"The Color of a Great City" by Theodore Dreiser is a prime example of Dreiser's naturalist writing. Set in early 20th century New York City, the book offers readers a chance to live a few hours in the shoes of someone who called one of the most famous cities in the world home during its industrial heyday. While Dreiser typically enjoyed his character-based writing, New York City is arguably the greatest character of all, and this book makes her the star.
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.
A unique color dictionary of international urban design and phenomenal photographic reference, "The Color of Cities, by Lois Swirnoff, documents the distinctive color characteristics of cities in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The book features beautiful original color photographs by the author who is an acclaimed artist and world authority on the three-dimensional use of color, and other noted architectural photographers. Topics covered include how cultural color preferences are grounded in vision differences in different geographic locations and the similarities within diversity in streets, facades, plazas, boundaries, and marketplaces. A reference section provides you with typical color palettes for each country, complete with thumbnail photographic examples.
How did our most renowned cities grow into the metropolises we know today? This unique cartography book looks at the city plan from the Renaissance until modern times. It surveys the city during the Enlightenment, Colonialism, and Industrial Revolution; explores Asian and frontier cities; looks at the administrative city plan; and presents the modern pictorial city map. Descriptions provide historical, political, social, and/or economic context, and biographies of the cartographers highlight their contributions.
Great City Parks is a celebration of some of the finest achievements of landscape architecture in the public realm. It is a comparative study of thirty significant public parks in major cities across Western Europe and North America. Collectively, they give a clear picture of why parks have been created, how they have been designed, how they are managed, and what plans are being made for them at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Based on unique research including extensive site visits and interviews with the managing organisations, this book is illustrated throughout with clear plans and photographs– with this new edition featuring full colour throughout. Tate updates his seminal 2001 work with 10 additional parks, including: The High Line in NYC, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam. All the previous city parks have also been updated and revised to reflect current usage and management. This book reflects a belief that well planned, well designed and well managed parks and park systems will continue to make major contributions to the quality of life in an increasingly urbanized world.
A work of history, but also about art and architecture, trade and commerce, travel and exploration, economics and politics, this is above all a book about people and how, over the millennia, they have managed to live closely together. From the origins of urbanization in Mesopotamia to the global metropolises of today, great cities have marked the development of humankind Babylon and Nineveh, Athens and Rome, Istanbul and Venice, Timbuktu and Samarkand, their very names are redolent both of history and romance. The Great Cities in History tells their story from early Uruk and Thebes to Jerusalem and Alexandria. Then the fabulous cities of the first millennium: Damascus and Baghdad in the days of the Caliphates, Teotihuacan and Maya Tikal in Central America, and Changan, capital of Tang Dynasty China. The medieval world saw the rise of powerful cities: Palermo and Paris in Europe, Benin in Africa and Angkor of the Khmer. In the early modern world, we journey to Islamic Isfahan and Agra, and Prague and Amsterdam in their heyday, before arriving at the phenomenon of the contemporary mega-city: London and New York, Tokyo and Barcelona, Los Angeles and São Paulo. A galaxy of more than fifty distinguished authors, including Jan Morris, Colin Thubron, Simon Schama, Orlando Figes, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Misha Glenny, Adam Zamoyski and A. N. Wilson, evoke the character of each place and explain the reasons for its success, seeing what each city would have been like during its golden age.
