City Making

City Making
Author: Gerald E. Frug
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2001-02-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 140082334X

American metropolitan areas today are divided into neighborhoods of privilege and poverty, often along lines of ethnicity and race. City residents traveling through these neighborhoods move from feeling at home to feeling like tourists to feeling so out of place they fear for their security. As Gerald Frug shows, this divided and inhospitable urban landscape is not simply the result of individual choices about where to live or start a business. It is the product of government policies--and, in particular, the policies embedded in legal rules. A Harvard law professor and leading expert on urban affairs, Frug presents the first-ever analysis of how legal rules shape modern cities and outlines a set of alternatives to bring down the walls that now keep city dwellers apart. Frug begins by describing how American law treats cities as subdivisions of states and shows how this arrangement has encouraged the separation of metropolitan residents into different, sometimes hostile groups. He explains in clear, accessible language the divisive impact of rules about zoning, redevelopment, land use, and the organization of such city services as education and policing. He pays special attention to the underlying role of anxiety about strangers, the widespread desire for good schools, and the pervasive fear of crime. Ultimately, Frug calls for replacing the current legal definition of cities with an alternative based on what he calls "community building"--an alternative that gives cities within the same metropolitan region incentives to forge closer links with each other. An incisive study of the legal roots of today's urban problems, City Making is also an optimistic and compelling blueprint for enabling American cities once again to embrace their historic role of helping people reach an accommodation with those who live in the same geographic area, no matter how dissimilar they are.

The Art of City Making

The Art of City Making
Author: Charles Landry
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2012-05-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1136554963

City-making is an art, not a formula. The skills required to re-enchant the city are far wider than the conventional ones like architecture, engineering and land-use planning. There is no simplistic, ten-point plan, but strong principles can help send good city-making on its way. The vision for 21st century cities must be to be the most imaginative cities for the world rather than in the world. This one change of word - from 'in' to 'for' - gives city-making an ethical foundation and value base. It helps cities become places of solidarity where the relations between the individual, the group, outsiders to the city and the planet are in better alignment. Following the widespread success of The Creative City, this new book, aided by international case studies, explains how to reassess urban potential so that cities can strengthen their identity and adapt to the changing global terms of trade and mass migration. It explores the deeper fault-lines, paradoxes and strategic dilemmas that make creating the 'good city' so difficult.

Making Mountains

Making Mountains
Author: David Stradling
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2009-11-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295989890

For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences. Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water. The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation. In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.

City-making, Space and Spirituality

City-making, Space and Spirituality
Author: Stéphan de Beer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2023-08-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000929892

This book is about the soul of the city, embodied in its spaces and people. It traces dynamics in inner city neighbourhoods of South Africa’s post-apartheid capital, Pretoria. Viewing the city through its most vulnerable people and places, it recognizes that urban space is never neutral and shaped by competing value frameworks. The first part of the book invites planners, city-makers, and ordinary urban citizens, to consider a new self-understanding, reclaiming their agency in the city-making process. Through the metaphor of "becoming like children", planning practice is deconstructed and re-imagined. A praxis-based methodology is presented, cultivating four distinct moments of entering, reading, imagining and co-constructing the city. After deconstructing urban spaces and discourses, the second part of the book explores a concrete spirituality and ethic of urban space. It argues for a shift from planning as technocracy, to planning as immersed, participatory artistry: opening up to the "genius" of space, responsive to urban cries, and joining to construct new, soul-full spaces. Local communities and interconnected movements become embodiments of urban alternatives – through resistance and reconstruction; building on local assets; animating local reclamations; and weaving nets of hope that will span the entire city. Providing a concrete methodology for city-making that is rooted in a community-based urban praxis, this book will be of interest to urban planning researchers, professional planners and designers and also grass-root community developers or activists.

City Making and Urban Governance in the Americas

City Making and Urban Governance in the Americas
Author: Clara Irazábal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351951343

Cities in both North and South America are confronting tremendous challenges in urban growth and management as they enter the new century. Curitiba in Brazil and Portland in Oregon, US are cities that have achieved recognition for exemplary urban planning programmes over the past three decades. As such, they provide particularly useful illustrations of the intense development pressures that many urban areas currently face. This book explores the dynamics of their urban governance, arguing that, in general, there has been a unique synergy derived from the combination of visionary leadership, innovative urban plans and effective citizen involvement. The book argues that, while urban design and architecture are key to the success in making cities livable and in augmenting the global reputations, such sensitive, innovative urban planning and design projects first need to be governed effectively and grounded within the specifics of their local cultures and existing built environments.

