenomena. It compiles diverse perspectives to delineate the current ‘infrastructural turn’ and assess policy and research challenges relating to contemporary forms of infrastructural development.

Reconstruction

Reconstruction
Author: Eric Foner
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 742
Release: 2011-12-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 006203586X

From the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), a newly updated edition of the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period which shaped modern America, with a new introduction from the author. Eric Foner's "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed. Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) remains the standard work on the wrenching post-Civil War period—an era whose legacy still reverberates in the United States today.

Urban Recovery

Urban Recovery
Author: Howayda Al-Harithy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2021-05-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 100036254X

This book calls for re-conceptualising urban recovery by exploring the intersection of reconstruction and displacement in volatile contexts in the Global South. It explores the spatial, social, artistic, and political conditions that promote urban recovery. Reconstruction and displacement have often been studied independently as two different processes of physical recovery and human migration towards safety and shelter. It is hoped that by intersecting or even bridging reconstruction with displacement we can cross-fertilize and exploit both discourses to reach a greater understanding of the notion of urban recovery as a holistic and multi-layered process. This book brings multidisciplinary perspectives into conversation with each other to look beyond the conflict-related displacement and reconstruction and into the greater processes of crises and recovery. It uses empirical research to examine how trauma, crisis, and recovery overlap, coexist, collide and redefine each other. The core exploration of this edited collection is to understand how the oppositional framing of destruction versus reconstruction and place-making versus displacement can be disrupted; how displacement is spatialized; and how reconstruction is extended to the displaced people rebuilding their lives, environments, and memories in new locations. In the process, displacement is framed as agency, the displaced as social capital, post-conflict urban environments as archives, and reconstructions as socio-spatial practices. With local and international insights from scholars across disciplines, this book will appeal to academics and students of urban studies, architecture, and social sciences, as well as those involved in the process of urban recovery.