Showing 1-40 of 118 items.
Home Truths
Fixing Canada's Housing Crisis
UBC Press, On Point Press
With Canadians burdened by the world’s highest household debt after decades of failed housing policy, Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis shows what went wrong, and how it can be fixed.
Nature-First Cities
Restoring Relationships with Ecosystems and with Each Other
UBC Press
Nature-First Cities recognizes nature as the lead architect in the most essential of restoration projects – our cities.
Modernism’s Magic Hat
Architecture and the Illusion of Development without Capital
University of Texas Press
Examines the role of architecture in the history of global development and decolonization.
Broken City
Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis
UBC Press
Broken City argues that skyrocketing urban land prices drive our global housing market failure – so, how did we get here, and what can be done about it?
Movement
How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives
Island Press
In Movement: How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives, journalist Thalia Verkade and mobility expert (“the cycling professor”) Marco te Brömmelstroet take a three-year shared journey of discovery into the possibilities of our streets. They investigate and question the choices and mechanisms underpinning how these public spaces are designed and look at how they could be different. Verkade and te Brömmelstroet draw inspiration from the Netherlands and look at what other countries are doing, and could do, to diversify how they use their streets and make them safer.
Making our communities safer, cleaner, and greener starts with asking these fundamental questions: who do our streets belong to, how do we want to use them, and who gets to decide? To truly transform mobility, we need to look far beyond the technical aspects and put people at the center of urban design. Movement will change the way that you view our streets.
Making our communities safer, cleaner, and greener starts with asking these fundamental questions: who do our streets belong to, how do we want to use them, and who gets to decide? To truly transform mobility, we need to look far beyond the technical aspects and put people at the center of urban design. Movement will change the way that you view our streets.
Creating the Hudson River Park
Environmental and Community Activism, Politics, and Greed
By Tom Fox
Rutgers University Press
Former Hudson River Park Conservancy president Tom Fox offers an insider’s look at the park’s expansion and the conflicts it has spawned among community activists, local politicians, and private developers. Explaining how the park’s current problems might be surmounted, he provides a model for future urban planners.
Sites of Conscience
Place, Memory, and the Project of Deinstitutionalization
Edited by Elisabeth Punzi and Linda Steele
UBC Press
Sites of Conscience charts the importance of public engagement with histories, memories, and lived experiences of institutions in forging new directions in social justice with and for disabled people and people experiencing mental distress, in a context where deinstitutionalization has failed to fully recognise, redress, and repair the ongoing impacts of institutions.
Empathic Design
Perspectives on Creating Inclusive Spaces
Edited by Elgin Cleckley
Island Press
How do you experience a public space? Do you feel safe? Seen? Represented? The response to these questions may differ based on factors including your race, age, ethnicity, or gender identity. In Empathic Design, designer and architecture professor Elgin Cleckley brings together leaders and visionaries in architecture, urban design, planning, and design activism to explore what it means to design with empathy. Empathic designers work with and in the communities affected. They acknowledge the full history of a place and approach the lived experience and memories of those in the community with respect.
Contributors explore broader conceptual approaches and highlight design projects including the Harriet Tubman Memorial in Newark, which replaced a long-standing statue of Christopher Columbus; and restoration of the Freedom Center in Oklahoma City, first built by civil activist Clara Luper to provide a safe place for gathering and youth education; and The Camp Barker Memorial in Washington, D.C., which commemorates a “contraband camp” used to house former slaves who had been captured by the Union Army.
Empathic Design provides essential approaches and methods from multiple perspectives, meeting the needs of our time and holding space for readers to find themselves.
Contributors explore broader conceptual approaches and highlight design projects including the Harriet Tubman Memorial in Newark, which replaced a long-standing statue of Christopher Columbus; and restoration of the Freedom Center in Oklahoma City, first built by civil activist Clara Luper to provide a safe place for gathering and youth education; and The Camp Barker Memorial in Washington, D.C., which commemorates a “contraband camp” used to house former slaves who had been captured by the Union Army.
