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Two contrasting terms are joined to conjugate the traditional idea of metropolis with horizontality; to combine the center of a vast territory--hierarchically organized, dense, vertical, and produced by polarization--with the idea of a more diffuse, isotropic urban condition, where center and periphery blur. Beyond a simplistic center versus periphery opposition, the concept of a horizontal metropolis reveals the dispersed condition as a potential asset, rather than a limit, to the construction of a sustainable and innovative urban dimension. Around 1990, Terry McGee, an urban researcher at University of British Columbia, coined the term desakota, deriving from Indonesian “desa” (village...
"Water and Asphalt, the latest volume in the UFO series, investigates the metropolitan area of Venice with regard to the increasing separation of residential and industrial neighborhoods. It is based on an extensive research project at Venice's Università IUAV on urban density and sprawl. The densely populated metropolitan region around the world-famous 'Sernenissima', crisscrossed by networks of roads and waterways, provides the ideal test case for imagining the concept termed by this study as the Project of Isotropy. The researchers argue that conditions now exist for redevising the isotropic space in Venice with a focus on the water system, roads and public transportation, alternative mobility, forms of diffused welfare, innovative agriculture, and the decentralized production of energy.--Publisher's website.
In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim—who is at the forefront of this new movement—has assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the field's top practitioners. Fourteen essays written by leading figures across a range of disciplines and from around the world—including James Corner, Linda Pollak, Alan Berger, Pierre Bolanger, Julia Czerniak, and more—capture the origins, the contemporary milieu, and the aspirations of this relatively new field. The Landscape Urbanism Reader is an inspiring signal to the future of city making as well as an indispensable reference for students, teachers, architects, and urban planners.
This book draws together classic and contemporary texts on the “Horizontal Metropolis” concept. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it explores various theoretical, methodological and political implications of the Horizontal Metropolis hypothesis. Assembling a series of textual and cartographic interventions, this book explores those that supersede inherited spatial ontologies (urban/rural, town/country, city/non-city, society/nature). It investigates the emergence of a new type of extended urbanity across regions, territories and continents up to the global scale through the reconstruction of a fundamental but neglected tradition. This book responds to the radical nature of the changes underway today, calling for a rethinking of the Western Metropolis idea and form along with the emergence of new urban paradigms. The Horizontal Metropolis concept represents an ambitious attempt to offer new instruction to take on this challenge at the global scale. The book is intended for a wide audience interested in the emergence and development of new approaches in urbanism, architecture, cultural theory, urban and design education, landscape urbanism and geography.
Some time ago, Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis used the term "porosity" with reference to Naples’ urban characteristics – spaces merging into each other and providing the backdrop for the unforeseen – improvisation as a way of life. Today, the term "porosity" in this context is increasingly used conceptually. Well-known authors from the worlds of architecture, town planning, and landscape design embark on a search for new concepts for a life-enhancing, user-friendly city – with reference to this enigmatic term. The term refers to the overlaying and interweaving of spaces and structures, to urban textures and their architectural properties and qualities – to cities with radically mixed urban functions.
The Designing Environments book series addresses questions regarding necessary environmental transformation in the context of the fast-unfolding environmental crisis. This is done from a broad interdisciplinary perspective, examining the negative impact of human transformations of the environment and providing different inroads towards sustainable environmental transformation with net positive impact. Volume one of the Designing Environments book series brings together experts from different disciplines and often inter- and transdisciplinary contexts, who discuss specific approaches to overcoming the negative impact of the transformation of environments by humans. Across the 12 chapters of volume one, specific keywords recur that are indicative of shared insights and concerns. These include Anthropocene, climate change, complexity, critical zone, ecosystem services, and sustainability. Furthermore, interdisciplinary approaches to human–environment interactions, sustainability transitions, and socio-ecological systems take center stage and are discussed in relation to conceptual and methodological as well as societal and technological challenges and opportunities.
This open access book provides an integrated overview of the challenges and resources of large-scale social housing estates in Europe and outlines possible interdisciplinary approaches and tools to promote their regeneration. It especially focuses on the tool of urban living labs, as promising in promoting new and more effective local governance and in including the different actors into the planning process. The book combines theory and practice, since it is the result of action-research conducted in different social housing estates all over Europe. Building on the results of the SoHoLab project (2017–2020), the book benefits from a multidisciplinary perspective, since the researchers involved belong to the fields of anthropology, urban planning, architecture, urban sociology. The project combined theoretical reflections with the installation and/or the consolidation of Urban Living Labs, run by universities, in large social housing estates in three European cities: Brussels, Milan and Paris.
Der Urban Design Ecologies Reader stellt Architekten und Stadtplanern wichtige Tools zum besseren Verständnis heutiger städtebaulicher Maßnahmen bereit. Essays führender Experten spannen den Bogen zwischen historischen Entwicklungen und innovativen Ansätzen zur Bewältigung der globalen Herausforderungen rasanter Urbanisierungsprozesse und des Klimawandels. Die neuesten Ansätze in den Bereichen Stadtentwicklung, darunter Kernkonzepte wie Stadtarchitektur, Architektur großer Metropolen (Stichwort "Großarchitektur"), Wucherung der Städte, Megastädte (oder die informelle Stadt) und Metastädte, die von digitalen Technologien und dem Ökologiegedanken getragen werden, werden im Detail erörtert.
Over the timespan of just one generation the planet's pace of urbanization has dramatically increased. Through these dynamics and its resulting environmental threats, new challenges have emerged that deeply question the validity of the post-war planning paradigms. Dominant ideologies have been replaced by a problem-solving attitude, increased economic pressure and an urgent quest for evidence. What impact does this have on the work of the urban designer and planner, and how can the profession prepare for the future? 'Designing Change' tries to answer these and many other questions through in-depth conversations with 12 leading practitioners in the field : Christopher Choa (AECOM), Bruno Fort...
This book discusses the role of regional design and visioning in the formation of regional territorial governance to offer a better understanding of (1) how a recognition of spatial dynamics and the visualization of spatial futures informs, and is informed by, planning frameworks and (2) how such design processes inform co-operation and collaboration on planning in metropolitan regions. It gathers theoretical reflections on these topics, and illustrates them by means of practical experiences in several European countries. Innovatively associating ideas with knowledge, it appeals to anyone with an interest in planning experiments in a post-regulative era. It aims at an increased understanding of how practices, engaged with the imagination of possible futures, support the creation of institutional capacity for strategic spatial planning at regional scales.