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It is a widely held belief that cities must change, or they will wither and die. One of the key problems of urbanization is how to cope with these changes while retaining the structures constructed and maintained by previous generations. Conservation and the City is a study of conservation and change throughout the built environment - city centres, suburbs and even tiny villages - and how the activites of conservation interact with the planning system. Using detailed case studies from Britain and the Westernized world, the author examines some of the key social, economic and psychological ideas which support conservation, as well as studying the urban landscape and the agents of change. Conservation and the City seeks to understand urban conservation, and in doing so presents possible solutions for managing change in the built environment of the future.
Like many UK cities Birmingham was heavily bombed during the Second World War and as with so many bombed British cities, and many un-bombed ones that jumped on to the re-planning bandwagon, there was a clear imperative to reconstruct. But Birmingham was atypical in how it went about this. The city had begun planning in the mid-1930s, principally to replace vast quantities of slum housing – and there had been suggestions about ring roads even from the time of the First World War. So plans were available virtually ready to go, and were approved by a private Act of Parliament in 1946. Yet within Birmingham there were individuals and organisations with a great interest and influence in plannin...
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.
This is the first history of Stockholm’s development from the city’s unique seventeenth-century redevelopment and extension to the postmodern, postindustrial trends of today. For much of the mid-twentieth century Stockholm was the planning model for Europe and elsewhere. Written by an acknowledged authority on the city and Swedish architecture and planning generally, this book provides a much needed explanation of one of Europe’s great cities.
This book explores Dubai's history from its beginnings as a small fishing village to its place on the world stage today, using historical narratives, travel descriptions, novels and fictional accounts by local writers to bring colour to€the history of the city's urban development. With case studies and surveys€the author explores the economic and political forces driving Dubai's urban growth, its changing urbanity and its place within the global city network.
In this sequel to his widely-acclaimed book The Experience of Modernism (1997), John Gold continues his detailed enquiry into the Modern Movement's involvement in urban planning and city design. Making extensive use of information gained from hours of in-depth interviews with architects of the time, this new book examines the complex relationship between vision and subsequent practice in the saga of postwar urban reconstruction. The Practice of Modernism: traces the personal, institutional and professional backgrounds of the architects involved in schemes for reconstruction and replanning deals directly with the progress of urban transformation, focusing on the contribution that modern architects and architectural principles made to town centre renewal and social housing highlights how the exuberance of the 1960s gave way to the profound reappraisal that emerged by the early 1970s. Written by an expert, this is a key book on the planning aspects of the modernist movement for architectural historians, urban geographers, planners and all concerned with understanding the recent history of the contemporary city.
The evolution of city planning theory and practice in the first half of the twentieth century was captured and driven by a range of exhibitionary practices in a variety of settings globally, from international expos to local public halls. The agendas of the promoters varied, but exhibitions generally drew their social legitimacy from their status as ’appropriate educative agencies of citizenship’. Bringing together a range of international case studies, this volume explores the highly visual genre of public planning exhibitions worldwide. In doing so, it provides a unique lens on the development of modern urban planning and design from the late 19th century to the present day. Focussing ...
This is a book about cities or, more precisely, about the physical form of cities. It starts presenting the main elements of urban form – streets, urban blocks, plots and buildings – structuring our cities and the fundamental actors and processes of transformation shaping these elements. It then applies this analytical framework to describe the evolution of cities over history as well as to explain the functioning of contemporary cities. After the initial focus on the ‘object’ (cities) the book describes how different researchers and different schools of thought have been dealing with this object since the emergence of Urban Morphology, as the science of urban form, in the turning to the twentieth century. Finally, the book tries to identify what are the most important (and specific) contributions that Urban Morphology has to offer to contemporary cities, societies and economies.
This book examines the interrelationship between telecommunications and tourism in shaping the nature of space, place and the urban at the end of the twentieth century. They discuss how these agents are instrumental in the production of homogenous world-spaces, and how htese, in turn, presuppose new kinds of political and cultural identity. Virtual Geographies explores how new communication technologies are being used to produce new geographies and new types of space. Leading contributors from a wide range of disciplines including geography, sociology, philosophy and literature: * investigate how visions of cyberspace have been constructed * offer a critical assessment of the status of virtual environments and geographies * explore how virtual environments reshape the way we think and write about the world. This book sets recent technological developments in a historical and geographical perspective to offer a clearer view of the new vistas ahead.