Download or read book Urban Design Futures written by Malcolm Moor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade has seen the rise of urban design which has taken a central position in the new agendas for urban regeneration and renaissance. Urban design has moved from marginality to mainstream. The principles espoused by urban designers over the past thirty years are now accepted as key to a better urban environment and as we move towards greater sustainability, different ideas are emerging that are challenging some of the accepted urban design norms; urban design is at a watershed. Urban Design Futures presents essays from an international cast of authors to review progress and explore emerging ideas: should urban design reflect the future rather than recreate the past? What are the new driving forces that will shape urban living and hence urban design in the future? This book explores new concepts and points the way towards a series of urban design paradigms for the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Urban Futures written by Timothy J. Dixon and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2021-05-19 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Urban Affairs Association Best Book Award. City visions represent shared, and often desirable, expectations about our urban futures. This book explores the history and evolution of city visions, placing them in the wider context of art, culture, science, foresight and urban theory. It highlights and critically reviews examples of city visions from around the world, contrasting their development and outlining the key benefits and challenges in planning such visions. The authors show how important it is to think about the future of cities in objective and strategic ways, engaging with a range of stakeholders – something more important than ever as we look to visions of a sustainable future beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

Download or read book The Ideal City written by Robert Klanten and published by Gestalten. This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Urban life is humankind’s biggest experiment to date, our cities are constantly evolving and adapting to climate and economy. The cities we have today are not necessarily the ones we need, but big and small innovation is rethinking visions of urbanization. Together with pioneering research and design lab SPACE10, we present future-orientated design which enhances quality of life and makes our urban spaces more vibrant. As technology and urban life edge ever closer, The Ideal City explores the ambitious actions and initiatives being brought to life across the globe to meet tomorrow’s demand in clever, forwarding-thinking ways. From pedestrian infrastructure to housing, the book uncovers what is being discussed at the forefront of urbanism through expert essays and profiles."--

Download or read book Designing the Urban Future written by Scientific American Editors and published by Scientific American. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We expect a lot from our technology. More and more products are created not only to perform multiple complex functions, but also to react to stimuli, patterns and information in a way that solves problems. Cars are being designed with systems that can detect a collision and automatically apply the brakes. Nest's thermostat learns your schedule and programs itself. Our phones are smart. Our TVs are smart. Since upping the ante is kind of "our thing" as a species, smart cities were the next logical step in trying to create a better, brighter, more sustainable and economically sound future. In this eBook, Designing the Urban Future: Smart Cities, we take a good look this relatively new concept, starting with Section 1, "Cities of the Future," which tackles what makes a city smart. In broad terms, smart cities encourage sustainable economic development and promote a high quality of life, and several stories elaborate on the trend toward urbanization and the qualities needed for a city to survive and thrive. Two articles by David Biello examine issues of sustainability in both new and existing cities. In "Street Talk," Michael Easter and Gary Stix ask urban leaders to name the top innovation would make any city more livable. Section 2, "Drivers: Innovation and Creativity," delves into how cities can and do make the most use of their best resource: human capital. Carlo Ratti and Anthony Townsend argue that people and their creativity will drive development in "The Social Nexus." Section 3 looks at readying cities for climate change, including a piece entitled "Chicago Goes Green" which examines Chicago's forward-thinking plan to eliminate a significant amount of its greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. In the same vein, the Section 4 covers "efficient" buildings, and opens with two pieces that discuss the pros and cons of LEED certification, respectively. In "Castles in the Air," Mark Lamster analyzes the green rebirth of the skyscraper and why building of these behemoths has increased in the post-9/11 world. Subsequent sections break down other characteristics of smart cities: making power more renewable, transportation more sustainable, and water cleaner. The last section tackles urban public health, and one piece details the use of a program called EpiSims to answer the question: What if smallpox struck Portland, Oregon? In short, while the definition of "smart city" might still be murky, the purpose is clear. If we want to address ongoing issues of climate change and water shortages; if we want to create more livable cities for all classes of people; if we want to encourage sustainable economic and social development; then making cities smarter IS the smartest thing we can do.

Download or read book Designing Urban Transformation written by Aseem Inam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While designers possess the creative capabilities of shaping cities, their often-singular obsession with form and aesthetics actually reduces their effectiveness as they are at the mercy of more powerful generators of urban form. In response to this paradox, Designing Urban Transformation addresses the incredible potential of urban practice to radically change cities for the better. The book focuses on a powerful question, "What can urbanism be?" by arguing that the most significant transformations occur by fundamentally rethinking concepts, practices, and outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, the book proposes three conceptual shifts for transformative urban practice: (a) beyond material objects: city as flux, (b) beyond intentions: consequences of design, and (c) beyond practice: urbanism as creative political act. Pragmatism encourages us to consider how we can make deeper and more systemic changes and how urbanism itself can be a design strategy for such transformations. To illuminate how these conceptual shifts operate in vastly different contexts through analysis of transformative urban initiatives and projects in Belo Horizonte, Boston, Cairo, Karachi, Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Paris. The book is a rare integration of theory and practice that proposes essential ways of rethinking city-design-and-building processes, while drawing critical lessons from actual examples of such processes.

