Planning and Place in the City

Planning and Place in the City
Author: Marichela Sepe
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2013
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0415664756

In this volume, Marichela Sepe explores the preservation, reconstruction and enhancement of cultural heritage and place identity. She outlines the history of the concept of placemaking, and sets out the range of different methods of analysis and assessment that are used to help pin down the nature of place identity.

Toward the Healthy City

Toward the Healthy City
Author: Jason Corburn
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2009-09-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262258099

A call to reconnect the fields of urban planning and public health that offers a new decision-making framework for healthy city planning. In distressed urban neighborhoods where residential segregation concentrates poverty, liquor stores outnumber supermarkets, toxic sites are next to playgrounds, and more money is spent on prisons than schools, residents also suffer disproportionately from disease and premature death. Recognizing that city environments and the planning processes that shape them are powerful determinants of population health, urban planners today are beginning to take on the added challenge of revitalizing neglected urban neighborhoods in ways that improve health and promote greater equity. In Toward the Healthy City, Jason Corburn argues that city planning must return to its roots in public health and social justice. The first book to provide a detailed account of how city planning and public health practices can reconnect to address health disparities, Toward the Healthy City offers a new decision-making framework called “healthy city planning” that reframes traditional planning and development issues and offers a new scientific evidence base for participatory action, coalition building, and ongoing monitoring. To show healthy city planning in action, Corburn examines collaborations between government agencies and community coalitions in the San Francisco Bay area, including efforts to link environmental justice, residents' chronic illnesses, housing and real estate development projects, and planning processes with public health. Initiatives like these, Corburn points out, go well beyond recent attempts by urban planners to promote public health by changing the design of cities to encourage physical activity. Corburn argues for a broader conception of healthy urban governance that addresses the root causes of health inequities.

Shaping Places

Shaping Places
Author: David Adams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2013
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0415497965

Shaping Places explains how towns and cities can turn real estate development to their advantage to create the kind of places where people want to live, work, relax and invest. It contends that the production of quality places which enhance economic prosperity, social cohesion and environmental sustainability require a transformation of market outcomes. The core of the book explores why this is essential, and how it can be delivered, by linking a clear vision for the future with the necessary means to achieve it. Crucially, the book argues that public authorities should seek to shape, regulate and stimulate real estate development so that developers, landowners and funders see real benefit in creating better places. Key to this is seeing planners as market actors, whose potential to shape the built environment depends on their capacity to understand and transform the embedded attitudes and practices of other market actors. This requires planners to be skilled in understanding the political economy of real estate development and successful in changing its outcomes through smart intervention. Drawing on a strong theoretical framework, the book reveals how the future of places will come to be shaped through constant interaction between State and market power. Filled with international examples, essential case studies, color diagrams and photographs, this is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students taking planning, property, real estate or urban design courses as well as for social science students more widely who wish to know how the shaping of place really occurs.

Urban Spaces

Urban Spaces
Author: James Jennings
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780739137444

The control and utilization of urban spaces remains a highly contested issue. Much of the debate centers on issues of economic development versus the maintenance and support of already existing communities. As a number of urban areas are in the throes of gentrification and economic development projects, there is a dearth of information on not only the use of private power in this process, but also the response of the community members. This anthology responds to a growing concern about urban and community development, and the role of corporate power. These essays focus on key themes of land ownership and management, community resistance against corporate agendas, and public discourse over these issues. These themes are presented and developed within an interdisciplinary framework which includes information and commentary about history, contemporary politics, economic development, and ideology. Most of the chapters include case studies that provide concrete examples of contemporary developments in urban areas, and each chapter includes discussion questions and a list of key words and terms to help guide the reader.

