Unorthodox Ways to Think the City

Unorthodox Ways to Think the City PDF Author: Teresa Stoppani
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351341103
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book argues that architecture and the city and their processes can be better understood by drawing categories from disciplines that exceed the architectural and urban cultural context. It performs an open intellectual reading that traverses architecture and architectural theory, but also art theory and history, cartography, philosophy, literature and cultural studies, to unfold a series of ‘figures’ that are ambiguously placed between the representation and the construction of space in architecture and the city. The paradigm and philosophy, the island and the city, the map and representation, the model and making and the questioning of form performed by dust, are explored beyond their definition, as processes that differently make space between architecture and the city and are proposed as unorthodox analytic techniques to decipher contemporary spatial complexity. The book analyses how these ‘figures’ have been employed at different times and in different creative disciplines, beyond architecture and in relation to changing notions of space, and traces the role that they have played in the shift towards the dynamic that has taken place in contemporary theory and design research. What emerges is the idea of an ‘architecture of the city’ that is not only physical but is largely defined by the way in which its physical spaces are regulated, lived and perceived, but also imagined and projected.

Unorthodox Ways to Think the City

Unorthodox Ways to Think the City PDF Author: Teresa Stoppani
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351341103
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book argues that architecture and the city and their processes can be better understood by drawing categories from disciplines that exceed the architectural and urban cultural context. It performs an open intellectual reading that traverses architecture and architectural theory, but also art theory and history, cartography, philosophy, literature and cultural studies, to unfold a series of ‘figures’ that are ambiguously placed between the representation and the construction of space in architecture and the city. The paradigm and philosophy, the island and the city, the map and representation, the model and making and the questioning of form performed by dust, are explored beyond their definition, as processes that differently make space between architecture and the city and are proposed as unorthodox analytic techniques to decipher contemporary spatial complexity. The book analyses how these ‘figures’ have been employed at different times and in different creative disciplines, beyond architecture and in relation to changing notions of space, and traces the role that they have played in the shift towards the dynamic that has taken place in contemporary theory and design research. What emerges is the idea of an ‘architecture of the city’ that is not only physical but is largely defined by the way in which its physical spaces are regulated, lived and perceived, but also imagined and projected.

The Image of the City

The Image of the City PDF Author: Kevin Lynch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262620017
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

How To Think About Cities

How To Think About Cities PDF Author: Deborah G. Martin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509536205
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
Cities are raucous, cacophonous, and complex. Many dimensions of life play out and conflict across cities’ intricate landscapes, be they political, cultural, economic, or social. Urban policy makers and analysts often attempt to “cut through the noise” of urban disagreement by emphasizing a dominant lens for understanding the key, central logic of the city. How To Think About Cities sees this tendency to selective vision as misleading and ultimately unjust: cities are many things at once to different people and communities. This book describes the various ways of seeing the functions and landscapes of the city as place frames, and the constant process of negotiating which place frames best explain the city as place-making. Martin and Pierce call for an explicitly hybrid perspective that shifts between many different frames for making sense of cities. This approach highlights how any given stance opens up some lines of inquiry and understanding while closing off others. Thinking of cities as sites of contested perspectives promotes a synthetic approach to urban analysis that emphasizes difference and political possibility. This mosaic view of the city will be a welcome read for those within urban studies, geography, and social sciences exploring the many faces of urban life.

A Pattern Language

A Pattern Language PDF Author: Christopher Alexander
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190050357
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 1216

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Book Description
You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.

How To Think About Cities

How To Think About Cities PDF Author: Deborah Martin
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9781509536191
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Cities are raucous, cacophonous, and complex. Many dimensions of life play out and conflict across cities' intricate landscapes, be they political, cultural, economic, or social. Urban policymakers and analysts often attempt to ""cut through the noise"" of urban disagreement by emphasizing a dominant lens for understanding the key, central logic of the city. How to Think About Cities sees this tendency to selective vision as misleading and ultimately unjust: cities are many things at once to different people and communities. This book describes the various ways of seeing the functions and landscapes of the city as place-frames, and the constant process of negotiating which place-frames best explain the city as place-making. Martin and Pierce call for an explicitly hybrid perspective that shifts between many different frames for making sense of cities. This approach highlights how any given stance opens up some lines of inquiry and understanding while closing off others. Thinking of cities as sites of contested perspectives promotes a synthetic approach to urban analysis that emphasizes difference and political possibility. This mosaic view of the city will be a welcome read for those within urban studies, geography, and social sciences exploring the many faces of urban life.