Empathic Design provides essential approaches and methods from multiple perspectives, meeting the needs of our time and holding space for readers to find themselves.
Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation
Island Press
Our population is aging—by 2034, the US will have more people over 65 than under 18, and older residents make up a disproportionate number of casualties from natural disasters. In Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation, community resilience and housing expert Danielle Arigoni argues that we cannot achieve true resilience until communities adopt interventions that work to meet the needs of their oldest residents.
Arigoni explores how to integrate age-friendly resilience into community planning and disaster preparedness efforts through new planning approaches. These include an age-friendly process, and a planning framework dedicated to inclusive disaster recovery.
Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation will help professionals and concerned citizens understand how to best plan for both the aging of our population and the climate changes underway to create communities that serve the needs of older adults better, not only during disasters but for all the days in between.
Arigoni explores how to integrate age-friendly resilience into community planning and disaster preparedness efforts through new planning approaches. These include an age-friendly process, and a planning framework dedicated to inclusive disaster recovery.
Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation will help professionals and concerned citizens understand how to best plan for both the aging of our population and the climate changes underway to create communities that serve the needs of older adults better, not only during disasters but for all the days in between.
Beyond Greenways
The Next Step for City Trails and Walking Routes
Island Press
Would you experience your city differently if your doorstep were a trailhead? Many people don’t have close-by, safe places to walk, despite walking’s known benefits. In Beyond Greenways: The Next Step for City Trails and Walking Routes, greenways expert Robert Searns introduces a new generation of more accessible pathways that stitch together urban and suburban areas.
Searns introduces two models—grand loop trails and town walks. Grand loop trails are 20 to 350-mile systems that encircle metro areas. Town walks are shorter—2 to 6-mile routes in cities. He then lays out how to plan, design, and build support for them, drawing inspiration from trails in the US and abroad.
Planners, trail advocates, and community leaders will find the tools here to develop successful and affordable trails. Now is the time to pursue accessible pedestrian routes for this, and future, generations.
Searns introduces two models—grand loop trails and town walks. Grand loop trails are 20 to 350-mile systems that encircle metro areas. Town walks are shorter—2 to 6-mile routes in cities. He then lays out how to plan, design, and build support for them, drawing inspiration from trails in the US and abroad.
Planners, trail advocates, and community leaders will find the tools here to develop successful and affordable trails. Now is the time to pursue accessible pedestrian routes for this, and future, generations.
Condoland
The Planning, Design, and Development of Toronto’s CityPlace
By James T. White and John Punter
UBC Press
In an era of frantic vertical urbanization known as “condoism,” Condoland explores the planning and design of Toronto’s CityPlace, one of North America’s largest residential development projects – and reveals what can happen when the real estate industry comes to dominate city planning.
Crossing Paths Crossing Perspectives
Urban Studies in British Columbia and Quebec
Edited by Meg Holden and Sandra Breux
Les Presses de l'Université Laval, Laval University Press
The Freedom of the City
By Charles Downing Lay; Introduction by Thomas Campanella
Island Press
Published in 1926, The Freedom of the City by Charles Downing Lay is an eloquent and timely defense of urbanism and city life. Award-winning author and urban historian Thomas J. Campanella has given Lay’s text new life and relevance, with the addition of explanatory notes, imagery, an introduction, and biographical essay, to bring this important work to a new generation of urbanists.
Campanella writes “The Freedom of the City was prescient in 1926 and timely now. Certainly, the essentials of good urbanism extolled in the book—human scale, diversity, walkability, the serendipities of the street; above all, density—are articles of faith among architects and urbanists today.”
Lay’s words are relevant today as density and congestion are once again under siege, especially in our most productive and thriving cities.
Campanella writes “The Freedom of the City was prescient in 1926 and timely now. Certainly, the essentials of good urbanism extolled in the book—human scale, diversity, walkability, the serendipities of the street; above all, density—are articles of faith among architects and urbanists today.”
