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Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631191889
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
The work of Henri Lefebvre - the only major French intellectual of the post-war period to give extensive consideration to the city and urban life - received considerable attention among both academics and practitioners of the built environment following the publication in English of The Production of Space. This new collection brings together, for the first time in English, Lefebvre's reflections on the city and urban life written over a span of some twenty years. The selection of writings is contextualized by an introduction - itself a significant contribution to the interpretation of Henri Lefebvre's work - which places the material within the context of Lefebvre's intellectual and political life and times and raises pertinent issues as to their relevance for contemporary debates over such questions as the nature of urban reality, the production of space and modernity. Writings on Cities is of particular relevance to architects, planners, geographers, and those interested in the philosophical and political understanding of contemporary life.
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631191889
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Get Book Here
Book Description
The work of Henri Lefebvre - the only major French intellectual of the post-war period to give extensive consideration to the city and urban life - received considerable attention among both academics and practitioners of the built environment following the publication in English of The Production of Space. This new collection brings together, for the first time in English, Lefebvre's reflections on the city and urban life written over a span of some twenty years. The selection of writings is contextualized by an introduction - itself a significant contribution to the interpretation of Henri Lefebvre's work - which places the material within the context of Lefebvre's intellectual and political life and times and raises pertinent issues as to their relevance for contemporary debates over such questions as the nature of urban reality, the production of space and modernity. Writings on Cities is of particular relevance to architects, planners, geographers, and those interested in the philosophical and political understanding of contemporary life.
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816641604
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
Originally published in 1970, The Urban Revolution marked Henri Lefebvre’s first sustained critique of urban society, a work in which he pioneered the use of semiotic, structuralist, and poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing the development of the urban environment. Although it is widely considered a foundational book in contemporary thinking about the city, The Urban Revolution has never been translated into English—until now. This first English edition, deftly translated by Robert Bononno, makes available to a broad audience Lefebvre’s sophisticated insights into the urban dimensions of modern life.Lefebvre begins with the premise that the total urbanization of society is an inevitable process that demands of its critics new interpretive and perceptual approaches that recognize the urban as a complex field of inquiry. Dismissive of cold, modernist visions of the city, particularly those embodied by rationalist architects and urban planners like Le Corbusier, Lefebvre instead articulates the lived experiences of individual inhabitants of the city. In contrast to the ideology of urbanism and its reliance on commodification and bureaucratization—the capitalist logic of market and state—Lefebvre conceives of an urban utopia characterized by self-determination, individual creativity, and authentic social relationships.A brilliantly conceived and theoretically rigorous investigation into the realities and possibilities of urban space, The Urban Revolution remains an essential analysis of and guide to the nature of the city.Henri Lefebvre (d. 1991) was one of the most significant European thinkers of the twentieth century. His many books include The Production of Space (1991), Everyday Life in the Modern World (1994), Introduction to Modernity (1995), and Writings on Cities (1995).Robert Bononno is a full-time translator who lives in New York. His recent translations include The Singular Objects of Architecture by Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel (Minnesota, 2002) and Cyberculture by Pierre Lévy (Minnesota, 2001).
Author: Frederick Law Olmsted
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262650120
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
A century ago Frederick Law Olmsted recognized the need for extensive planning if American cities were to become civilized environments for man. The selections in this book demonstrate his understanding of urban spaces and how, when politically unobstructed, he was able to manipulate them. While Sutton has concentrated on Olmsted's contributions to the theory and practice of city planning, her anthology reveals a broad and comprehensive cross section of his career.Writings in the first two chapters elucidate the views and values that Olmsted brought to his work--notably his attitudes on form and function (fitness and appropriateness)-- and his criticisms of existing urban patterns. At a time when men generally took a static approach to planning, Olmsted opposed the traditional grid system, lack of organic structure, and abuse of space which dominated schemes for American cities. Instead he proposed that large spaces be set aside for public parks, connected by roadways and public transportation to the rest of the city.The books remaining chapters contain documents written in support of specific plans for five North American cities with widely varying conditions: San Francisco, Buffalo, Montreal, Chicago, and Boston. The writings range in scope from Olmsted's observations on nineteenth century California life ti his most elaborate and ambitious design of a system of parks and boulevards for Boston. Two selections describing plans for the exurban Garden Cities of Berkeley, California, and Riverside, Illinois, complete anthology.At the end of his career, Olmsted could look on 17 large public parks as well as numerous smaller works and comment: "I know that in the minds of a large body of men of influence I have raised my calling from the rank of a trade, even of a handicraft, to that of a liberal profession, an art, an art of design."
Author: Chris Butler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134045883
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 202
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Book Description
While certain aspects of Henri Lefebvre’s writings have been examined extensively within the disciplines of geography, social theory, urban planning and cultural studies, there has been no comprehensive consideration of his work within legal studies. Henri Lefebvre: Spatial Politics, Everyday Life and the Right to the City provides the first serious analysis of the relevance and importance of this significant thinker for the study of law and state power. Introducing Lefebvre to a legal audience, this book identifies the central themes that run through his work, including his unorthodox, humanist approach to Marxist theory, his sociological and methodological contributions to the study of everyday life and his theory of the production of space. These elements of Lefebvre’s thought are explored through detailed investigations of the relationships between law, legal form and processes of abstraction; the spatial dimensions of neoliberal configurations of state power; the political and aesthetic aspects of the administrative ordering of everyday life; and the ‘right to the city’ as the basis for asserting new forms of spatial citizenship. Chris Butler argues that Lefebvre’s theoretical categories suggest a way for critical legal scholars to conceptualise law and state power as continually shaped by political struggles over the inhabitance of space. This book is a vital resource for students and researchers in law, sociology, geography and politics, and all readers interested in the application of Lefebvre’s social theory to specific legal and political contexts.
