With a comprehensive analysis, this book links theory, evidence and practical application to bridge gaps between planning, design and criminology. The authors investigate connections between crime prevention and development planning with an international approach, looking at initiatives in the field and incorporating an understanding of current responses to the growth of technology and terrorism.
Drawing on the experience of several cities from different parts of the world, this text provides a global perspective on the urbanization phenomenon and tall building development, and examines their underlying logic, design drivers, contextual relationships and pitfalls.
How well have architects succeeded in building housing and what lessons can be learned from their triumphs and failures? The Housing Design Handbook will give you a complete understanding of what makes successful housing design. Through the analysis of work by Levitt Bernstein and a wide range of other UK practices, it illustrates good design principles and accumulates a wealth of knowledge in a readily accessible format for the first time. Written by a recognised authority in the field, the book provides: a range of cases to illustrate the way that different issues in the design of housing have been approached and with what degree of success a review of the place of housing as the most significant built form in the urban landscape an understanding of the importance of achieving a sense of place as the bedrock of social continuity a discussion of how flexibility might be achieved in order to accommodate future changes in housing need, if wholesale demolition and replacement is to be avoided more recent examples which explore why certain social groupings are more resistant to design innovation than others and why there has been such an architectural breakthrough in market led, higher density urban living. David Levitt examines the ideas behind the schemes and assesses how successful and sustainable those ideas have proved, making this an essential reference for professionals and students practicing and studying the design and commissioning of housing.
Tensions over the production of urban public space came to the fore in summer 2013 with mass protests in Turkey sparked by a plan to redevelop Taksim Gezi Park, Istanbul. In London, concomitant proposals to refurbish an area of the ’South Bank’ historically used by skateboarders were similarly met by staunch opposition. Through an in-depth ethnographic examination of London’s South Bank, this book explores multiple dimensions of the production of urban public space. Drawing on user accounts of the significance of public space, as well as observations of how the South Bank is ’practised’ on a daily basis, it argues that public space is valued not only for its essential material characteristics but also for the productive potential that these characteristics, if properly managed, afford on a daily basis. At a time when policy-makers, urban planners and law enforcement authorities simultaneously grapple with pressures to deal with social 'problems' (such as street drinking, vandalism, and skateboarding) and accusations that new modes of urban planning and civic management infringe upon civil liberties and dilute the publicity of ’public’ space, this book offers an insightful account of the daily exigencies of public spaces. In so doing, it questions the utility of the public/private binary for our understanding both of common urban space and of different sets of social practices, and points towards the need to be attentive to productive processes in how we understand and experience urban open space as public.
This book highlights various designs for urban green spaces and their functions. It provides an interesting meeting point between Asian, European and North America specialists (researchers, planners, landscape architects) studying urban biodiversity; urban biodiversity and green space; relations between people and biodiversity. The most important feature of this book is the unique point of view from each contributor towards “the relationship between nature and people in urban areas”, in the context of the ecosystem and biodiversity in urban areas and how to manage them. All chapters explore and consider the relationship between humans and nature in cities, a subject which is taking on increasing importance as new cities are conceptualized and planned. These discussion and examples would be useful for urban ecology researchers, biologists, city planners, government staff working in city planning, architects, landscape architects, and university instructors. This book can also be used as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate city planning, architecture or landscape architecture courses.