Lay’s words are relevant today as density and congestion are once again under siege, especially in our most productive and thriving cities.
Place and Prosperity
How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate
Island Press
In Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate, urban planning expert William Fulton takes an engaging look at the importance of connecting to place, how cities are engines of prosperity, and how these two ideas – place and prosperity – lie at the heart of what a city is and, by extension, what our society is all about.
Fulton has been writing about cities over his forty-year career as a journalist, professor, mayor, planning director, and the director of an urban think tank in one of America’s great cities. Place and Prosperity is a curated collection of his writings with new and updated selections and framing material.
Fulton shows that at their best, cities not only inspire and uplift us, but they make our daily life more convenient, more fulfilling, and more prosperous.
Fulton has been writing about cities over his forty-year career as a journalist, professor, mayor, planning director, and the director of an urban think tank in one of America’s great cities. Place and Prosperity is a curated collection of his writings with new and updated selections and framing material.
Fulton shows that at their best, cities not only inspire and uplift us, but they make our daily life more convenient, more fulfilling, and more prosperous.
Managing the Climate Crisis
Designing and Building for Floods, Heat, Drought, and Wildfire
By Jonathan Barnett and Matthijs Bouw
Island Press
Natural disasters from heat waves to coastal and river flooding will inevitably become worse because of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Managing them is possible, but planners, designers, and policymakers need to advance adaptation and preventative measures now.
Managing the Climate Crisis: Designing and Building for Floods, Heat, Drought and Wildfire by design and planning experts Jonathan Barnett and Matthijs Bouw is a practical guide to addressing this urgent national security problem. Barnett and Bouw draw from the latest scientific findings and include many recent, real-world examples to illustrate how to manage seven climate-related threats: flooding along coastlines, river flooding, flash floods from extreme rain events, drought, wildfire, long periods of high heat, and food shortages.
Managing the Climate Crisis: Designing and Building for Floods, Heat, Drought and Wildfire by design and planning experts Jonathan Barnett and Matthijs Bouw is a practical guide to addressing this urgent national security problem. Barnett and Bouw draw from the latest scientific findings and include many recent, real-world examples to illustrate how to manage seven climate-related threats: flooding along coastlines, river flooding, flash floods from extreme rain events, drought, wildfire, long periods of high heat, and food shortages.
Making Healthy Places, Second Edition
Designing and Building for Well-Being, Equity, and Sustainability
Island Press
Making Healthy Places surveys the many intersections between health and the built environment, from the scale of buildings to the scale of metro areas, and across a range of outcomes, from cardiovascular health and infectious disease to social connectedness and happiness. This new edition is significantly updated, with a special emphasis on equity and sustainability, and takes a global perspective. It provides current evidence not only on how poorly designed places may threaten well-being, but also on solutions that have been found to be effective.
Making Healthy Places is a must-read for students, academics, and professionals in health, architecture, urban planning, civil engineering, parks and recreation, and related fields.
Making Healthy Places is a must-read for students, academics, and professionals in health, architecture, urban planning, civil engineering, parks and recreation, and related fields.
City Forward
How Innovation Districts Can Embrace Risk and Strengthen Community
By Matt Enstice and Mike Gluck
Island Press
Innovation districts and anchor institutions—like hospitals and universities—drive economic growth. But the benefits often fail to reach the very neighborhoods they are built in. As CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC), Matt Enstice fosters a different, collaborative approach. City Forward explains how BNMC promotes a shared goal of equity among companies and institutions with diverse motivations. Offering a candid look at BNMC’s setbacks and successes, along with efforts from other institutions nationwide, Enstice shares twelve strategies that innovation districts can harness to weave equity into their core work.
Institutional leadership, business owners, and professionals will find experienced direction here. City Forward is a refreshing look at the brighter futures that we can create through thoughtful collaboration—moving forward, together.
Institutional leadership, business owners, and professionals will find experienced direction here. City Forward is a refreshing look at the brighter futures that we can create through thoughtful collaboration—moving forward, together.