Download or read book Urban Futures written by Mark Burry and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the rapid evolution of concepts such as smart cities, who are the architects riding the wave of new possibilities for urban design? How do contemporary agencies find pathways to understand the challenges and opportunities presented by evolving urban technology, and how does architecture engage with the expanding pool of associated disciplines? How should schools of architecture and urban design engage with radical digitalised urbanism? This issue of AD claims that this is contested territory. The two-dimensionality of planners’ urban construct is as limited as engineers’ predilection to zero-in and solve problems. Urban Futures contends that society needs a much broader professional brush than has been applied in the past: interdisciplinary urban design professionals who can reach across the philosophy and mundanity of urban existence with a creative eye. The issue identifies a selection of internally resourceful visionaries who combine sociology, geography, logistics and systems theory with the practical realities and challenges of mobility, sustainable materials, food, water and energy supply, and waste disposal. Crucially, they seek to ensure better urban futures, and a civil and convivial urban experience for all city dwellers. Contributors: Refik Anadol, Philip Belesky, Shajay Bhooshan, Jane Burry and Marcus White, Thomas Daniell, Vicente Guallart, Shan He, Wanyu He, Dan Hill, Justyna Karakiewicz, Tom Kvan, Areti Markopoulou, Ed Parham, Carlo Ratti, Ferran Sagarra, and Bige Tunçer. Featured architects: Arup Digital Studio, Guallart Architects, Space10, Space Syntax, UNStudio, and XKool Technology.

Download or read book Designing the Megaregion written by Jonathan Barnett and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the US population grows—potentially adding more than 110 million people by 2050—cities and their suburbs will continue expanding, eventually meeting the suburbs of neighboring cities and forming continuous urban megaregions. There are now at least a dozen megaregions in the US, such as the one extending from Richmond, Virginia, to Portland, Maine, and the megaregion that runs from Santa Barbara through Los Angeles and San Diego, down to the Mexican border. In Designing the Megaregion, planning and urban design expert Jonathan Barnett takes a fresh look at designing megaregions. Barnett argues that planning megaregions requires ecological literacy and a renewed commitment to social equity in order to address the increasing pressure this growth puts on natural, built, and human resources. If current trends continue, new construction in megaregions will put additional stress on natural resources, make highway gridlock and airline delays much worse, and cause each region to become more separate and unequal. Barnett offers an incremental approach to designing at the megaregional scale that will help prepare for future economic and population growth. Designing the Megaregion explains how we can, and should, redesign megaregional growth using mostly private investment, without having to wait for large-scale, government initiatives and trying to create whole new governmental structures. Barnett explains practical initiatives for adapting development in response to a changing climate, improving transportation systems, and redirecting the forces that make megaregions very unequal places. There is an urgent need to begin designing megaregions, and Barnett offers a hopeful way forward using systems that are already in place.

Download or read book Designing Sustainable Urban Futures Concepts and Practices from Different Countries written by Albiez, Marius and published by KIT Scientific Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Resilient Urban Futures written by Zoé A. Hamstead and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change. The editors and authors show why cities must wage simultaneous battles to curb global climate change trends while adapting and transforming to address local climate impacts. This book addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups. Although planning processes consider visions for the future, the editors highlight a more ambitious long-term positive visioning approach that accounts for unpredictability, system dynamics and equity in decision-making. This volume brings the science of urban transformation together with practices of professionals who govern and manage our social, ecological and technological systems to design processes by which cities may achieve resilient urban futures in the face of climate change.

Download or read book Sustainable Nation written by Douglas Farr and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PROSE Award Finalist 2019 Association of American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence As a follow up to his widely acclaimed Sustainable Urbanism, this new book from author Douglas Farr embraces the idea that the humanitarian, population, and climate crises are three facets of one interrelated human existential challenge, one with impossibly short deadlines. The vision of Sustainable Nation is to accelerate the pace of progress of human civilization to create an equitable and sustainable world. The core strategy of Sustainable Nation is the perfection of the design and governance of all neighborhoods to make them unique exemplars of community and sustainability. The tools to achieve this vision are more than 70 patterns for rebellious change written by industry leaders of thought and practice. Each pattern represents an aspirational, future-oriented ideal for a key aspect of a neighborhood. At once an urgent call to action and a guidebook for change, Sustainable Nation is an essential resource for urban designers, planners, and architects.

