Improvised Cities

Improvised Cities
Author: Helen Gyger
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2019-03-12
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0822986388

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Beginning in the 1950s, an explosion in rural-urban migration dramatically increased the population of cities throughout Peru, leading to an acute housing shortage and the proliferation of self-built shelters clustered in barriadas, or squatter settlements. Improvised Cities examines the history of aided self-help housing, or technical assistance to self-builders, which took on a variety of forms in Peru from 1954 to 1986. While the postwar period saw a number of trial projects in aided self-help housing throughout the developing world, Peru was the site of significant experiments in this field and pioneering in its efforts to enact a large-scale policy of land tenure regularization in improvised, unauthorized cities. Gyger focuses on three interrelated themes: the circumstances that made Peru a fertile site for innovation in low-cost housing under a succession of very different political regimes; the influences on, and movements within, architectural culture that prompted architects to consider self-help housing as an alternative mode of practice; and the context in which international development agencies came to embrace these projects as part of their larger goals during the Cold War and beyond.

Improvised Cities

Improvised Cities
Author: Helen Gyger
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780822945369

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Beginning in the 1950s, an explosion in rural-urban migration dramatically increased the population of cities throughout Peru, leading to an acute housing shortage and the proliferation of self-built shelters clustered in barriadas, or squatter settlements. Improvised Cities examines the history of aided self-help housing, or technical assistance to self-builders, which took on a variety of forms in Peru from 1954 to 1986. While the postwar period saw a number of trial projects in aided self-help housing throughout the developing world, Peru was the site of significant experiments in this field and pioneering in its efforts to enact a large-scale policy of land tenure regularization in improvised, unauthorized cities. Gyger focuses on three interrelated themes: the circumstances that made Peru a fertile site for innovation in low-cost housing under a succession of very different political regimes; the influences on, and movements within, architectural culture that prompted architects to consider self-help housing as an alternative mode of practice; and the context in which international development agencies came to embrace these projects as part of their larger goals during the Cold War and beyond.

The Accidental City

The Accidental City
Author: Lawrence N. Powell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2012-04-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674065441

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Chronicles the history of the city from its being contended over as swampland through Louisiana's statehood in 1812, discussing its motley identities as a French village, African market town, Spanish fortress, and trade center.

Improvised City

Improvised City
Author: Cole Roskam
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780295744780

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For nearly one hundred years, Shanghai was an international treaty port in which the extraterritorial rights of foreign governments shaped both architecture and infrastructure, and it merits examination as one of the most complex and influential urban environments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Improvised City illuminates the interplay between the city's commercial nature and the architectural forms and practices designed to manage it in Shanghai's three municipalities: the International Settlement, the French Concession, and the Chinese city. This book probes the relationship between architecture and extraterritoriality in ways that challenge standard narratives of Shanghai's built environment, which are dominated by stylistic analyses of major landmarks. Instead, by considering a wider range of town halls, post offices, municipal offices, war memorials, water works, and consulates, Cole Roskam traces the cultural, economic, political, and spatial negotiations that shaped Shanghai's growth. Improvised City repositions Shanghai within architectural and urban transformations that reshaped the world over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It responds to growing academic interest in the history of modern and contemporary Chinese architecture and urbanism; the ongoing, shifting relationship between sovereignty and space; and the variegated forms of urban exceptionality'such as special economic zones, tax-free trading spheres, and commercial enclaves'that continue to shape cities.

Improvised Lives

Improvised Lives
Author: AbdouMaliq Simone
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 103
Release: 2018-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1509523391

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The poor and working people in cities of the South find themselves in urban spaces that are conventionally construed as places to reside or inhabit. But what if we thought of popular districts in more expansive ways that capture what really goes on within them? In such cities, popular districts are the settings of more uncertain operations that take place under the cover of darkness, generating uncanny alliances among disparate bodies, materials and things and expanding the urban sensorium and its capacities for liveliness. In this important new book AbdouMaliq Simone explores the nature of these alliances, portraying urban districts as sites of enduring transformations through rhythms that mediate between the needs of residents not to draw too much attention to themselves and their aspirations to become a small niche of exception. Here we discover an urban South that exists as dense rhythms of endurance that turn out to be vital for survival, connectivity, and becoming.

