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During the 1960s, building sites in Paris became spaces that expressed preoccupations about urban transformation, labour immigration and national identity. As new buildings and infrastructure changed the city, building sites revealed the substandard living and working conditions of migrant construction workers in France. Moreover, construction was the touchstone in debates about the dangers of urban life, and triggered action in communities whose districts faced demolition. Paris Under Construction explores the social, political and cultural responses to construction work and urban transformation in the Paris metropolitan region during the 1960s. This examination of a decade of intensive bui...
Planning is centrally focused on places which are significant to people, including both the built and natural environments. In making changes to these places, planning outcomes inevitably benefit some and disadvantage others. It is perhaps surprising that Actor Network Theory (ANT) has only recently been considered as an appropriate lens through which to understand planning practice. This book brings together an international range of contributors to explore such potential of ANT in more detail. While it can be thought of as a subset of complexity theory, given its appreciation for non-linear processes and responses, ANT has its roots in the sociology of scientific and technology studies. AN...
Sustainable Regeneration of Former Military Sites is the first book to analyze a profound land use change happening all over the world: the search for sustainable futures for property formerly dedicated to national defense now becoming redundant, disposed of and redeveloped. The new military necessity for rapid flexible response requires quite different physical resources from the massive fixed positions of the Cold War, with huge tracts of land and buildings looking for new uses. The transition from military to civilian life for these complex, contaminated, isolated, heritage laden and often contested sites in locations ranging from urban to remote is far from easy. There is very little sys...
This book provides a comprehensive framework for analysing, comparing and promoting territorial governance in policy relevant research. It reveals in-depth considerations of the emergence, state-of-the art and evolution of the concept of territorial governance. A unique series of ten case studies across Europe, from neighbourhood planning in North Shields in the North East of England to climate change adaptation in the Baltic Sea Region, provides far-reaching insights into a number of key elements of territorial governance. The book draws generalised empirically-based conclusions and discusses modes of transferability of ‘good practices’. A number of suggestions are presented as to how t...
After West African migrants arrived in France in the 1960s, the authorities opened residences for them known as “foyers.” Initially intended to contain the West African population, these hostels for single men fostered the emergence of Black communities in the heart of Paris and other cities. More recently, however, a nationwide renovation program sought to replace the collective living arrangements of foyers with more individualized spaces by constructing new buildings or drastically reshaping existing ones—and casting the West African presence as a threat to French identity. Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye examines the changing roles that foyers have played in the lives of generations of West ...
Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots...
End-users provide the most valuable perspective and insights into how public social space should function. Much of the failure of urban settings can be related to over-structured urban environments which deterministically prescribe usage, constraining instead of enabling socio-spatial performance. Planning decisions by specialists should be made with the participation of the end-user to minimise uncertainty as far as possible, creating enabling environments. Placemaking: An Urban Design Methodology presents a methodology that evaluates the preferences of urban dwellers and synthesises these with the planning specialist’s expertise, better representing all views. Author Derek Thomas integrates the Sondheim Methodology with means to understanding cultural clues to create a matrix methodology that links planning primers with planning actions. A unique new tool for community planners, this book emphasises the importance of the community while taking into account the expertise of the planner in creating public spaces.
Throughout the twentieth century architectural models served as the miniature playgrounds in which the future of Britain’s built environment was imagined, and in drawing from the evidence provided by those models today, this book considers how architects, planners, and civil engineers thought about that future by presenting a history of yesterday’s dreams of tomorrow, told through architectural models. Focused not on the making of architectural models but rather the optimistic and utopian visions they were made to communicate, this book examines the possible futures put forward by 120 models made by Thorp, the oldest and most prolific firm of architectural modelmakers in Britain, in orde...
Neoliberal Spatial Governance explores the changing nature of English town and city planning as it has slowly but clearly transformed. Once a system for regulating and balancing change in the built and natural environments in the public interest, planning now finds itself facilitating development and economic growth for narrow, sectional interests. Whilst there is a lip service towards traditional values, the progressive aims and inclusivity that provided planning’s legitimacy and broad support have now largely disappeared. The result is a growing backlash of distrust and discontent as planning has evolved into neoliberal spatial governance. The tragedy of this change is that at a time whe...
Shaping Jerusalem: Spatial planning, politics and the conflict focuses on a hidden facet of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the relentless reshaping of the Holy City by the Israeli authorities through urban policies, spatial plans, infrastructural and architectural projects, land use and building regulations. From a political point of view, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may appear to be at an impasse; however, it is precisely by looking at the city’s physical space that one can perceive that a war of cement and stone is under way. Many books have been written on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem; some of them have focused on the urban fabric; Shaping Jerusalem uniquely d...