Download or read book The City Shaped written by Spiro Kostof and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is about the universal phenomenon of citymaking seen in a historical perspective - how and why cities took the shape they did. It focuses on a number of themes - organic patterns, the grid, the city as a diagram, the grand manner, and the skyline - and moves through time and place to interpret the hidden order inscribed in urban patterns.
Download or read book The City Assembled written by Spiro Kostof and published by Bulfinch Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving from the historical and cultural overviews of the city, Kostof descends into the streets, sidewalks, squares, markets, and waterfronts and presents a detailed urban anatomy. The book is organized thematically around the structural phenomena of cities, the city edge, the street, public space, the marketplace, and the realities of cultural and economic segregation.
Download or read book The Image of the City written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1964-06-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book History of Architecture written by Louisa Caroline Tuthill and published by . This book was released on 1848 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Urbanist written by Richard K. Rein and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "William H. Whyte's curiosity compelled him to question the status quo--whether helping to make Fortune Magazine essential reading for business leaders, warning of "groupthink" in his bestseller The Organization Man, or standing up for Jane Jacobs as she advocated for the vitality of city life and public space. This compelling biography sheds light on Whyte's bold way of thinking, ripe for rediscovery at a time when we are reshaping our communities into places of opportunity and empowerment for all citizens" -- Backcover.
Download or read book Cities That Shaped the Ancient World written by John Julius Norwich and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating and evocatively illustrated tour of forty of the greatest cities that shaped the ancient world and its civilizations, from China and Mesoamerica to Europe and Ethiopia Today we take living in cities, with all their attractions and annoyances, for granted. But when did humans first come together to live in large groups, creating an urban landscape? What were these places like to inhabit? More than simply a history of ancient cities, this volume also reveals the art and architecture created by our ancestors, and provides a fascinating exploration of the origins of urbanism, politics, culture, and human interaction. Arranged geographically into five sections, Cities That Shaped the Ancient World takes a global view, beginning in the Near East with the earliest cities such as Ur and Babylon, Troy and Jerusalem. In Africa, the great cities of Ancient Egypt arose, such as Thebes and Amarna. Glorious European metropolises, including Athens and Rome, ringed the Mediterranean, but also stretched to Trier on the turbulent frontier of the Roman Empire. Asia had bustling commercial centers such as Mohenjodaro and Xianyang, while in the Americas the Mesoamerican and Peruvian cultures stamped their presence on the landscape, creating massive structures and extensive urban settlements in the deep jungles and high mountain ranges, including Caral and Teotihuacan. A team of expert historians and archaeologists with firsthand knowledge and deep appreciation of each site gives voices to these silent ruins, bringing them to life as the bustling state-of-the-art metropolises they once were.
Download or read book The Heart of the City written by Alexander Garvin and published by . This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book City Life written by Witold Rybczynski and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In City Life, Witold Rybczynski, bestselling author of Now I Sit Me Down, looks at what we want from cities, how they have evolved, and what accounts for their unique identities. In this vivid description of everything from the early colonial settlements to the advent of the skyscraper to the changes wrought by the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and telecommuting, Rybczynski reveals how our urban spaces have been shaped by the landscapes and lifestyles of the New World.
Download or read book Streets written by Zeynep Çelik and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of twenty-one essays, written by colleagues and former students of the architectural historian Spiro Kostof (1936-1991), presents case studies on Kostof's model of urban forms and fabrics. The essays are remarkably diverse: the range includes pre-Columbian Inca settlements, fourteenth-century Cairo, nineteenth-century New Orleans, and twentieth-century Tokyo. Focusing on individual streets around the world and from different historical periods, the collection is an inviting overview of the street as an urban institution. The theme of the volume is that the street presents itself as the basic structuring device of a city's form and also as the locus of its civilization. Each essay is a detailed investigation of a single urban street with unique historical conditions. The authors' shared concern regarding anthropological, political, and technical aspects of street making coalesce into a critical discourse on urban space. A fitting tribute to Spiro Kostof, this collection will be greatly admired by scholars and general readers alike.
Download or read book The City in Time written by Pamela N. Corey and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2021-12-20 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The City in Time, Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists’ engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism. The City in Time traces the process through which collective memory and aspiration are mapped onto landscape and built space to shed light on how these vibrant Southeast Asian cities shape artistic practices as the art simultaneously consolidates the city as image and imaginary. Featuring a dynamic array of creative productions that include staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds.
