Download or read book Concrete Cities written by Rob Imrie and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible critique of urban construction reimagines city development and life in an era of unprecedented building. Exploring the proliferation of building and construction, Imrie sets out its many degrading impacts on both people and the environment. Using examples from around the world, he illustrates how construction is motivated by economic and political ideologies rather than actual need, and calls for a more sensitive, humane and nature-focused culture of construction. This compelling book calls for radical changes to city living and environments by building less, but better.
Download or read book Concrete Cities written by Rob Imrie and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global building and construction cultures are hard-wired to constructing too much, too badly, with major social and ecological consequences. Rob Imrie calls us to build less and to build better as a pre-requisite for enhancing welfare and well-being.
Download or read book Concrete Reveries written by Mark Kingwell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the relationship between urbanism and personal identity evaluates the ways in which people are shaped by their spaces and vice versa, in an account that explores such topics as the disparities between structural interiors and exteriors, the moral obligations of citizens, and the role of a city's atmosphere in molding its residents' beliefs. 10,000 first printing.
Download or read book Concrete City written by Armelle Choplin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2023-03-29 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CONCRETE CITY “Armelle Choplin’s Concrete City weaves a novel and engaging analysis of urbanization by tracing the journeys of cement and people making urban life in West Africa. From post-independence high modernist ambitions to building the opportunities to make a living, the emerging transnational corridor along the West African coast provides a starting point for insights which will expand and inform understanding of both established and newly emerging urbanization processes in many different contexts.” —Jennifer Robinson, Professor of Geography, University College of London, UK “In this very innovative and superbly illustrated book, Armelle Choplin makes cement vibrant with affect, politics, economic interests and cultural meanings. She takes us to a fascinating journey along the West African urban corridor following the social life of concrete and showing how this material shapes contemporary urbanization and everyday life.” —Ola Söderström, Professor of Geography, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland Concrete City: Material Flows and Urbanization in West Africa delivers a theoretically informed, ethnographic exploration of the African urban world through the life of concrete. Emblematic of frenetic urban and capitalistic development, this material is pervasive, shaping contemporary urban landscapes and societies and their links to the global world. It stands and circulates at the heart of major financial investments, political forces and environmental debates. At the same time, it epitomises values of modernity and success, redefining social practices, forms of dwelling and living, and popular imaginaries. The book invites the reader to follow bags of cement from production plant to construction site, along the 1000-kilometre urban corridor that links Abidjan to Accra, Lomé, Cotonou and Lagos, combining the perspectives of cement tycoons, entrepreneurs and political stakeholders, but also of ordinary men and women who plan, build and dream of the Concrete City. With this innovative exploration of urban life through concrete, Armelle Choplin delivers a fascinating journey into and reflection on the sustainability of our urban futures.
Download or read book Concrete Jungle written by Niles Eldredge and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If they are to survive, cities need healthy chunks of the world’s ecosystems to persist; yet cities, like parasites, grow and prosper by local destruction of these very ecosystems. In this absorbing and wide-ranging book, Eldredge and Horenstein use New York City as a microcosm to explore both the positive and the negative sides of the relationship between cities, the environment, and the future of global biodiversity. They illuminate the mass of contradictions that cities present in embodying the best and the worst of human existence. The authors demonstrate that, though cities have voracious appetites for resources such as food and water, they also represent the last hope for conserving healthy remnants of the world’s ecosystems and species. With their concentration of human beings, cities bring together centers of learning, research, government, finance, and media—institutions that increasingly play active roles in solving environmental problems. Some of the topics covered in Concrete Jungle: --The geological history of the New York region, including remnant glacial features visible today --The early days of urbanization on Manhattan Island, focusing on the history of Central Park, Collect Pond, and Manhattan Square --The history of early railway lines and the development of New York’s iconic subway system --The problem of producing enough safe drinking water for an ever-expanding population --Prominent civic institutions, including universities, museums, and zoos
Download or read book The Concrete Dragon written by Thomas J. Campanella and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2012-03-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is the most rapidly urbanizing nation in the world, with an urban population that may well reach one billion within a generation. Over the past 25 years, surging economic growth has propelled a construction boom unlike anything the world has ever seen, radically transforming both city and countryside in its wake. The speed and scale of China's urban revolution challenges nearly all our expectations about architecture, urbanism and city planning. China's ambition to be a major player on the global stage is written on the skylines of every major city. This is a nation on the rise, and it is building for the record books. China is now home to some of the world's tallest skyscrapers and biggest shopping malls; the longest bridges and largest airport; the most expansive theme parks and gated communities and even the world's largest skateboard park. And by 2020 China's national network of expressways will exceed in length even the American interstate highway system. China's construction industry, employing a workforce equal to the population of California, has been erecting billions of square feet of housing and office space every year. But such extensive development has also meant demolition on a scale unprecedented in the peacetime history of the world. Nearly all of Beijing's centuries-old cityscape has been bulldozed in recent years, and redevelopment in Shanghai has displaced more families than 30 years of urban renewal in the United States. China's cities are also rapidly sprawling across the landscape, churning precious farmland into a landscape of superblock housing estates and single-family subdivisions laced with highways and big-box malls. In a mere generation, China's cities have undergone a metamorphosis that took 150 years to complete in the United States. The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World sheds light on this extraordinary chapter in world urban history. The book surveys the driving forces behind the great Chinese building boom, traces the historical precedents and global flows of ideas and information that are fusing to create a bold new Chinese cityscape, and considers the social and environmental impacts of China's urban future. The Concrete Dragon provides a critical overview of contemporary Chinese urbanization in light of both China's past as well as earlier episodes of rapid urban development elsewhere in the world--especially that of the United States, a nation that itself once set global records for the speed and scale of its urban ambitions.