Strong Towns

Strong Towns PDF Author: Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119564816
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you’ll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles—and why it just doesn’t work. New development and high-risk investing don’t generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens’ quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the “traditional” search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.

The Divided City

The Divided City PDF Author: Alan Mallach
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610917812
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach presents a detailed picture of what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He spotlights these changes while placing them in their larger economic, social and political context. Most importantly, he explores the pervasive significance of race in American cities, and looks closely at the successes and failures of city governments, nonprofit entities, and citizens as they have tried to address the challenges of change. The Divided City concludes with strategies to foster greater equality and opportunity, firmly grounding them in the cities' economic and political realities.

Unsettling Cities

Unsettling Cities PDF Author: John Allen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134636334
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This text examines the global nature of cities - cities whose openness has shaped their dynamism and character. It explores cities as sites of movement, migration and settlement where different peoples, cultures and environments combine. Unsettling Cities explores the mix of proximity and difference that exists in the rich and diverse texture of city life. The contributors reveal the association between the changing fortunes of cities and the power and influence of global networks.

Cities

Cities PDF Author: Lawrence Halprin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"People 'think' in different ways, and I find that I think most effectively graphically and also that my thinking is influenced a great deal by my ability to get it down where I can 'look at it' and think about it further - the process of thinking with me generates more thinking - the notebooks, in other words, have been not only a way of 'recording' ideas but also of 'generating' ideas... they are ways of running out what I call series of alternative SCORES." These selections from Halprin's personal and professional notebooks take us as far as it may be possible to go within the imagination of another person, especially one whose highly energized originality is moving in several directions simultaneously. Halprin's creativity, as his notebooks attest, springs from his synthesizing instincts: the joining of elements of landscape and cityscape, melding of individual architectural entities with community living patterns. The whole is enlivened by Halprin's awareness in such matters as group and ecological dynamics, participatory art, the choreography and scoring of human movement. The notebooks reveal an embracing of progressively more inclusive environments over the years: "In the early notebooks there is emphasis on gardens and on landscape... the later notebooks reflect my increasing interest and commitment to the total environment as an integrating matrix for 'community.'" The reader will find here both an abiding interest in the natural environment and an evolving interest in the man-made environment. There are numerous drawings of mountains, rock formations, and waterfalls in California and elsewhere and an increasing concern with cities and how than can best serve man and nature. Halprin records his reactions to a worldwide array of cities - Paris, Venice, Los Angeles, Jerusalem - and displays drawings of their grand aspects and sketches of their intimate features. Other entries reflect the inception and growth process of ideas later to be fully realized in book form (Cities: Freeways; New York New York; The RSVP Cycles) or in built form (the Portland fountains). Still others relate to Halprin's recent involvement with community workshops, group sessions, and participatory planning. In short, the full range of Halprin's imagination and professional activities is displayed here: "These notebooks have been - for me - a process ... a way of exploring ideas and of 'scoring' the future... they are filled with the trying-out-of-things... of alternative scores which have been either discarded or recycled into actuality or put aside for other times... they are full of letters either sent or not sent, articles published or never submitted for publication, speeches made or only imagined... an assemblage." The material in this book represents about one-twelfth of the original notebooks and was selected by an associate, Jim Burns, on the grounds that someone close to Halprin's work but at one remove from his total personal involvement could best present a cross section equally accenting past interests and current concerns. The notebook is entirely written in Halprin's very legible hand." --

End of the Road

End of the Road PDF Author: William Riggs
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529225159
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This book offers a unique look at streets as locations that can evolve to support the economic, social, cultural and natural aspects of cities. It focuses on how the power of streets can be harnessed to shape more dynamic spaces for walking, biking and living and stimulate urban vitality and community regeneration.