January New Urban Studies books
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Writing Cities: Exploring Early Modern Urban Discourse
Writing Cities: Exploring Early Modern Urban Discourse: HT131 .A44 2019
Author(s): James Amelang
Budapest, Hungary : Central European University Press 2019.
Only one out of every ten early modern Europeans lived in cities. Yet cities were crucial nodes, joining together producers and consumers, rulers and ruled, and believers in diverse faiths and futures. They also generated an enormous amount of writing, much of which focused on civic life itself. Yet despite its obvious importance, historians have paid surprisingly little attention to urban discourse; its forms, themes, emphases and silences all invite further study. This book explores various dimensions of early modern citizens' writing about their cities. First, the diverse social backgrounds of the men and women who contributed to urban discourse have very are highlighted. With regard to what they wrote, the book centers on what made for a beautiful city prior to the nineteenth century. The closing chapter looks at the dialogue as a literary vehicle particularly well adapted to discussing city life and culture. The author concludes that early modern urban discourse increasingly took written form—in addition to traditional oral discussion about cities a growing number of individuals began to write about them; that these writers saw their fundamental task as presenting a detatched description of cities and city life, task to be description; and while their dominant tone continued to be positive, over time a more detached and less judgmental (pro or con) mode developed alongside the traditional mood of praise.
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Future Cities Laboratory: Indicia 02
Future Cities Laboratory: Indicia 02: HT166 .F892 2019
Author(s): Stephen Cairns, Devisari Tunas
Zürich : Lars Müller Publishers 2019.
This second volume in the 'Future Cities Laboratory Indicia' series focuses on the tools, methods, and approaches needed for urban research. In short, following Marshall McLuhan's famous provocation, the editors focus less on the message and more on the medium of research. This involves retreating from research contents--the topics, themes, questions, hypotheses, insights, ideas, concepts, and thoughts--for the moment to consider the materials, methods, tools, techniques, and approaches that support them. This change in perspective reveals a rich array of research approaches that include: the visual documentation of complex stakeholder interests, political and economic circumstances in built form and design vision; two- and three-dimensional mapping of vegetation, temperature and humidity, in conjunction with point cloud terrestrial and airborne laser-scanning technology; gathering data from sensors and geospatial data; emergence of 'solution spaces' and multi-dimensional complexity science; subject oriented approaches to behavioural and cognitive decision making in city navigation; and approaches to emergent phenomena such as extended urbanisation that are not always visible to existing analytical or documentary lenses.
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Changing Places: The Science and Art of New Urban Planning
Changing Places: The Science and Art of New Urban Planning: HT166 .M233 2019
Author(s): John MacDonald, Charles Branas, Robert Stokes
Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press [2019]
How the science of urban planning can make our cities healthier, safer, and more livable The design of every aspect of the urban landscape—from streets and sidewalks to green spaces, mass transit, and housing—fundamentally influences the health and safety of the communities who live there. It can affect people's stress levels and determine whether they walk or drive, the quality of the air they breathe, and how free they are from crime. Changing Places provides a compelling look at the new science and art of urban planning, showing how scientists, planners, and citizens can work together to reshape city life in measurably positive ways. Drawing on the latest research in city planning, economics, criminology, public health, and other fields, Changing Places demonstrates how well-designed changes to place can significantly improve the well-being of large groups of people. The book argues that there is a disconnect between those who implement place-based changes, such as planners and developers, and the urban scientists who are now able to rigorously evaluate these changes through testing and experimentation. This compelling book covers a broad range of structural interventions, such as building and housing, land and open space, transportation and street environments, and entertainment and recreation centers. Science shows we can enhance people's health and safety by changing neighborhoods block-by-block. Changing Places explains why planners and developers need to recognize the value of scientific testing, and why scientists need to embrace the indispensable know-how of planners and developers. This book reveals how these professionals, working together and with urban residents, can create place-based interventions that are simple, affordable, and scalable to entire cities.
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Dwelling Urbanism: City Making Through Corporeal Practice in Mexico City
Dwelling Urbanism: City Making Through Corporeal Practice in Mexico City: HT169.M62 M499 2019
Author(s): Christian von Wissel
Basel Birkhäuser part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH; Birkhauser [2019]
City dwellers are direct agents in the making of cities; yet how do they actually constitute and sustain the urban and its forms? How do they practice the urban and through this practice shape the city-in-the-making that emerges along with them on the backs of their working bodies? Dwelling Urbanism re-thinks the urban from this perspective of corporeal making and with regard to the cityness that it bears. It delves into the thick of life in the periphery of Mexico City, uncovering the everyday actions and efforts that practitioners of space accomplish when building houses, creating jobs and putting themselves to work as infrastructure. How are consequential conjunctions, how is access to, and presence in the city actively grown? And what does such thinking the city as a verb, as citying, imply for urban planning?
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Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism
Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism: HT241 .A38 2019
Author(s): Robert Krueger, Tim Freytag, Samuel Mössner
Albany : State University of New York Press [2019]
Opens up new ways of thinking about and debating the consequences of sustainable urbanism as it moves from planning to practice. In the context of urban sustainable development, the “details” of sustainability’s current expressions perpetuate environmental injustice, untenable growth, and the destruction of functioning ecosystems. In response to this state of affairs, Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism aims to prompt new debates about the consequences of sustainable urbanism as it moves from planning to practice. Contributors explore policy, practice, and experience from cities around the world, including Calgary, Christchurch, Dortmund, Vancouver, and others. Written by scholars who live in these cities, chapters offer empirically rich descriptions for opening up new lines of thinking, theorizing, and debate about the sustainable city and its actual material expressions in place. By examining the sustainable city through various analytical framings, contributors urge readers to move from viewing the sustainable city as something everyone can agree on, to a highly politicized and contested process. Additional resources are provided for readers who may wish to extend their own research into a city or theme. “This is a very compelling book that clearly conveys the multiple and contested meanings and practices of sustainable urban development. In the end, the reader is left to consider not only the plurality of understandings of sustainability—clearly not an innocent or neutral concept—but the varied interests sustainability may serve. This book represents a unique contribution to the field.” — Byron Miller, coeditor of The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics
Other new Urban Studies books