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Neighbourhood open space ranks highly as a key component in suburban liveability assessments, originating from the development of urban planning as a profession and the proliferation of the garden suburb. Community Green uniquely connects the past, present and future of planning for small open spaces around the narrative of internal reserves. The distinctive planned spaces are typically enclosed on every side, hidden within residential blocks, serving as local pocket parks and reflecting the evolving values of community life from the garden city movement to contemporary new urbanism. This book resuscitates the enclosed, almost secretive reserve from history as a distinctive form of local ope...
Told through the stories, journals and personal letters of the women of the powerful Fox family, Wives and Daughters is a window into the daily lives and experiences of women of eighteenth-century aristocratic society and the country houses that symbolized the power and taste of eighteenth-century Britain. Combining personality with historical setting and detail, Joanna Martin traces the lives of fifteen individual women in their four country houses through several generations, in society and at home. Taking an intimate and personal look at courtship, marriage, childbirth, education, houses and gardens, reading, hobbies, travel and health, this book is an engrossing account of woman's lives in this fascinating time.
Farmers held a pivotal role in the capitalist agriculture that emerged in England in the eighteenth century, yet they have attracted little attention from rural historians. Farmers made agriculture happen. They brought together the capital and the technical and management skills which allowed food to be produced. It was they - and not landowners - who employed and supervised labour. They accepted the risk inherent in agriculture, paying largely fixed rents out of fluctuating and uncertain incomes. They are the rural equivalent of the small businessman with his own firm, employing people and producing for markets, sometimes distant ones. Our ignorance of the farmer might be justified by the c...
Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew were pioneers of Modern Architecture in Britain and its former colonies from the late 1920s through to the early 1970s. As a barometer of twentieth century architecture, their work traces the major cultural developments of that century from the development of modernism, its spread into the late-colonial arena and finally, to its re-evaluation that resulted in a more expressive, formalist approach in the post-war era. This book thoroughly examines Fry and Drew's highly influential 'Tropical Architecture' in West Africa and India, whilst also discussing their British work, such as their post World War II projects for the Festival of Britain, Harlow New Town, Pilkington Brothers’ Headquarters and Coychurch Crematorium. It highlights the collaborative nature of Fry and Drew's work, including schemes undertaken with Elizabeth Denby, Walter Gropius, Denys Lasdun, Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier. Positioning their architecture, writing and educational endeavours within a wider context, this book illustrates the significant artistic and cultural contributions made by Fry and Drew throughout their lengthy careers.
The long-term development of public green spaces such as parks, public gardens, and recreation grounds in London during the twentieth century is a curiously neglected subject, despite the fact that various kinds of green spaces cover huge areas in cities in the UK today. This book explores how and why public green spaces have been created and used in London, and what actors have been involved in their evolution, during the course of the twentieth century. Building on case studies of the contemporary boroughs of Camden and Southwark and making use of a wealth of archival material, the author takes us through the planning and creation stages, to the intended (and actual) uses and ongoing management of the spaces. By highlighting the rise and fall of municipal authorities and the impact of neo-liberalism after the 1970s, the book also deepens our understanding of how London has been governed, planned and ruled during the twentieth century. It makes a crucial contribution to academic as well as political discourse on the history and present role of green space in sustainable cities.
Landscape architecture plays an important role in shaping the places in which we live and work. But what is it? Landscape architects are involved, amongst other things, in the layout of business parks, the reclamation of derelict industrial sites, the restoration of historic city parks, and the siting and design of major pieces of infrastructure such as motorways, dams, power stations, and flood defences, as well as the planning of parks and gardens. Taking a historical perspective, Ian Thompson looks at both the roots of landscape architecture and the people that established it. This Very Short Introduction explores some of the misconceptions about landscape architecture and considers the d...
This 1997 book is a standard reference to the 1910 'New Domesday' data; essential for historians of Edwardian Britain.
This book will appeal not only to historians and geographers, but to many who maintain a deep interest in the British countryside and its past, and to those who continue to share a fascination for the Second World War, in particular the 'home front'. The Battle of the Fields tells the story of rural community and authority in Britain during the Second World War by looking at the County War Agricultural Executive Committees. From 1939 they were imbued with powers to transform British farming to combat the loss of food imports caused by German naval activity and initial European mainland successes. Their powers were sweeping and draconian. When fully exercised against recalcitrant farmers, dis...
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Miss Pym Disposes" by Elizabeth Mackintosh. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
In early December 2006, a powerful windstorm ripped through Vancouver’s Stanley Park. The storm transformed the city’s most treasured landmark into a tangle of splintered trees, and shattered a decades-old vision of the park as timeless virgin wilderness. In Inventing Stanley Park, Sean Kheraj traces how the tension between popular expectations of idealized nature and the volatility of complex ecosystems helped transform the landscape of one of the world’s most famous urban parks. This beautifully illustrated book not only depicts the natural and cultural forces that shaped the park’s landscape, it also examines the roots of our complex relationship with nature.