Download or read book Order without Design written by Alain Bertaud and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Luther s Rome Rome s Luther written by Carl P. E. Springer and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reconsiders the question of Martin Luther's relationship with Rome in all its sixteenth-century manifestations: the early-modern city he visited as a young man, the ancient republic and empire whose language and literature he loved, the Holy Roman Empire of which he was a subject, and the sacred seat of the papacy. It will appeal to scholars as well as lay readers, especially those interested in Rome, the reception of the classics in the Reformation, Luther studies, and early-modern history. Springer's methodology is primarily literary-critical, and he analyzes a variety of texts--prose and poetry--throughout the book. Some of these speak for themselves, while Springer examines others more closely to tease out their possible meanings. The author also situates relevant texts within their appropriate contexts, as the topics in the book are interdisciplinary. While many of Luther's references to Rome are negative, especially in his later writings, Springer argues that his attitude to the city in general was more complicated than has often been supposed. If Rome had not once been so dear to Luther, it is unlikely that his later animosity would have been so intense. Springer shows that Luther continued to be deeply fascinated by Rome until the end of his life and contends that what is often thought of as his pure hatred of Rome is better analyzed as a kind of love-hate relationship with the venerable city.
Download or read book What Makes a Great City written by Alexander Garvin and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2016-09-08 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Architect written by Spiro Kostof and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Architect traces the role of the profession across the centuries and in different cultures, showing the architect both as designer and as mediator between the client and the builder.
Download or read book Technology and the City written by Michael Nagenborg and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-25 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions in this volume map out how technologies are used and designed to plan, maintain, govern, demolish, and destroy the city. The chapters demonstrate how urban technologies shape, and are shaped, by fundamental concepts and principles such as citizenship, publicness, democracy, and nature. The many authors herein explore how to think of technologically mediated urban space as part of the human condition. The volume will thus contribute to the much-needed discussion on technology-enabled urban futures from the perspective of the philosophy of technology. This perspective also contributes to the discussion and process of making cities ‘smart’ and just. This collection appeals to students, researchers, and professionals within the fields of philosophy of technology, urban planning, and engineering.
Download or read book Chicago by the Book written by The Caxton Club and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its rough-and-tumble image, Chicago has long been identified as a city where books take center stage. In fact, a volume by A. J. Liebling gave the Second City its nickname. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle arose from the midwestern capital’s most infamous industry. The great Chicago Fire led to the founding of the Chicago Public Library. The city has fostered writers such as Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Chicago’s literary magazines The Little Review and Poetry introduced the world to Eliot, Hemingway, Joyce, and Pound. The city’s robust commercial printing industry supported a flourishing culture of the book. With this beautifully produced collection, Chicago’s rich literary tradition finally gets its due. Chicago by the Book profiles 101 landmark publications about Chicago from the past 170 years that have helped define the city and its image. Each title—carefully selected by the Caxton Club, a venerable Chicago bibliophilic organization—is the focus of an illustrated essay by a leading scholar, writer, or bibliophile. Arranged chronologically to show the history of both the city and its books, the essays can be read in order from Mrs. John H. Kinzie’s 1844 Narrative of the Massacre of Chicago to Sara Paretsky’s 2015 crime novel Brush Back. Or one can dip in and out, savoring reflections on the arts, sports, crime, race relations, urban planning, politics, and even Mrs. O’Leary’s legendary cow. The selections do not shy from the underside of the city, recognizing that its grit and graft have as much a place in the written imagination as soaring odes and boosterism. As Neil Harris observes in his introduction, “Even when Chicagoans celebrate their hearth and home, they do so while acknowledging deep-seated flaws.” At the same time, this collection heartily reminds us all of what makes Chicago, as Norman Mailer called it, the “great American city.” With essays from, among others, Ira Berkow, Thomas Dyja, Ann Durkin Keating, Alex Kotlowitz, Toni Preckwinkle, Frank Rich, Don Share, Carl Smith, Regina Taylor, Garry Wills, and William Julius Wilson; and featuring works by Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros, Clarence Darrow, Erik Larson, David Mamet, Studs Terkel, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many more.
Download or read book Introduction to Cities written by Xiangming Chen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The revised and updated second edition of Introduction to Cities explores why cities are such a vital part of the human experience and how they shape our everyday lives. Written in engaging and accessible terms, Introduction to Cities examines the study of cities through two central concepts: that cities are places, where people live, form communities, and establish their own identities, and that they are spaces, such as the inner city and the suburb, that offer a way to configure and shape the material world and natural environment. Introduction to Cities covers the theory of cities from an historical perspective right through to the most recent theoretical developments. The authors offer a balanced account of life in cities and explore both positive and negative themes. In addition, the text takes a global approach, with examples ranging from Berlin and Chicago to Shanghai and Mumbai. The book is extensively illustrated with updated maps, charts, tables, and photographs. This new edition also includes a new section on urban planning as well as new chapters on cities as contested spaces, exploring power and politics in an urban context. It contains; information on the status of poor and marginalized groups and the impact of neoliberal policies; material on gender and sexuality; and presents a greater range of geographies with more attention to European, Latin American, and African cities. Revised and updated, Introduction to Cities provides a complete introduction to the history, evolution, and future of our modern cities.