Arbitrary Lines
How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It
Island Press
It’s time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities.
Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city.
Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life—where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up.
Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city.
Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life—where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up.
The Heart of Toronto
Corporate Power, Civic Activism, and the Remaking of Downtown Yonge Street
By Daniel Ross
UBC Press
From the sidewalk to City Hall, in the corporate boardroom, and around the kitchen table, The Heart of Toronto traces the power dynamics and projects that have transformed downtown Toronto.
Climate Change and U.S. Cities
Urban Systems, Sectors, and Prospects for Action
Island Press, NCA Regional Input Reports
From roads to clean water systems, the built infrastructure sustaining urban populations is increasingly vulnerable to climate. Understanding the dilemma and identifying a path forward is particularly important as cities are significant agents of climate action.
A follow-up to the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA), Climate Change and U.S. Cities documents the current and future climate risk for U.S. cities, urban systems, and their residents. It is an examination of research findings since early 2012, with a critical emphasis on the cross-cutting factors of economics, equity, and governance.
Urban stakeholders and decision makers will gain an understanding of climate risks and a set of conclusions and recommendations for action. Climate Change and U.S. Cities boldly lays out the tools that cities must harness to effect decisive, meaningful change.
A follow-up to the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA), Climate Change and U.S. Cities documents the current and future climate risk for U.S. cities, urban systems, and their residents. It is an examination of research findings since early 2012, with a critical emphasis on the cross-cutting factors of economics, equity, and governance.
Urban stakeholders and decision makers will gain an understanding of climate risks and a set of conclusions and recommendations for action. Climate Change and U.S. Cities boldly lays out the tools that cities must harness to effect decisive, meaningful change.
Dream Play Build
Hands-On Community Engagement for Enduring Spaces and Places
By James Rojas and John Kamp
Island Press
People love their communities and want them to become safer, healthier, more prosperous places. But the standard approach to public meetings somehow makes everyone miserable. Conversations that should be inspiring can become shouting matches. So what would it look like to facilitate truly meaningful discussions? What if they could be fun?
For twenty years, James Rojas and John Kamp have been using art, creative expression, and storytelling to shake up the classic community meeting. In Dream Play Build, they share their insights into building common ground and inviting active participation among diverse groups. Their approach, “Place It!,” draws on three methods: the interactive model-building workshop, the pop-up, and site exploration using our senses. Inspirational and fun, this book celebrates the value of engaging with the dreams we have for our communities.
For twenty years, James Rojas and John Kamp have been using art, creative expression, and storytelling to shake up the classic community meeting. In Dream Play Build, they share their insights into building common ground and inviting active participation among diverse groups. Their approach, “Place It!,” draws on three methods: the interactive model-building workshop, the pop-up, and site exploration using our senses. Inspirational and fun, this book celebrates the value of engaging with the dreams we have for our communities.
Cities for Life
How Communities Can Recover from Trauma and Rebuild for Health
Island Press
In cities around the world, planning and health experts are beginning to understand the role of social and environmental conditions that lead to trauma. By respecting the lived experience of those who were most impacted by harms, some cities have developed innovative solutions for urban trauma.
In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-makers in these cities over a ten-year period, as individuals and communities worked to heal from trauma—including from gun violence, housing and food insecurity, poverty, and other harms. Cities for Life is about a new way forward with urban communities that rebuilds our social institutions, practices, and policies to be more focused on healing and health.
In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-makers in these cities over a ten-year period, as individuals and communities worked to heal from trauma—including from gun violence, housing and food insecurity, poverty, and other harms. Cities for Life is about a new way forward with urban communities that rebuilds our social institutions, practices, and policies to be more focused on healing and health.
Curbing Traffic
The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives
By Chris Bruntlett and Melissa Bruntlett
Island Press
In Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives, mobility experts Melissa and Chris Bruntlett chronicle their experience living in the Netherlands and the benefits that result from treating cars as visitors rather than owners of the road. They weave their personal story with research and interviews with experts and Delft locals to help readers share the experience of living in a city designed for people.
