What Makes a Great City

What Makes a Great City PDF Author: Alexander Garvin
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610917588
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
One of Planetizen's Top Planning Books for 2017 - San Francisco Chronicle's 2016 Holiday Books Gift Guide Pick What makes a great city? City planner and architect Alexander Garvin set out to answer this question by observing cities, largely in North America and Europe, with special attention to Paris, London, New York, and Vienna. For Garvin, greatness is about what people who shape cities can do to make a city great. A great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Most importantly, it is about the interplay between people and public realm, and how they have interacted throughout history to create great cities. What Makes a Great City will help readers understand that any city can be changed for the better and inspire entrepreneurs, public officials, and city residents to do it themselves.

What Makes a Great City

What Makes a Great City PDF Author: Alexander Garvin
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610917588
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of Planetizen's Top Planning Books for 2017 - San Francisco Chronicle's 2016 Holiday Books Gift Guide Pick What makes a great city? City planner and architect Alexander Garvin set out to answer this question by observing cities, largely in North America and Europe, with special attention to Paris, London, New York, and Vienna. For Garvin, greatness is about what people who shape cities can do to make a city great. A great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Most importantly, it is about the interplay between people and public realm, and how they have interacted throughout history to create great cities. What Makes a Great City will help readers understand that any city can be changed for the better and inspire entrepreneurs, public officials, and city residents to do it themselves.

The Heart of the City

The Heart of the City PDF Author: Alexander Garvin
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610919491
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles. In The Heart of the City, distinguished urban planner Alexander Garvin shares lessons on how to plan for a mix of housing, businesses, and attractions; enhance the public realm; improve mobility; and successfully manage downtown services. Garvin opens the book with diagnoses of downtowns across the United States, including the people, businesses, institutions, and public agencies implementing changes. In a review of prescriptions and treatments for any downtown, Garvin shares brief accounts—of both successes and failures—of what individuals with very different objectives have done to change their downtowns. The final chapters look at what is possible for downtowns in the future, closing with suggested national, state, and local legislation to create standard downtown business improvement districts to better manage downtowns. This book will help public officials, civic organizations, downtown business property owners, and people who care about cities learn from successful recent actions in downtowns across the country, and expand opportunities facing their downtown. Garvin provides recommendations for continuing actions to help any downtown thrive, ensuring a prosperous and thrilling future for the 21st-century American city.

Great City Parks

Great City Parks PDF Author: Alan Tate
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317612981
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Great City Parks is a celebration of some of the finest achievements of landscape architecture in the public realm. It is a comparative study of thirty significant public parks in major cities across Western Europe and North America. Collectively, they give a clear picture of why parks have been created, how they have been designed, how they are managed, and what plans are being made for them at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Based on unique research including extensive site visits and interviews with the managing organisations, this book is illustrated throughout with clear plans and photographs– with this new edition featuring full colour throughout. Tate updates his seminal 2001 work with 10 additional parks, including: The High Line in NYC, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam. All the previous city parks have also been updated and revised to reflect current usage and management. This book reflects a belief that well planned, well designed and well managed parks and park systems will continue to make major contributions to the quality of life in an increasingly urbanized world.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The Death and Life of Great American Cities PDF Author: Jane Jacobs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Central business districts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Triumph of the City

Triumph of the City PDF Author: Edward Glaeser
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143120549
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Best Book of the Year Award in 2011 “A masterpiece.” —Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics “Bursting with insights.” —The New York Times Book Review A pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or are they? In this revelatory book, Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist, declares that cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in both cultural and economic terms) places to live. He travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and cogent argument, Glaeser makes an urgent, eloquent case for the city's importance and splendor, offering inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest creation and our best hope for the future.

Cities for People

Cities for People PDF Author: Jan Gehl
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1597269840
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use—or could use—the spaces where they live and work. In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people. Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl emphasizes four human issues that he sees as essential to successful city planning. He explains how to develop cities that are Lively, Safe, Sustainable, and Healthy. Focusing on these issues leads Gehl to think of even the largest city on a very small scale. For Gehl, the urban landscape must be considered through the five human senses and experienced at the speed of walking rather than at the speed of riding in a car or bus or train. This small-scale view, he argues, is too frequently neglected in contemporary projects. In a final chapter, Gehl makes a plea for city planning on a human scale in the fast- growing cities of developing countries. A “Toolbox,” presenting key principles, overviews of methods, and keyword lists, concludes the book. The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl’s work around the globe.

Here is New York

Here is New York PDF Author: E. B. White
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590174798
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 59

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Book Description
In the summer of 1948, E.B. White sat in a New York City hotel room and, sweltering in the heat, wrote a remarkable pristine essay, Here is New York. Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, the author’s stroll around Manhattan—with the reader arm-in-arm—remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America’s foremost literary figures. Here is New York has been chosen by The New York Times as one of the ten best books ever written about the city. The New Yorker calls it “the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.”

City

City PDF Author: P.D. Smith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608197069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
For the first time in the history of the planet, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - are now living in cities. Two hundred years ago only 3 per cent of the world's population were urbanites, a figure that had remained fairly stable (give or take the occasional plague) for about 1000 years. By 2030, 60 per cent of us will be urban dwellers. City is the ultimate handbook for the archetypal city and contains main sections on 'History', 'Customs and Language', 'Districts', 'Transport', 'Money', 'Work', 'Tourist Sites', 'Shops and markets', 'Nightlife', etc., and mini-essays on anything and everything from Babel, Tenochtitlán and Ellis Island to Beijing, Mumbai and New York, and from boulevards, suburbs, shanty towns and favelas, to skylines, urban legends and the sacred. Drawing on a wide range of examples from cities across the world and throughout history, it explores the reasons why people first built cities and why urban populations are growing larger every year. City is illustrated throughout with a range of photographs, maps and other illustrations.

The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities

The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities PDF Author: Andrew Tuck
Publisher: Die Gestalten Verlag-DGV
ISBN: 9783899555035
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this joyful new book Monocle unpacks what makes a great city, whether you're looking for a new place to call home or need help fixing your own. How do we make better cities - places that work for people of all ages and backgrounds? How do we make cities that provide the obvious essentials - great transport, good places to work - as well as the softer elements that truly deliver quality of life, from urban swimming pools to rooftop clubs? Since its launch in 2007, Monocle has been passionate about making better places to live. Every year it publishes a Quality of Life Survey, which names the top 25 cities to call home. In addition, across the issues, it has interviewed the best mayors, looked at the metropolises putting pedestrians first and met the people creating the best parks, both pocket and grand. Discover how you too can have a High Line, create the most covetable housing or turn a dirty river into a summer asset. Packed with great images and intriguing reports, this is a book that takes the urbanism debate away from city hall and explains what's needed in ways that will inspire us all.

The City at Eye Level

The City at Eye Level PDF Author: Meredith Glaser
Publisher: Eburon Uitgeverij B.V.
ISBN: 9059727142
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Although rarely explored in academic literature, most inhabitants and visitors interact with an urban landscape on a day-to-day basis is on the street level. Storefronts, first floor apartments, and sidewalks are the most immediate and common experience of a city. These "plinths" are the ground floors that negotiate between inside and outside, the public and private spheres. The City at Eye Level qualitatively evaluates plinths by exploring specific examples from all over the world. Over twenty-five experts investigate the design, land use, and road and foot traffic in rigorously researched essays, case studies, and interviews. These pieces are supplemented by over two hundred beautiful color images and engage not only with issues in design, but also the concerns of urban communities. The editors have put together a comprehensive guide for anyone concerned with improving or building plinths, including planners, building owners, property and shop managers, designers, and architects.