The Death of Urbanism

The Death of Urbanism
Author: Marcus White
Publisher: AADR – Art Architecture Design Research
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2020-02-17
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 3887788117

Koolhaas pronounced urbanism dead in 1995. Since then, urban design has struggled to come to terms with this and other losses including environmental stability, af- fordable housing, design control, and urban amenity. This book explores urban design paradigms transitioning through a misappropriation of Kübler-Ross' "five stages of grief" – from pro-sprawl 'denial', NIMBY 'anger', revisionist NewUrban, 'bargaining', 'depressed' starchitects, through to an optimistic manifesto of 'acceptance'.

The Death of Urbanism

The Death of Urbanism
Author: Marcus White
Publisher: AADR – Art Architecture Design Research
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2020-02-17
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 3887789113

Koolhaas pronounced urbanism dead in 1995. Since then, urban design has struggled to come to terms with this and other losses including environmental stability, af- fordable housing, design control, and urban amenity. This book explores urban design paradigms transitioning through a misappropriation of Kübler-Ross' "five stages of grief" – from pro-sprawl 'denial', NIMBY 'anger', revisionist NewUrban, 'bargaining', 'depressed' starchitects, through to an optimistic manifesto of 'acceptance'.

American Urbanist

American Urbanist
Author: Richard K. Rein
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2022-01-13
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1642831700

"William H. Whyte's curiosity compelled him to question the status quo--whether helping to make Fortune Magazine essential reading for business leaders, warning of "groupthink" in his bestseller The Organization Man, or standing up for Jane Jacobs as she advocated for the vitality of city life and public space. This compelling biography sheds light on Whyte's bold way of thinking, ripe for rediscovery at a time when we are reshaping our communities into places of opportunity and empowerment for all citizens" -- Backcover.

Death and Life of Nature in Asian Cities

Death and Life of Nature in Asian Cities
Author: Anne Rademacher
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-09-10
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9888528688

Death and Life of Nature in Asian Cities explores the encounter between two processes that are unfolding in diverse patterns across Asia—the rapid urbanization of Asia across big cities, smaller towns, and the newest urban concentrations; and the contentious debates and novel schemes by which nature is figured and emplaced in cities and their conurbations. Contemporary Asian cities displace nature by causing its death and withering, but also embrace it through acts of renewal and the pursuit of sustainability. Contributors in this volume gather case studies from across Asia to address projects of urban greening and reimagining nature in urban life. The book illustrates how the intersection of urban growth and urban nature is a place rich with fresh ideas about urban planning, governance, and social life. This book illuminates a continuing process of discovery and regeneration through which urban natures may well be moving from taken-for-granted infrastructures to more consciously experienced sites of interplay between non-human life and materials, and daily human life experiences. Debates and efforts to recover nature in the city provoke moral and ethical evaluations of the human ecology of city life, and direct ecologies of urbanism into new avenues like aesthetics, care, perception, and stewardship. “This fascinating collection of essays brings together a series of cutting-edge insights into Asian cities caught in the maelstrom of global environmental change. A particular strength of this book is its commitment to forms of interdisciplinary dialogue and conceptual engagement that unsettle existing geographies of knowledge.” —Matthew Gandy, University of Cambridge; author of Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space “This impressive collection on urban ecologies moves beyond the anthropocentric city to expand our understanding of cities as multispecies spaces of active collaboration, decay, and regeneration, offering new possibilities for the flourishing of urban life—both human and non-human—and the design of more just and sustainable cities for all.” —Christina Schwenkel, University of California, Riverside; author of Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam

Instant City

Instant City
Author: Steve Inskeep
Publisher: Penguin Books
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2012-09-25
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0143122169

"Morning Edition" cohost Inskeep presents a riveting account of a single harrowing day in December 2009 that sheds light on the constant tensions in Karachi, Pakistan--when a bomb blast ripped through a religious procession.

Epidemic Urbanism

Epidemic Urbanism
Author: Mohammad Gharipour
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2021-12-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9781789384673

Thirty-six interdisciplinary essays analyze the mutual relationship between historical epidemics and the built environment. Epidemic illnesses--not only a product of biology, but also social and cultural phenomena--are as old as cities themselves. The outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 brought the effects of epidemic illness on urban life into sharp focus, exposing the vulnerabilities of the societies it ravages as much as the bodies it infects. How might insights from the outbreak and responses to previous urban epidemics inform our understanding of the current world? With these questions in mind, Epidemic Urbanism gathers scholarship from a range of disciplines--including history, public health, sociology, anthropology, and medicine--to present historical case studies from across the globe, each demonstrating how cities are not just the primary place of exposure and quarantine, but also the site and instrument of intervention. They also demonstrate how epidemic illnesses, and responses to them, exploit and amplify social inequality in the communities they touch. Illustrated with more than 150 historical images, the essays illuminate the profound, complex ways epidemics have shaped the world around us and convey this information in a way that meaningfully engages a public readership.

Dead End

Dead End
Author: Benjamin Ross
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199360146

A witty, readable, and highly original tour through the history of America's suburbs and cities to uncover the human impulses that keep sprawl spreading

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities
Author: Greg Woolf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2020-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190618566

The dramatic story of the rise and collapse of Europe's first great urban experiment The growth of cities around the world in the last two centuries is the greatest episode in our urban history, but it is not the first. Three thousand years ago most of the Mediterranean basin was a world of villages; a world without money or writing, without temples for the gods or palaces for the mighty. Over the centuries that followed, however, cities appeared in many places around the Inland Sea, built by Greeks and Romans, and also by Etruscans and Phoenicians, Tartessians and Lycians, and many others. Most were tiny by modern standards, but they were the building blocks of all the states and empires of antiquity. The greatest--Athens and Corinth, Syracuse and Marseilles, Alexandria and Ephesus, Persepolis and Carthage, Rome and Byzantium--became the powerhouses of successive ancient societies, not just political centers but also the places where ancient art and literatures were created and accumulated. And then, half way through the first millennium, most withered away, leaving behind ruins that have fascinated so many who came after. Based on the most recent historical and archaeological evidence, The Life and Death of Ancient Cities provides a sweeping narrative of one of the world's first great urban experiments, from Bronze Age origins to the demise of cities in late antiquity. Greg Woolf chronicles the history of the ancient Mediterranean city, against the background of wider patterns of human evolution, and of the unforgiving environment in which they were built. Richly illustrated, the book vividly brings to life the abandoned remains of our ancient urban ancestors and serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of even the mightiest of cities.

Community as Urban Practice

Community as Urban Practice
Author: Talja Blokland
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2017-05-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1509504850

Community is a central idea in urban studies but remains conceptually vague and empirically difficult to work with. Building on existing theories of community, Talja Blokland offers an important contribution to defining and understanding this key theme. Blokland argues that there has been too much focus on community as a stable construct, formed by durable relationships with kin, friends, social groups or neighbours. She draws attention to the non-durable, fluid encounters that constitute community, theorizing communities as shared urban practices in a globalizing world. The book proposes two core ways of thinking about community: the dimension of familiarity, defined by our ability to construct identities, and the dimension of access, defined by our freedom to enter and leave urban spaces. These dimensions form various urban configurations which enable us to experience and practise community in diverse ways. As this book maintains, community is after all an urban practice, not a fixed state of affairs.