Their insights will help decision makers and advocates to better understand and communicate the human impacts of low-car cities: lower anxiety and stress, increased independence, social autonomy, inclusion, and improved mental and physical wellbeing.
Curbing Traffic provides relatable, emotional, and personal reasons why it matters and inspiration for exporting the low-car city.
Their insights will help decision makers and advocates to better understand and communicate the human impacts of low-car cities: lower anxiety and stress, increased independence, social autonomy, inclusion, and improved mental and physical wellbeing.
Curbing Traffic provides relatable, emotional, and personal reasons why it matters and inspiration for exporting the low-car city.
Recast Your City
How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing
By Ilana Preuss
Island Press
In Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing, community development expert Ilana Preuss explains how local leaders can revitalize their downtowns or neighborhood main streets by bringing in and supporting small-scale manufacturing. Small-scale manufacturing businesses help create thriving places, with local business ownership opportunities and well-paying jobs that other business types can’t fulfill.
Preuss draws from her experience working with local governments, large and small, from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Columbia, Missouri, to Fremont, California. She provides tools, such as her five-step method for recasting your city, that local leaders in government, business, and real estate as well as entrepreneurs and advocates in every community can use.
Preuss draws from her experience working with local governments, large and small, from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Columbia, Missouri, to Fremont, California. She provides tools, such as her five-step method for recasting your city, that local leaders in government, business, and real estate as well as entrepreneurs and advocates in every community can use.
A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation
Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy
Island Press
Tens of millions of Americans are at risk from sea level rise, increased tidal flooding, and intensifying storms. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation identifies a bold new research and policy agenda and provides implementable options for coastal communities responding to these threats. In this book, coastal adaptation experts present a range of climate adaptation policies that could protect coastal communities against increasing risk, including concrete financing recommendations. Coastal adaptation will not be easy, but it is achievable using varied approaches. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation will inspire innovative and cross-disciplinary thinking about coastal policy at the state and local level while providing actionable, realistic policy and planning options for adaptation professionals and policymakers.
Evaluating Urban and Regional Plans
From Theory to Practice
By Mark Seasons
UBC Press
The first text of its kind in Canada, Evaluating Urban and Regional Plans provides both a theoretical foundation and pragmatic guidance for plan evaluation.
Right of Way
Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America
By Angie Schmitt; Foreword by Charles T. Brown
Island Press
In Right of Way, journalist Angie Schmitt shows that pedestrian traffic deaths are not unavoidable “accidents,” They are predictable, occurring in stark geographic patterns that tell a story about systemic inequality. These deaths are the forgotten faces of an increasingly urgent public health crisis that we have the tools, but not the will, to solve.
Schmitt examines the increase in pedestrian deaths in the US as well as programs and movements that are beginning to respond to the epidemic. Right of Way is a call to reframe the problem, acknowledge the role of racism and classism in the public response to these deaths, and energize advocacy around road safety.
Right of Way unveils a crisis that is rooted in both inequality and the undeterred reign of the automobile in our cities. It challenges us to imagine and demand safer and more equitable cities, where no one is expendable.
Schmitt examines the increase in pedestrian deaths in the US as well as programs and movements that are beginning to respond to the epidemic. Right of Way is a call to reframe the problem, acknowledge the role of racism and classism in the public response to these deaths, and energize advocacy around road safety.
Right of Way unveils a crisis that is rooted in both inequality and the undeterred reign of the automobile in our cities. It challenges us to imagine and demand safer and more equitable cities, where no one is expendable.
Landed Internationals
Planning Cultures, the Academy, and the Making of the Modern Middle East
By Burak Erdim
University of Texas Press
Landed Internationals explores how postwar encounters in housing and planning helped transform the dynamics of international development and challenged American modernity.
