Enhancing the City.

Enhancing the City.
Author: Giovanni Maciocco
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2009-09-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9048124190

Download Enhancing the City. Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Departing from a survey on the post-modern landscapes of tourism, this book explores the transformations the city has undergone and the way it has become a simulacrum offered to tourists, spectacularised with the aim of increasing its capacity for attraction. The experiences dealt with in the papers of authors belonging to different disciplinary fields, emphasise the city’s tendencies to create “stage-set contexts” of the private type, be it historic quarters, theme parks or hypermarkets. Issues like aestheticisation, thematisation and genericity are dealt with, conceptual categories that highlight the weak resistance cities put up against the rules of the leisure industry and, more generally speaking, the consumer economy. The book inquires into the capacity of the urban and territorial project to construct a perspective for a public dimension of space. This is linked with ethical action of the project involving an active relationship with places and a capacity to understand the dynamics of different urban populations. In this sense capacity for innovation and creativity can contribute to transforming “islands” of leisure into places of the city and consumers into citizens.

What Makes a Great City

What Makes a Great City
Author: Alexander Garvin
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2016-09-08
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610917588

Download What Makes a Great City Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

One of Planetizen's Top Planning Books for 2017 - San Francisco Chronicle's 2016 Holiday Books Gift Guide Pick What makes a great city? City planner and architect Alexander Garvin set out to answer this question by observing cities, largely in North America and Europe, with special attention to Paris, London, New York, and Vienna. For Garvin, greatness is about what people who shape cities can do to make a city great. A great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Most importantly, it is about the interplay between people and public realm, and how they have interacted throughout history to create great cities. What Makes a Great City will help readers understand that any city can be changed for the better and inspire entrepreneurs, public officials, and city residents to do it themselves.

Seeing the Better City

Seeing the Better City
Author: Charles R. Wolfe
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2016
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 161091774X

Download Seeing the Better City Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Cover -- About Island Press -- Subscribe -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Why Urban Observation Matters: Seeing the Better City -- 01. How to See City Basics and Universal Patterns -- 02. Observational Approaches -- 03. Seeing the City through Urban Diaries -- 04. Documenting Our Personal Cities -- 05. From Urban Diaries to Policies, Plans, and Politics -- Conclusion: What the Better City Can Be -- Notes -- Index -- IP Board of Directors

The Heart of the City

The Heart of the City
Author: Alexander Garvin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610919491

Download The Heart of the City Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles. In The Heart of the City, distinguished urban planner Alexander Garvin shares lessons on how to plan for a mix of housing, businesses, and attractions; enhance the public realm; improve mobility; and successfully manage downtown services. Garvin opens the book with diagnoses of downtowns across the United States, including the people, businesses, institutions, and public agencies implementing changes. In a review of prescriptions and treatments for any downtown, Garvin shares brief accounts--of both successes and failures--of what individuals with very different objectives have done to change their downtowns. The final chapters look at what is possible for downtowns in the future, closing with suggested national, state, and local legislation to create standard downtown business improvement districts to better manage downtowns. This book will help public officials, civic organizations, downtown business property owners, and people who care about cities learn from successful recent actions in downtowns across the country, and expand opportunities facing their downtown. Garvin provides recommendations for continuing actions to help any downtown thrive, ensuring a prosperous and thrilling future for the 21st-century American city.

Policy, Planning, and People

Policy, Planning, and People
Author: Naomi Carmon
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2013-06-27
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0812222393

Download Policy, Planning, and People Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Policy, Planning, and People presents original essays by leading authorities in the field of urban policy and planning. The volume includes theoretical and practice-based essays that integrate social equity considerations into state-of-the-art discussions of findings in a variety of planning issues.

The Image of the City

The Image of the City
Author: Kevin Lynch
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1964-06-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262620017

Download The Image of the City Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

Sustainable City and Creativity

Sustainable City and Creativity
Author: Dr Tüzin Baycan
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2012-11-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1409490394