Download or read book The Concrete Plateau written by Andrew Grant and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Concrete Plateau, Andrew Grant examines the ways that urbanization has extended into the Tibetan Plateau. Many people still think of Tibetans as not being urban, or that if they do live in cities, this means that they have lost something. Much of this is relates to the expectation that urbanization can only erode essential aspects of Tibetan culture. Grant pushes back against this notion through his in-depth exploration of Tibetans' experiences with urban life in the growing city of Xining, the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau. Grant shows how Tibetans' actions to sustain their community challenge China's civilizing machine: a product of state-led urbanization that seeks to marginalize ethnic and indigenous groups. In their homes, neighborhoods, and businesses, Tibetans' assertion of cultural identity and modification of the built environment has prevented their assimilation into China's national urban project. The Concrete Plateau presents insights into the politics of urban development not only in Tibet and China, but to contexts of urban diversity all around world. Its findings are important for studies of urban development in the Global South where in-migrating ethnic and indigenous groups are negotiating top-down urban projects. Grant's book offers a profound rethinking of urbanization, rurality, culture, and the politics of place.
Download or read book Concrete and Clay written by Matthew Gandy and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-29 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary account of the environmental history and changing landscape of New York City. In this innovative account of the urbanization of nature in New York City, Matthew Gandy explores how the raw materials of nature have been reworked to produce a "metropolitan nature" distinct from the forms of nature experienced by early settlers. The book traces five broad developments: the expansion and redefinition of public space, the construction of landscaped highways, the creation of a modern water supply system, the radical environmental politics of the barrio in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the contemporary politics of the environmental justice movement. Drawing on political economy, environmental studies, social theory, cultural theory, and architecture, Gandy shows how New York's environmental history is bound up not only with the upstate landscapes that stretch beyond the city's political boundaries but also with more distant places that reflect the nation's colonial and imperial legacies. Using the shifting meaning of nature under urbanization as a framework, he looks at how modern nature has been produced through interrelated transformations ranging from new water technologies to changing fashions in landscape design. Throughout, he considers the economic and ideological forces that underlie phenomena as diverse as the location of parks and the social stigma of dirty neighborhoods.
Download or read book Concrete Planet written by Robert Courland and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concrete: We use it for our buildings, bridges, dams, and roads. We walk on it, drive on it, and many of us live and work within its walls. But very few of us know what it is. We take for granted this ubiquitous substance, which both literally and figuratively comprises much of modern civilization's constructed environment; yet the story of its creation and development features a cast of fascinating characters and remarkable historical episodes. Featuring a new epilogue on the Surfside condominium collapse and the current state of infrastructure in America, this book delves into this history, opening readers' eyes at every turn. In a lively narrative peppered with intriguing details, author Robert Courland describes how some of the most famous personalities of history became involved in the development and use of concrete-including King Herod the Great of Judea, the Roman emperor Hadrian, Thomas Edison (who once owned the largest concrete cement plant in the world), and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Courland points to recent archaeological evidence suggesting that the discovery of concrete directly led to the Neolithic Revolution and the rise of the earliest civilizations. Much later, the Romans reached extraordinarily high standards for concrete production, showcasing their achievement in iconic buildings like the Coliseum and the Pantheon. Amazingly, with the fall of the Roman Empire, the secrets of concrete manufacturing were lost for over a millennium. The author explains that when concrete was rediscovered in the late eighteenth century it was initially viewed as an interesting novelty or, at best, a specialized building material suitable only for a narrow range of applications. It was only toward the end of the nineteenth century that the use of concrete exploded. During this rapid expansion, industry lobbyists tried to disguise the fact that modern concrete had certain defects and critical shortcomings. It is now recognized that modern concrete, unlike its Roman predecessor, gradually disintegrates with age. Compounding this problem is another distressing fact: the manufacture of concrete cement is a major contributor to global warming. Concrete Planet is filled with incredible stories, fascinating characters, surprising facts, and an array of intriguing insights into the building material that forms the basis of the infrastructure on which we depend.