Changing Places

Changing Places
Author: John MacDonald
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691234434

How the science of urban planning can make our cities healthier, safer, and more livable The design of every aspect of the urban landscape—from streets and sidewalks to green spaces, mass transit, and housing—fundamentally influences the health and safety of the communities who live there. It can affect people's stress levels and determine whether they walk or drive, the quality of the air they breathe, and how free they are from crime. Changing Places provides a compelling look at the new science and art of urban planning, showing how scientists, planners, and citizens can work together to reshape city life in measurably positive ways. Drawing on the latest research in city planning, economics, criminology, public health, and other fields, Changing Places demonstrates how well-designed changes to place can significantly improve the well-being of large groups of people. The book argues that there is a disconnect between those who implement place-based changes, such as planners and developers, and the urban scientists who are now able to rigorously evaluate these changes through testing and experimentation. This compelling book covers a broad range of structural interventions, such as building and housing, land and open space, transportation and street environments, and entertainment and recreation centers. Science shows we can enhance people's health and safety by changing neighborhoods block-by-block. Changing Places explains why planners and developers need to recognize the value of scientific testing, and why scientists need to embrace the indispensable know-how of planners and developers. This book reveals how these professionals, working together and with urban residents, can create place-based interventions that are simple, affordable, and scalable to entire cities.

Planning World Cities

Planning World Cities
Author: P. Newman
Publisher: Red Globe Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-06-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0230247326

The second edition of this internationally comparative text on urban planning covers both the global and regional context in which it takes place and the different combinations of issues confronting different types of cities. Thoroughly updated throughout, this edition includes a new chapter on "the world city hypothesis."

Geography Of Nowhere

Geography Of Nowhere
Author: James Howard Kunstler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1994-07-26
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0671888250

Argues that much of what surrounds Americans is depressing, ugly, and unhealthy; and traces America's evolution from a land of village commons to a man-made landscape that ignores nature and human needs.

Latino City

Latino City
Author: Erualdo R. Gonzalez
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2017-02-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1317590228

American cities are increasingly turning to revitalization strategies that embrace the ideas of new urbanism and the so-called creative class in an attempt to boost economic growth and prosperity to downtown areas. These efforts stir controversy over residential and commercial gentrification of working class, ethnic areas. Spanning forty years, Latino City provides an in-depth case study of the new urbanism, creative class, and transit-oriented models of planning and their implementation in Santa Ana, California, one of the United States’ most Mexican communities. It provides an intimate analysis of how revitalization plans re-imagine and alienate a place, and how community-based participation approaches address the needs and aspirations of lower-income Latino urban areas undergoing revitalization. The book provides a critical introduction to the main theoretical debates and key thinkers related to the new urbanism, transit-oriented, and creative class models of urban revitalization. It is the first book to examine contemporary models of choice for revitalization of US cities from the point of view of a Latina/o-majority central city, and thus initiates new lines of analysis and critique of models for Latino inner city neighborhood and downtown revitalization in the current period of socio-economic and cultural change. Latino City will appeal to students and scholars in urban planning, urban studies, urban history, urban policy, neighborhood and community development, central city development, urban politics, urban sociology, geography, and ethnic/Latino Studies, as well as practitioners, community organizations, and grassroots leaders immersed in these fields.

Biophilic Cities

Biophilic Cities
Author: Timothy Beatley
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2011
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1597267155

Tim Beatley has long been a leader in advocating for the "greening" of cities. But too often, he notes, urban greening efforts focus on everything except nature, emphasizing such elements as public transit, renewable energy production, and energy efficient building systems. While these are important aspects of reimagining urban living, they are not enough, says Beatley. We must remember that human beings have an innate need to connect with the natural world (the biophilia hypothesis). And any vision of a sustainable urban future must place its focus squarely on nature, on the presence, conservation, and celebration of the actual green features and natural life forms. A biophilic city is more than simply a biodiverse city, says Beatley. It is a place that learns from nature and emulates natural systems, incorporates natural forms and images into its buildings and cityscapes, and designs and plans in conjunction with nature. A biophilic city cherishes the natural features that already exist but also works to restore and repair what has been lost or degraded. In Biophilic Cities Beatley not only outlines the essential elements of a biophilic city, but provides examples and stories about cities that have successfully integrated biophilic elements--from the building to the regional level--around the world. From urban ecological networks and connected systems of urban greenspace, to green rooftops and green walls and sidewalk gardens, Beatley reviews the emerging practice of biophilic urban design and planning, and tells many compelling stories of individuals and groups working hard to transform cities from grey and lifeless to green and biodiverse.

Order without Design

Order without Design
Author: Alain Bertaud
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2024-08-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262550970

An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure. Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground—the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative—“sustainable,” “livable,” “resilient”—often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens. Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities’ development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this “urban planners’ dream” created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities’ productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.