Resurrection City

Resurrection City
Author: Peter Heltzel
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2012-11-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0802867596

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In Resurrection City Peter Heltzel paints a prophetic picture of an evangelical Christianity that eschews a majority mentality and instead fights against racism, inequality, and injustice, embracing the concerns of the poor and marginalized, just as Jesus did. Placing society's needs front and center, Heltzel calls for radical change and collective activism modeled on God's love and justice. In particular, Heltzel explores the social forms that love and justice can take as religious communities join together to build "beloved cities." He proclaims the importance of "improvising for justice" -- likening the church's prophetic ministry to jazz music -- and develops a biblical theology of shalom justice. His vision draws inspiration from the black freedom struggle and the lives of Sojourner Truth, Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King Jr. Pulsing with hope and beauty, Resurrection City compels evangelical Christians to begin "a global movement for love and justice" that truly embodies the kingdom of God.

The Second City Guide to Improv in the Classroom

The Second City Guide to Improv in the Classroom
Author: Katherine S. McKnight
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2008-05-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0787996505

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Most people know The Second City as an innovative school for improvisation that has turned out leading talents such as Alan Arkin, Bill Murray, Stephen Colbert, and Tina Fey. This groundbreaking company has also trained thousands of educators and students through its Improvisation for Creative Pedagogy program, which uses improv exercises to teach a wide variety of content areas, and boost skills that are crucial for student learning: listening, teamwork, communication, idea-generation, vocabulary, and more.

The Urban Improvise

The Urban Improvise
Author: Kristian Kloeckl
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Cities and towns
ISBN: 0300243049

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A book for architects, designers, planners, and urbanites that explores how cities can embrace improvisation to improve urban life The built environment in today's hybrid cities is changing radically. The pervasiveness of networked mobile and embedded devices has transformed a predominantly stable background for human activity into spaces that have a more fluid behavior. Based on their capability to sense, compute, and act in real time, urban spaces have the potential to go beyond planned behaviors and, instead, change and adapt dynamically. These interactions resemble improvisation in the performing arts, and this book offers a new improvisation-based framework for thinking about future cities. Kristian Kloeckl moves beyond the smart city concept by unlocking performativity, and specifically improvisation, as a new design approach and explores how city lights, buses, plazas, and other urban environments are capable of behavior beyond scripts. Drawing on research of digital cities and design theory, he makes improvisation useful and applicable to the condition of today's technology-imbued cities and proposes a new future for responsive urban design.

The Urban Improvise

The Urban Improvise
Author: Kristian Kloeckl
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0300249349

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A book for architects, designers, planners, and urbanites that explores how cities can embrace improvisation to improve urban life The built environment in today’s hybrid cities is changing radically. The pervasiveness of networked mobile and embedded devices has transformed a predominantly stable background for human activity into spaces that have a more fluid behavior. Based on their capability to sense, compute, and act in real time, urban spaces have the potential to go beyond planned behaviors and, instead, change and adapt dynamically. These interactions resemble improvisation in the performing arts, and this book offers a new improvisation-based framework for thinking about future cities. Kristian Kloeckl moves beyond the smart city concept by unlocking performativity, and specifically improvisation, as a new design approach and explores how city lights, buses, plazas, and other urban environments are capable of behavior beyond scripts. Drawing on research of digital cities and design theory, he makes improvisation useful and applicable to the condition of today’s technology-imbued cities and proposes a new future for responsive urban design.

Process

Process
Author: Mary Scruggs
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2008
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0810124726

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Process: An Improviser's Journey is an invaluable resource for mastering improv. Author, teacher, and improviser Michael Gellman was given a mission by famed improv coach Del Close: “[T]o create improvised one-act plays of literary quality from scratch.” Already steeped in the world of improvisation, he took it upon himself to do this, in the form of a class for other improvisers in which they would build the skills necessary to execute such a seemingly tall order. Scruggs and Gellman’s book, modeled after Stanislavski’s timeless An Actor Prepares, follows a fictional young actor taking Gellman’s real-life class. Scruggs and Gellman introduce readers to Geoff, who has just moved to Chicago to pursue acting. He undergoes the standard trials of audition and rejection before he takes the advice of a fellow actor and turns to improv classes at Second City. At first, Geoff thinks improvisation is about laughs and loosening up, but he soon learns that it is a powerful tool as well as an end in itself. Through Geoff’s eyes, the book introduces readers to key tenets of improvisation: concentration, visualization, focus, object work, being in the moment, and the crucial “yes, and.” His experiences with the basics of improvisation do serve to get him a few roles, but his real breakthrough comes when he signs up for an improvised one-act class with Michael Gellman. He and his classmates arrive unprepared for the challenge, but with Gellman’s prompts and advice, they slowly move through process to performance over the course of three seasons in Chicago. The class culminates with their final project: a completely improvised one-act play performed in front of a live audience.