Our Urban Future

Our Urban Future
Author: Akhtar Badshah
Publisher: Zed Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1996
Genre: City planning
ISBN: 9781856494069

In recent years, new approaches to urban planning and development have generated some optimism that the failure of earlier strategies to address the overwhelming problems entailed can be overcome. The author seeks out those innovative approaches that have actually worked in various large cities in India, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and elswhere. He identifies effective urban practices that are socially equitable, ecologically sustainable, economically viable and replicable. All of them share a commitment to the genuine participation of the poor in the urban development process, starting right from the planning and design stages. (Adapté du résumé de l'éditeur).

The Smart Enough City

The Smart Enough City
Author: Ben Green
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262352257

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

Market Cities, People Cities

Market Cities, People Cities
Author: Michael Oluf Emerson
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1479800260

Introduction: the claim -- How it happens -- Becoming market and people cities -- How government and leaders make cities work -- What residents think, believe, and act on -- Why it matters -- Getting there, being there: transportation and land use -- Environment/economy : and or versus? -- Life together and apart -- Across cities -- To be or not to be -- Acknowledgments -- Methodological appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the authors

Urban Futures

Urban Futures
Author: Timothy J. Dixon
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2021-05-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1447336305

Winner of the 2022 Urban Affairs Association Best Book Award. City visions represent shared, and often desirable, expectations about our urban futures. This book explores the history and evolution of city visions, placing them in the wider context of art, culture, science, foresight and urban theory. It highlights and critically reviews examples of city visions from around the world, contrasting their development and outlining the key benefits and challenges in planning such visions. The authors show how important it is to think about the future of cities in objective and strategic ways, engaging with a range of stakeholders – something more important than ever as we look to visions of a sustainable future beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

Our Urban Future

Our Urban Future
Author: Sabina Shaikh
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2024-06-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262376687

A practical, comprehensive textbook that uses active learning techniques to teach about the challenges and opportunities associated with urban sustainability. While the problem of urban sustainability has long been a subject of great scholarly interest, there has, until now, been no single source providing a multi-disciplinary, exhaustive view of how it can be effectively taught. Filling this gap, Our Urban Future uses active learning techniques to comprehensively relate the theory of urban sustainability and the what, why, and how of sustainable cities. This practical, pedagogically rich textbook concisely covers all the key subjects of the field, including ecosystem services and transects, the internal design and patterning of urban elements, how cities mitigate and adapt to climate change, and questions of environmental justice. It functions as both an illuminating roadmap and active reference to which any student of sustainability can turn to find essential resources and perspectives in pursuit of creating sustainable cities. Approachable, discrete exercises introduce students to key sustainability subjects Learn-by-doing approach encourages critically engaging from multiple angles Ideal for students across environmental sustainability, urban planning, urban design, urban studies, sociology architecture, landscape architecture, and geography Robust suite of ancillaries includes links and downloadable data to support activities, and additional readings and resources

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age
Author: Annalee Newitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 039365267X

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Science Friday A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history—and figure out why people abandoned them. In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia. Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

Resilience and Southern Urbanism

Resilience and Southern Urbanism
Author: Binti Singh
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2022-01-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000557219

This volume studies the urbanisation trends of medium-sized cities of India to develop a typology of urban resilience. It looks at historic second-tier cities like Nashik, Bhopal, Kolkata and Agra, which are laboratories of smart experiments and are subject to technological ubiquity, with rampant deployment of smart technologies and dashboard governance. The book examines the traditional values and systems of these cities that have proven to be resilient and studies how they can be adapted to contemporary times. It also highlights the vulnerabilities posed by current urban development models in these cities and presents best practices that could provide leads to address impending climate risks. The book also offers a unique Resilience Index that can drive change in the way cities are imagined and administered, customised to specific needs at various scales of application. Part of the Urban Futures series, the volume is an important contribution to the growing scholarship of southern urbanism and will be of interest to researchers and students of urban studies, urban ecology, urban sociology, architecture, geography, urban design, anthropology, cultural studies, environment, sustainability, urban planning and climate change.

Resilient Urban Futures

Resilient Urban Futures
Author: Zoé A. Hamstead
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030631311

This open access book addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change. The editors and authors show why cities must wage simultaneous battles to curb global climate change trends while adapting and transforming to address local climate impacts. This book addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups. Although planning processes consider visions for the future, the editors highlight a more ambitious long-term positive visioning approach that accounts for unpredictability, system dynamics and equity in decision-making. This volume brings the science of urban transformation together with practices of professionals who govern and manage our social, ecological and technological systems to design processes by which cities may achieve resilient urban futures in the face of climate change.

Megacities

Megacities
Author: Frauke Kraas
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2013-07-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 904813417X

As urbanization continues, and even accelerates, scientists estimate that by 2015 the world will have up to 60 ‘megacities’ – urban areas with more than five million inhabitants. With the irresistible economic attractions of urban centers, particularly in developing countries, making the influx of citizens unstoppable, many of humankind’s coming social, economic and political dramas will be played out in megacities. This book shows how geographers and Earth scientists are contributing to a better understanding of megacities. The contributors analyze the impact of socio-economic and political activities on environmental change and vice versa, and identify solutions to the worst problems. They propose ways of improving the management of megacities and achieving a greater degree of sustainability in their development. The goals, of wise use of human and natural resources, risk reduction (both social and environmental) and quality of life enhancement, are agreed upon. But, as this text proves, the means of achieving these ends are varied. Hence, chapters cover an array of topics, from health management in Indian megacities, to planning in New York, to transport solutions for the chronically traffic-choked Bangkok. Authors cover the impact of climate change on megacities, as well as less tangible issues such as socio-political fragmentation in the urban areas of Rio de Janeiro. This exploration of some of the most crucial issues that we face as a species sets out research that is of the utmost importance, with the potential to contribute substantially to global justice and peace – and thereby prosperity.

Urban Future Manifestos

Urban Future Manifestos
Author: Peter Noever
Publisher:
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2010
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

... "Calls upon leading creative thinkers to address urgent questions about the future of the contemporary city. Contributing architects, artists, designers, and urban scholars from around the globe consider the city from a variety of positions and posit their unique and inspiring visions"--Page 4 of cover.