Parks and Recreation System Planning
A New Approach for Creating Sustainable, Resilient Communities
By David Barth
Island Press
Parks and recreation systems have evolved in remarkable ways over the past two decades. No longer just playgrounds and ballfields, parks and open spaces have become recognized as essential green infrastructure with the potential to contribute to community resiliency and sustainability. To capitalize on this potential, the parks and recreation system planning process must evolve as well. In Parks and Recreation System Planning, David Barth draws on real-world examples to provide a step-by-step approach to creating parks systems that generate greater economic, social, and environmental benefits. Chapters outline each step—evaluating existing systems, implementing a carefully crafted plan, and more—necessary for creating a successful, adaptable system.
Missing Middle Housing
Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis
Island Press
Daniel Parolek, an architect and urban designer, illustrates the power of Missing Middle housing types—such as duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts— to meet today’s diverse housing needs. With the benefit of beautiful full-color graphics, Parolek goes into depth about the benefits and qualities of Missing Middle Housing, explains why more developers should be building them, and defines the barriers cities need to remove to enable them to be built.
Parolek proves that density is too blunt of an instrument to effectively regulate for twenty-first-century housing needs. Whether you are a planner, architect, builder, or city leader, Missing Middle Housing will help you think differently about how to address housing needs for today’s communities.
Parolek proves that density is too blunt of an instrument to effectively regulate for twenty-first-century housing needs. Whether you are a planner, architect, builder, or city leader, Missing Middle Housing will help you think differently about how to address housing needs for today’s communities.
DIY City
The Collective Power of Small Actions
By Hank Dittmar
Island Press
Hank Dittmar, urban planner, friend of artists and creatives, sometime rancher, “high priest of town planning” to the Prince of Wales, believed in letting small things happen. Looking at the global cities of the world, he saw a crisis of success, with gentrification and global capital driving up home prices in some cities, while others decayed for lack of investment.
In DIY City, Dittmar explains why individual initiative, small-scale business, and small development matter, with lively stories from his own experience and examples from recent history.
Dittmar’s timely response to the challenges many cities face today is to make Do-It-Yourself the norm rather than the exception by removing the barriers to small-scale building and local business. The message of DIY City can offer hope to anyone who cares about cities.
In DIY City, Dittmar explains why individual initiative, small-scale business, and small development matter, with lively stories from his own experience and examples from recent history.
Dittmar’s timely response to the challenges many cities face today is to make Do-It-Yourself the norm rather than the exception by removing the barriers to small-scale building and local business. The message of DIY City can offer hope to anyone who cares about cities.
Learning from Bryant Park
Revitalizing Cities, Towns, and Public Spaces
Rutgers University Press
Andrew M. Manshel helped transform New York’s Bryant Park from a blighted eyesore to a vibrant destination, then applied its strategies to an equally successful renewal project in a very different neighborhood: Jamaica, Queens. Here, he candidly describes what does (and doesn’t) work when coordinating urban redevelopment projects.
Changing Neighbourhoods
Social and Spatial Polarization in Canadian Cities
UBC Press
Changing Neighbourhoods offers revealing insights into the way that Canadian cities have grown increasingly unequal and polarized since 1980, identifying the causal factors driving neighbourhood change and their troubling implications.
Designing the Megaregion
Meeting Urban Challenges at a New Scale
Island Press
In Designing the Megaregion, planning and urban design expert Jonathan Barnett takes a fresh look at designing megaregions. Barnett argues that planning megaregions requires ecological literacy and a renewed commitment to social equity in order to address the increasing pressure that growth puts on natural, built, and human resources. If current trends continue, new construction in megaregions will put additional stress on natural resources, make highway gridlock and airline delays much worse, and cause each region to become more separate and unequal. Barnett offers an incremental approach to designing at the megaregional scale that will help prepare for future economic and population growth.
There is an urgent need to begin designing megaregions, and Barnett offers a hopeful way forward using systems that are already in place.