Download or read book The City of Tomorrow written by Carlo Ratti and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since cities emerged ten thousand years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear—cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their very essence. In this book, a renowned architect and urban planner who studies the intersection of cities and technology argues that we are in such a moment. The authors explain some of the forces behind urban change and offer new visions of the many possibilities for tomorrow’s city. Pervasive digital systems that layer our cities are transforming urban life. The authors provide a front-row seat to this change. Their work at the MIT Senseable City Laboratory allows experimentation and implementation of a variety of urban initiatives and concepts, from assistive condition-monitoring bicycles to trash with embedded tracking sensors, from mobility to energy, from participation to production. They call for a new approach to envisioning cities: futurecraft, a symbiotic development of urban ideas by designers and the public. With such participation, we can collectively imagine, examine, choose, and shape the most desirable future of our cities.

Download or read book Co creating Sustainable Urban Futures written by Niki Frantzeskaki and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a unique book that provides rich knowledge on how to understand and actively contribute to urban sustainability transitions. The book combines theoretical frameworks and tools with practical experiences on transition management as a framework that supports urban planning and governance towards sustainability. The book offers the opportunity to become actively engaged in working towards sustainable futures of cities. Readers of this book will be equipped to understand the complexity of urban sustainability transitions and diagnose persistent unsustainability problems in cities. Urban planners and professionals will build competences for designing transition management processes in cities and engaging with multidisciplinary knowledge in solution-seeking processes. The heart of the book marks the variety of very different local case studies across the world – including, amongst others, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, La Botija in Honduras, Sydney in Australia and Cleveland in the US. These rich studies give inspiration and practical insights to young planners on how to create sustainable urban futures in collaboration with other stakeholders. The case studies and critical reflections on applications of transition management in cities offer food for thought and welcome criticism. They also introduce new lenses to understand the bigger picture that co-creation dynamics play in terms of power, (dis-)empowerment, legitimacy and changing actor roles. This will equip the readers with a deep understanding of the dynamics, opportunities and challenges present in urban contexts and urban sustainability transitions.

Download or read book Urban Ecological Design written by Danilo Palazzo and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-06-22 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This trailblazing book outlines an interdisciplinary "process model" for urban design that has been developed and tested over time. Its goal is not to explain how to design a specific city precinct or public space, but to describe useful steps to approach the transformation of urban spaces. Urban Ecological Design illustrates the different stages in which the process is organized, using theories, techniques, images, and case studies. In essence, it presents a "how-to" method to transform the urban landscape that is thoroughly informed by theory and practice. The authors note that urban design is viewed as an interface between different disciplines. They describe the field as "peacefully overrun, invaded, and occupied" by city planners, architects, engineers, and landscape architects (with developers and politicians frequently joining in). They suggest that environmental concerns demand the consideration of ecology and sustainability issues in urban design. It is, after all, the urban designer who helps to orchestrate human relationships with other living organisms in the built environment. The overall objective of the book is to reinforce the role of the urban designer as an honest broker and promoter of design processes and as an active agent of social creativity in the production of the public realm.

Download or read book Imagining Urban Futures written by Carl Abbott and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What science fiction can teach us about urban planning Carl Abbott, who has taught urban studies and urban planning in five decades, brings together urban studies and literary studies to examine how fictional cities in work by authors as different as E. M. Forster, Isaac Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson, and China Miéville might help us to envision an urban future that is viable and resilient. Imagining Urban Futures is a remarkable treatise on what is best and strongest in urban theory and practice today, as refracted and intensely imagined in science fiction. As the human population grows, we can envision an increasingly urban society. Shifting weather patterns, rising sea levels, reduced access to resources, and a host of other issues will radically impact urban environments, while technology holds out the dream of cities beyond Earth. Abbott delivers a compelling critical discussion of science fiction cities found in literary works, television programs, and films of many eras from Metropolis to Blade Runner and Soylent Green to The Hunger Games, among many others.

Download or read book The Smart Enough City written by Ben Green and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

Download or read book Urban Futures written by Ian Ritchie and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2020-10-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Designing Future Cities for Wellbeing written by Christopher T. Boyko and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designing Future Cities for Wellbeing draws on original research that brings together dimensions of cities we know have a bearing on our health and wellbeing – including transportation, housing, energy, and foodways – and illustrates the role of design in delivering cities in the future that can enhance our health and wellbeing. It aims to demonstrate that cities are a complex interplay of these various dimensions that both shape and are shaped by existing and emerging city structures, governance, design, and planning. Explaining how to consider these interconnecting dimensions in the way in which professionals and citizens think about and design the city for future generations’ health and wellbeing, therefore, is key. The chapters draw on UK case and research examples and make comparison to international cities and examples. This book will be of great interest to researchers and students in planning, public policy, public health, and design.