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This book examines two civic initiatives in Europe and analyses their evolution through the institutionalisation of their practices, local public effects, and established models for action at broader scales. Drawing from the concepts of civic action, problematic situations, public problems, and experience, this book coins the concept of direct civic action to explore civic initiatives beyond sectorial categories. It draws from the histories, everyday activities, and encounters with new problematic situations of a Slovak and a French initiative. It analyses the institutionalisation of their internal practices, their public cultural services, the models for action they establish in broader net...
This book explores mobilities as a key to understanding the practices that both frame and generate contemporary everyday life in the urban context. At the same time, it investigates the challenges arising from the interpretation of mobility as a socio-spatial phenomenon both in the social sciences and in urban studies. Leading sociologists, economists, urban planners and architects address the ways in which spatial mobilities contribute to producing diversified uses of the city and describe forms and rhythms of different life practices, including unexpected uses and conflicts. The individual sections of the book focus on the role of mobility in transforming contemporary cities; the consequen...
Urban planning is a complex field of knowledge and practice. Through the decades, theoretical debate has formed an eclectic set of possible perspectives, without finding, in our opinion, a coherent paradigmatic framework which can adequately guide the interpretation and action in urban planning. The hypothesis of this book is that the attempts of founding an autonomous planning theory are inadequate if they do not explore two interconnected fields: architecture and public policies.The book critically reviews a selected set of current practices and theoretical founding works of modern and contemporary urban planning by highlighting the continuous search for the epistemic legitimization of a l...
"The Project of Autonomy radically rediscusses the concept of autonomy in politics and architecture by tracing a concise and polemical argument about its history in Italy in the 1960's and early 1970's. Architect and educator Pier Vittorio Aureli analyzes the position of the Operaism movement, formed by a group of intellectuals that produced a powerful and rigorous critique of capitalism and its intersections with two of the most radical architectural-urban theories of the day: Aldo Rossi's redefinition of the architecture of the city and Archizoom's No-stop City. Readers are introduced to major figures like Mario Tronti and Raniero Panzieri who have previously been little known in the English-speaking world, especially in an architectural context, and to the political motivations behind the theories of Rossi and Archizoom. The book draws on significant new source material, including recent interviews by the author and untranslated documents."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.
The book aims at nurturing theoretic reflection on the city and the territory and working out and applying methods and techniques for improving our physical and social landscapes. The main issue is developed around the projectual dimension, with the objective of visualising both the city and the territory from a particular viewpoint, which singles out the territorial dimension as the city’s space of communication and negotiation. Issues that characterise the dynamics of city development will be faced, such as the new, fresh relations between urban societies and physical space, the right to the city, urban equity, the project for the physical city as a means to reveal civitas, signs of new social cohesiveness, the sense of contemporary public space and the sustainability of urban development. Authors have been invited to explore topics that feature a pluralism of disciplinary contributions studying formal and informal practices on the project for the city and seeking conceptual and operative categories capable of understanding and facing the problems inherent in the profound transformations of contemporary urban landscapes.
The book interprets and recombines, within a subjective trajectory, some roots, pathways and conceptual frames of the planning thought that worked either as dissenting imaginations or generative source to critically question the modernist epistemologies. ‘Critical planning and design’ is presented in this book as a field of research inspired by critical urban theory and developed along with ideas and theories that prove to be radical, alternative, dialectical to the mainstream history of planning. In this book, scholars present what they consider as the most important books in the field of planning, public policy and design. They have been asked to write about a book and its author, in t...
This book explores the effects of covid-19 crisis on cities and urban areas and proposes approaches and solutions to invert the pandemic's negative impact. The covid-19 crisis has had significant impacts on public health, on the everyday lives of millions of people, and on the use of urban spaces at all levels. All over the world, cities have been at the forefront of a crisis that have worsened socio-spatial inequalities between regions and inside urban areas. The book examines three aspects of the connection between pandemic and urban issues: the relevance of spatial and territorial variables in the explanation of pandemic dynamics and consequences in fragile cities; the assumption of radical uncertainty as the conceptual framework for a new approach to urban planning, in a phase of raise of public investments; and the design of urban policies aimed at facing the material and symbolic effects of pandemic on the practices of use of spaces and places, in a context characterized by a plurality of populations and forms of life.
The first edition of this book was published in Italian in 1989, about two years after the death of Ludovico Quaroni; this edition in English is addressed mainly to non-Italian scholars with an interest in modern architecture in Italy. Given the imperfect parallel between musical and literary composition, therefore, in this book an intimate intellectual atmosphere prevails, which reveals the author’s skill in creating a narrative and also in engaging in a type of critical writing that is rarely undertaken by architect-intellectuals. The five episodes in the book cover almost thirty years, from 1958 to 1987, which were years that remained deeply preserved in the author’s memory. The liter...