Migration, Work and Home-Making in the City

Migration, Work and Home-Making in the City
Author: Annabelle Wilkins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351267663

This book explores the relationships between home, work and migration among Vietnamese people in East London, demonstrating the diversity of home-making practices and forms of belonging in relation to the dwelling, workplace and wider city. Engaging with wider scholarship on transnationalism, urban mobilities and the geopolitical dimensions of home among migrants and diasporic communities, the author draws on ethnographic work to examine the experiences of people who migrated from Vietnam to London at different times and in diverse circumstances, including individuals who arrived as refugees in the 1970s, as well as those who have migrated for work or education in recent years. Migration, Work and Home-Making in the City thus sheds new light on the social, material and spiritual practices through which people create senses of home that connect them with their country of origin, and reveals how home-making is constrained by immigration policies, insecure housing and precarious work, thus highlighting the barriers to belonging in the city.

Edinburgh - The Making of a Capital City

Edinburgh - The Making of a Capital City
Author: Edwards Brian Edwards
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-07-29
Genre: City planning
ISBN: 1474467989

This book provides a unique and comprehensive review of the making and re-making of Edinburgh over most of the last millennium. A series of themes of wide relevance are explored and discussed in the context of their impact upon the form of the city and its success as a capital. These include:*The European influence on urban and architectural form.*The synthesis of architecture, landscape and topography.*The dialogue between conservation and innovation.*The search for social, economic and cultural sustainability.*The role of governance and public action in urban ecology.A special feature of the book is the way the Old and New Towns are discussed as a connected problem of image and politics, rather than two isolated events in the history of the city. Likewise, the relations between the city centre, the suburban edge and beyond throughout the 20th century are examined holistically, allowing the reader to gain a broader perspective both of the city of today and of the future. What emerges is a city unique - at least in the UK - in terms of the care taken over its image and sense of identity, and the political and institutional investment made in preserving this.Key Features:*Deals with the development of the city in a holistic manner.*Relates the physical evolution of the city to wide social, cultural, economic and political movements in the UK and Europe.*Uses design, conservation, sustainability and governance as major structuring themes.*Presents fresh perspectives on the making and re-making of Edinburgh over a period of nearly 1,000 years.

Making Smart Cities More Playable

Making Smart Cities More Playable
Author: Anton Nijholt
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2019-07-23
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9811397651

This book explores the ways in which the broad range of technologies that make up the smart city infrastructure can be harnessed to incorporate more playfulness into the day-to-day activities that take place within smart cities, making them not only more efficient but also more enjoyable for the people who live and work within their confines. The book addresses various topics that will be of interest to playable cities stakeholders, including the human–computer interaction and game designer communities, computer scientists researching sensor and actuator technology in public spaces, urban designers, and (hopefully) urban policymakers. This is a follow-up to another book on Playable Cities edited by Anton Nijholt and published in 2017 in the same book series, Gaming Media and Social Effects.

Creating Smart Cities

Creating Smart Cities
Author: Claudio Coletta
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351182390

In cities around the world, digital technologies are utilized to manage city services and infrastructures, to govern urban life, to solve urban issues and to drive local and regional economies. While "smart city" advocates are keen to promote the benefits of smart urbanism – increased efficiency, sustainability, resilience, competitiveness, safety and security – critics point to the negative effects, such as the production of technocratic governance, the corporatization of urban services, technological lock-ins, privacy harms and vulnerability to cyberattack. This book, through a range of international case studies, suggests social, political and practical interventions that would enable more equitable and just smart cities, reaping the benefits of smart city initiatives while minimizing some of their perils. Included are case studies from Ireland, the United States of America, Colombia, the Netherlands, Singapore, India and the United Kingdom. These chapters discuss a range of issues including political economy, citizenship, standards, testbedding, urban regeneration, ethics, surveillance, privacy and cybersecurity. This book will be of interest to urban policymakers, as well as researchers in Regional Studies and Urban Planning.

City Planning for the Public Manager

City Planning for the Public Manager
Author: Nicolas A. Valcik
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2017-09-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 135158975X

Why should public administrators care about city planning? Is city planning not a field ruled by architects and public works personnel? Much of city planning in fact requires expertise in areas other than buildings and infrastructure, and with city planning expertise, urban administrators are empowered to make more informed decisions on matters that involve budgeting, economic development, tax revenues, public relations, and ordinances and policies that will benefit the community. City Planning for the Public Manager is designed to fill a gap in the urban administration literature, offering students and practitioners hands-on, practical advice from experts with diverse city administration experience, and demonstrating where theory and practice intersect. Divided into three sections, the book provides an overview of the life cycle of a municipality and its services, explores city planning applications for planners on a strict budget, and walks the reader through a real-life planning research project, demonstrating how it was formulated, implemented, and analyzed to produce usable results. Topics explored include justifications for specific city services, internal and external benchmarking used for city planning, common technical tools (e.g., GIS), legal aspects of planning and zoning, environmental concerns, transportation, residential planning, business district planning, and infrastructure. City Planning for the Public Manager is required reading for students of urban administration and practicing city administrators interested in improving their careers and their communities.