There is an urgent need to begin designing megaregions, and Barnett offers a hopeful way forward using systems that are already in place.
Five Rules for Tomorrow's Cities
Design in an Age of Urban Migration, Demographic Change, and a Disappearing Middle Class
Island Press
As urban designers respond to the critical issue of climate change they must also address three cresting cultural waves: the worldwide rural-to-urban migration; the collapse of global fertility rates; and the disappearance of the middle class. In Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities, planning and design expert Patrick Condon offers five rules to help urban designers assimilate these interconnected changes into their work: (1) See the City as a System; (2) Recognize Patterns in the Urban Environment; (3) Apply Lighter, Greener, Smarter Infrastructure; (4) Strengthen Social and Economic Urban Resilience; and (5) Adapt to Shifts in Jobs, Retail, and Wages.
Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities provides grounded and financially feasible design examples for tomorrow’s sustainable cities, and the design tools needed to achieve them.
Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities provides grounded and financially feasible design examples for tomorrow’s sustainable cities, and the design tools needed to achieve them.
Planning on the Edge
Vancouver and the Challenges of Reconciliation, Social Justice, and Sustainable Development
Edited by Penny Gurstein and Tom Hutton
UBC Press
Planning on the Edge explores the reality behind the rhetoric of Vancouver’s reputation as a sustainable city and paves the way for developing Vancouver and its region into a place that is both economically sustainable and socially just.
My Kind of City
Collected Essays of Hank Dittmar
By Hank Dittmar
Island Press
In My Kind of City, Dittmar has organized his selected writings into ten sections with original introductions. His observations range on scale from local (“My Favorite Street: Seven Dials, Covent Garden, London”) to national (“Post Truth Architecture in the Age of Trump”) and global (“Architects are Critical to Adapting our Cities to Climate Change”). Andrés Duany writes of Hank in the book foreword, “He has continued to search for ways to engage place, community and history in order to avoid the tempting formalism of plans.”
The range of topics covered in My Kind of City reflects the breadth of Dittmar’s experience in working for better cities for people. Common themes emerge in the engaging prose including Dittmar’s belief that improving our cities should not be left to the “experts”; his appreciation for the beautiful and the messy; and his rare combination of deep expertise and modesty. As Lynn Richards, CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism expresses in the preface, “Hank’s writing is smart without being elitist, witty and poetic, succinct and often surprising.”
My Kind of City captures a visionary planner’s spirit, eye for beauty, and love for the places where we live.
The range of topics covered in My Kind of City reflects the breadth of Dittmar’s experience in working for better cities for people. Common themes emerge in the engaging prose including Dittmar’s belief that improving our cities should not be left to the “experts”; his appreciation for the beautiful and the messy; and his rare combination of deep expertise and modesty. As Lynn Richards, CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism expresses in the preface, “Hank’s writing is smart without being elitist, witty and poetic, succinct and often surprising.”
My Kind of City captures a visionary planner’s spirit, eye for beauty, and love for the places where we live.
Climate Action Planning
A Guide to Creating Low-Carbon, Resilient Communities
Island Press
Climate Action Planning is designed to help professionals working at local levels to develop and implement plans to mitigate a community's greenhouse gas emissions and increase the resilience of communities against climate change impacts. This fully revised and expanded edition goes well beyond climate action plans to examine the mix of policy and planning instruments available to every community.
Climate Action Planning is the most comprehensive book on the state of the art, science, and practice of local climate action planning. It should be a first stop for any local government interested in addressing climate change.
Climate Action Planning is the most comprehensive book on the state of the art, science, and practice of local climate action planning. It should be a first stop for any local government interested in addressing climate change.
Vancouverism
UBC Press, On Point Press
This is the remarkable story, told by a key insider, about Vancouver’s dramatic transformation from a typical mid-sized North American city into an inspiring world-class metropolis celebrated for its liveability, sustainability, and vibrancy.
The Heart of the City
Creating Vibrant Downtowns for a New Century
Island Press
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.
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.
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