Download Sustainable City and Creativity Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The notion of 'creative cities' - where cultural activities and creative and cultural industries play a crucial role in supporting urban creativity and contributing to the new creative economy - has become central to most regional and urban development strategies in recent years. A creative city is supposed to develop imaginative and innovative solutions to a range of social, economic and environmental problems: economic stagnancy, urban shrinkage, social segregation, global competition or more. Cities and regions around the world are trying to develop, facilitate or promote concentrations of creative, innovative and/or knowledge-intensive industries in order to become more competitive. These places are seeking new strategies to combine economic development with quality of place that will increase economic productivity and encourage growth. Against this increasing interest in creative cities, this volume offers a coherent set of articles on sustainable and creative cities, and addresses modern theories and concepts relating to research on sustainability and creativity. It analyses principles and practices of the creative city for the formulation of policies and recommendations towards the sustainable city. It brings together leading academics with different approaches from different disciplines to provide a comprehensive and holistic overview of creativity and sustainability of the city, linking research and practice. In doing so, it puts forward ideas about stimulating the production of an innovative knowledge for a creative and sustainable city, and transforming a specific knowledge into a general common knowledge, which suggests best future policy actions, decision-making processes and choices for the change towards a human sustainable development of the city.

The Smart Enough City

The Smart Enough City
Author: Ben Green
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262352257

Download The Smart Enough City Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

Towards Socially Integrative Cities

Towards Socially Integrative Cities
Author: Bernhard Müller
Publisher: MDPI
Total Pages: 1
Release: 2021-05-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 3039366785

Download Towards Socially Integrative Cities Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The book Towards Socially Integrative Cities deals with the transition towards urban sustainability through socially integrative cities in Europe and China. It shares the impactful original research results of an EU-funded R&I project involving eight European and six Chinese partners (TRANS-URBAN-EU-CHINA; see www.transurbaneuchina.eu). Three each of the six editors come from European and Chinese universities and research institutions. The first articles (No. 1–4) provide an overview and insights into the conceptual basis of the book. The socially integrative city is framed by discussions in academia and practice, and it is defined in a comprehensive way as an element of urban sustainability. Sustainability transitions in China are linked to international discussions and the challenges are articulated. Moreover, the discussions touch on the strengths and weaknesses related to managing urban growth and the rapid expansion of cities. Land development tools are discussed with regard to the opportunities they offer for creating socially integrative cities. A second set of articles (No. 5–9) focus on socially integrative urban regeneration of cities. After an overview of policies and strategies in Europe and China, detailed aspects are discussed, such as community building through public engagement, challenges of place-making, and the role of education and life-long learning. Finally, a manuscript on heritage preservation and its impact on social integration in urban regeneration concludes this section. A third set of articles (No. 10–13) look into issues of the transformation of cities and sustainability transitions. Transformation is understood as a complex set of interactions. The development of tools, such as community platforms for information and dialogue transfer, are discussed as an instrument to facilitate transition processes. The transformative capacity of cities in Europe and China is discussed in an article that looks into possibilities to narrow the gaps between urban planning and development. Smart and eco-cities in Europe and China are taken as an empirical base. Advanced methods, such as the Social Cost–Benefit Analysis, may support social integration. Finally, an example of how the use of multiple data sources can speed up the digital transition in cities and provide decision support for social integration is presented. The final set of articles (No. 14 and 15) deal with questions of replicability of experiences and the role of concrete urban experiments in so-called Urban Living Laboratories. Methods to explore the replication potential of urban solutions for socially integrative cities are discussed. Finally, the potential of urban living laboratories for nurturing open urban innovation in Chinese cities is scrutinized. Several examples are discussed, and conclusions regarding the enhancement of social integration in cities are drawn. The book is edited by Bernhard Müller (Technische Universität Dresden, TUD), Baojun Yang (China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, CAUPD), Liu Jian (Tsinghua University), Jianming Cai (China Academy of Sciences, CAS), Paulina Schiappacasse (TUD) and Hans-Martin Neumann (Austrian Institute of Technology, AIT).

Smart City Emergence

Smart City Emergence
Author: Leonidas Anthopoulos
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2019-06-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0128161698

Download Smart City Emergence Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Smart City Emergence: Cases from Around the World analyzes how smart cities are currently being conceptualized and implemented, examining the theoretical underpinnings and technologies that connect theory with tangible practice achievements. Using numerous cities from different regions around the globe, the book compares how smart cities of different sizes are evolving in different countries and continents. In addition, it examines the challenges cities face as they adopt the smart city concept, separating fact from fiction, with insights from scholars, government officials and vendors currently involved in smart city implementation. Utilizes a sound and systematic research methodology Includes a review of the latest research developments Contains, in each chapter, a brief summary of the case, an illustration of the theoretical context that lies behind the case, the case study itself, and conclusions showing learned outcomes Examines smart cities in relation to climate change, sustainability, natural disasters and community resiliency