Author: Alain Bertaud
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262550970
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429
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Book Description
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.
Author: Vishaan Chakrabarti
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935202172
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
In A Country of Cities, author Vishaan Chakrabarti argues that well-designed cities are the key to solving America's great national challenges: environmental degradation, unsustainable consumption, economic stagnation, rising public health costs and decreased social mobility. If we develop them wisely in the future, our cities can be the force leading us into a new era of progressive and prosperous stewardship of our nation. In compelling chapters, Chakrabarti brings us a wealth of information about cities, suburbs and exurbs, looking at how they developed across the 50 states and their roles in prosperity and globalization, sustainability and resilience, and heath and joy. Counter to what you might think, American cities today are growing faster than their suburban counterparts for the first time since the 1920s. If we can intelligently increase the density of our cities as they grow and build the transit systems, schools, parks and other infrastructure to support them, Chakrabarti shows us how both job opportunities and an improved, sustainable environment are truly within our means. In this call for an urban America, he illustrates his argument with numerous infographics illustrating provocative statistics on issues as disparate as rising childhood obesity rates, ever-lengthening automobile commutes and government subsidies that favor highways over mass transit. The book closes with an eloquent manifesto that rallies us to build "a Country of Cities," to turn a country of highways, houses and hedges into a country of trains, towers and trees. Vishaan Chakrabarti is an architect, scholar and founder of PAU. PAU designs architecture that builds the physical, cultural, and economic networks of cities, with an emphasis on beauty, function and user experience. PAU simultaneously advances strategic urbanism projects in the form of master planning, tactical project advice and advocacy.
Author: John Julius Norwich
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500773580
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
A work of history, but also about art and architecture, trade and commerce, travel and exploration, economics and politics, this is above all a book about people and how, over the millennia, they have managed to live closely together. From the origins of urbanization in Mesopotamia to the global metropolises of today, great cities have marked the development of humankind Babylon and Nineveh, Athens and Rome, Istanbul and Venice, Timbuktu and Samarkand, their very names are redolent both of history and romance. The Great Cities in History tells their story from early Uruk and Thebes to Jerusalem and Alexandria. Then the fabulous cities of the first millennium: Damascus and Baghdad in the days of the Caliphates, Teotihuacan and Maya Tikal in Central America, and Changan, capital of Tang Dynasty China. The medieval world saw the rise of powerful cities: Palermo and Paris in Europe, Benin in Africa and Angkor of the Khmer. In the early modern world, we journey to Islamic Isfahan and Agra, and Prague and Amsterdam in their heyday, before arriving at the phenomenon of the contemporary mega-city: London and New York, Tokyo and Barcelona, Los Angeles and São Paulo. A galaxy of more than fifty distinguished authors, including Jan Morris, Colin Thubron, Simon Schama, Orlando Figes, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Misha Glenny, Adam Zamoyski and A. N. Wilson, evoke the character of each place and explain the reasons for its success, seeing what each city would have been like during its golden age.
Author: Allen J Scott
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446264424
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Culture is big business. It is at the root of many urban regeneration schemes throughout the world, yet the economy of culture is under-theorized and under-developed. In this wide-ranging and penetrating volume, the economic logic and structure of the modern cultural industries is explained. The connection between cultural production and urban-industrial concentration is demonstrated and the book shows why global cities are the homelands of the modern cultural industries. This book covers many sectors of cultural economy, from craft industries such as clothing and furniture, to modern media industries such as cinema and music recording. The role of the global city as a source of creative and innovative energy is examined in detail, with particular attention paid to Paris and Los Angeles.
Author: Sue Middleton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135092281
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
During his lifetime Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) was renowned in France as a philosopher, sociologist and activist. Although he published more than 70 books, few were available in English until The Production of Space was translated in 1991. While this work - often associated with geography - has influenced educational theory’s ‘spatial turn,’ educationalists have yet to consider Lefebvre’s work more broadly. This book engages in an educational reading of the selection of Lefebvre’s work that is available in English translation. After introducing Lefebvre’s life and works, the book experiments with his concepts and methods in a series of five ‘spatial histories’ of educational theories. In addition to The Production of Space, these studies develop themes from Lefebvre’s other translated works: Rhythmanalysis, The Explosion, the three volumes of Critique of Everyday Life and a range of his writings on cities, Marxism, technology and the bureaucratic state. In the course of these inquiries, Lefebvre’s own passionate interest in education is uncovered: his critiques of bureaucratised schooling and universities, the analytic concepts he devised to study educational phenomena, and his educational methods. Throughout the book Middleton demonstrates how Lefebvre’s conceptual and methodological tools can enhance the understanding of the spatiotemporal location of educational philosophy and theory. Bridging disciplinary divides, it will be key reading for researchers and academics studying the philosophy, sociology and history of education, as well as those working in fields beyond education including geography, history, cultural studies and sociology.
Author: David Harvey
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844678822
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
Manifesto on the urban commons from the acclaimed theorist.