Download or read book Engineering Geology for Tomorrow s Cities written by International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment. International Congress and published by Geological Society of London. This book was released on 2009 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summing up knowledge and understanding of engineering geology as is applies to the urban environment at the start of the 21st century, this volume demonstrates that: working standards are becoming internationalised; risk assessment is driving decision-making; geo-environmental change is becoming better understood; greater use of underground space is being made; and IT advances are improving subsurface visualization. --
Download or read book A World More Concrete written by N.D.B. Connolly and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-08-25 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people characterize urban renewal projects and the power of eminent domain as two of the most widely despised and often racist tools for reshaping American cities in the postwar period. In A World More Concrete, N. D. B. Connolly uses the history of South Florida to unearth an older and far more complex story. Connolly captures nearly eighty years of political and land transactions to reveal how real estate and redevelopment created and preserved metropolitan growth and racial peace under white supremacy. Using a materialist approach, he offers a long view of capitalism and the color line, following much of the money that made land taking and Jim Crow segregation profitable and preferred approaches to governing cities throughout the twentieth century. A World More Concrete argues that black and white landlords, entrepreneurs, and even liberal community leaders used tenements and repeated land dispossession to take advantage of the poor and generate remarkable wealth. Through a political culture built on real estate, South Florida’s landlords and homeowners advanced property rights and white property rights, especially, at the expense of more inclusive visions of equality. For black people and many of their white allies, uses of eminent domain helped to harden class and color lines. Yet, for many reformers, confiscating certain kinds of real estate through eminent domain also promised to help improve housing conditions, to undermine the neighborhood influence of powerful slumlords, and to open new opportunities for suburban life for black Floridians. Concerned more with winners and losers than with heroes and villains, A World More Concrete offers a sober assessment of money and power in Jim Crow America. It shows how negotiations between powerful real estate interests on both sides of the color line gave racial segregation a remarkable capacity to evolve, revealing property owners’ power to reshape American cities in ways that can still be seen and felt today.
Download or read book General Statistics of Cities written by and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Information Circular written by and published by . This book was released on 1930 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eastern Blocks written by Zupagrafika and published by Brutalist Architecture. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sleeping districts? of Moscow, Plattenbauten of East Berlin, modernist estates of Warsaw, Kyiv's Brezhnevki: although these are home to the vast majority of city dwellers, post-war suburbs of central and eastern Europe have been invisible for decades.00'Eastern Blocks' by Zupagrafika is a photographic journey through the cityscapes the former Eastern Bloc, inviting readers to explore the districts and peripheries that became a playground for mass housing development after WW2, including objects like Soviet?flying saucers?, houses?on chicken legs? or hammer-shaped tower blocks.00Showcasing modernist and brutalist architecture scattered around the cities of Moscow, (East) Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest, Kyiv and Saint Petersburg, the book contains over 100 photographs taken by Zupagrafika throughout the last decade as a reference archive for their illustrated kits and books, with special contributions by local photographers. Divided into 6 chapters, 'Eastern Blocks' includes a foreword by writer and journalist Christopher Beanland, orientative maps, index of architects and informative texts on the featured cities and constructions.
Download or read book Innovations in Smart Cities Applications Edition 2 written by Mohamed Ben Ahmed and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-06 with total page 1239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights cutting-edge research presented at the third installment of the International Conference on Smart City Applications (SCA2018), held in Tétouan, Morocco on October 10–11, 2018. It presents original research results, new ideas, and practical lessons learned that touch on all aspects of smart city applications. The respective papers share new and highly original results by leading experts on IoT, Big Data, and Cloud technologies, and address a broad range of key challenges in smart cities, including Smart Education and Intelligent Learning Systems, Smart Healthcare, Smart Building and Home Automation, Smart Environment and Smart Agriculture, Smart Economy and Digital Business, and Information Technologies and Computer Science, among others. In addition, various novel proposals regarding smart cities are discussed. Gathering peer-reviewed chapters written by prominent researchers from around the globe, the book offers an invaluable instructional and research tool for courses on computer and urban sciences; students and practitioners in computer science, information science, technology studies and urban management studies will find it particularly useful. Further, the book is an excellent reference guide for professionals and researchers working in mobility, education, governance, energy, the environment and computer sciences.
Download or read book Cement and Engineering News written by and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
