"Urban life is humankind’s biggest experiment to date, our cities are constantly evolving and adapting to climate and economy. The cities we have today are not necessarily the ones we need, but big and small innovation is rethinking visions of urbanization. Together with pioneering research and design lab SPACE10, we present future-orientated design which enhances quality of life and makes our urban spaces more vibrant. As technology and urban life edge ever closer, The Ideal City explores the ambitious actions and initiatives being brought to life across the globe to meet tomorrow’s demand in clever, forwarding-thinking ways. From pedestrian infrastructure to housing, the book uncovers what is being discussed at the forefront of urbanism through expert essays and profiles."--
The concept of the 'ideal city' is, perhaps, more important today - when planners and architects are so firmly confined by considerations of our immediate environment - than ever before. Yet it is a concept which has profoundly influenced the western world throughout history, both as a regulative model and as an inspiration. Rosenau traces the progress of the concept from biblical sources through the hellenistic and Roman empires to the Renaissance and the later Age of Enlightenment, when the emphasis shifted from religious to social considerations. She goes on to discuss the resultant nineteenth-century ideal planning, when the idea of social betterment was approached with a specific and conscious effort. This book was first published in 1983.
"In this richly illustrated book, the author explores the ability of ideal cities to stimulate reflection and change, and suggests under what conditions they might continue to exercise their vital function in relation to the urban environment of the future. The ideal cities presented by Ruth Eaton exist for the most part in the virtual domain of ideas, treading the fine line between dream and nightmare." - book jacket.
An Ideal Theater is a wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theatre movement as told by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator, Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. This celebration of the artists who came before is an exhilarating look backward, as well as toward the future, and includes contributions from: Jane Addams • William Ball • Julian Beck • Herbert Blau • Angus Bowmer • Bernard Bragg • Maurice Browne • Robert Brustein • Alison Carey • Joseph Chaikin • Harold Clurman • Dudley Cocke • Alice Lewisohn Crowley • Gordon Davidson • R. G. Davis • Doris Derby • W. E. B. Du Bois • Zelda Fichandler • Hallie Flanagan • Eva Le Gallienne • Robert E. Gard • Susan Glaspell • André Gregory • Tyrone Guthrie • John Houseman • Jules Irving • Margo Jones • Frederick H. Koch • Lawrence Langner • W. McNeil Lowry • Charles Ludlam • Judith Malina • Theodore Mann • Gilbert Moses • Michaela O’Harra • John O’Neal • Joseph Papp • Robert Porterfield • José Quintero • Bill Rauch • Bernard Sahlins • Richard Schechner • Peter Schumann • Maurice Schwartz • Gary Sinise • Ellen Stewart • Lee Strasberg • Luis Miguel Valdez • Nina Vance • Douglas Turner Ward As well as the founding visions of theatres from across the country: The Actors Studio • The Actor's Workshop • Alley Theatre • American Conservatory Theater • American Repetory Theater • Arena Stage • Barter Theatre • Bread and Puppet Theater • The Carolina Playmakers • The Chicago Little Theater • Circle in the Square Theatre • The Civic Repertory Theatre • Cornerstone Theater Company • The Federal Theatre Project • Ford Foundation Program in Humanities and the Arts • The Free Southern Theater • The Group Theatre • The Hull-House Dramatic Association • KRIGWA Players • The Living Theatre • La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club • The Mark Taper Forum • The Mercury Theatre • Minnesota Theater Company (Guthrie Theater) • The National Theatre of the Deaf • The Negro Ensemble Company • The Negro Theatre Project, Federal Theatre Project • The Neighborhood Playhouse • New Dramatists • The New York Shakespeare Festival • The Open Theater • Oregon Shakespeare Festival • The Performance Group • The Provincetown Players • The Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center • The Ridiculous Theatrical Company • Roadside Theater • The San Francisco Mime Troupe • The Second City • Steppenwolf Theatre Company • El Teatro Campesino • Theater '47 • The Theatre Guild • The Theatre of the Living Arts • The Washington Square Players • The Wisconsin Idea Theater • Yale Repertory Theatre • The Yiddish Art Theatre Todd London is in his 18th season as artistic director of New Dramatists, the nation’s oldest center for the creative and professional development of American playwrights. In 2009 Todd became the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) Visionary Leadership Award for “an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theater field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.” He’s the author of The Importance of Staying Earnest: Writings from Inside the American Theatre, 1988-2013 (NoPassport Press), Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (with Ben Pesner, Theatre Development Fund), The Artistic Home (TCG), and The World’s Room, a novel (Steerforth Press), among others. His column, “A Lover’s Guide to American Playwrights,” tributes to contemporary
A sweeping history of American cities and towns, and the utopian aspirations that shaped them, by one of America’s leading urban planners and scholars. The first European settlers saw America as a paradise regained. The continent seemed to offer a God-given opportunity to start again and build the perfect community. Those messianic days are gone. But as Alex Krieger argues in City on a Hill, any attempt at deep understanding of how the country has developed must recognize the persistent and dramatic consequences of utopian dreaming. Even as ideals have changed, idealism itself has for better and worse shaped our world of bricks and mortar, macadam, parks, and farmland. As he traces this uniquely American story from the Pilgrims to the “smart city,” Krieger delivers a striking new history of our built environment. The Puritans were the first utopians, seeking a New Jerusalem in the New England villages that still stand as models of small-town life. In the Age of Revolution, Thomas Jefferson dreamed of citizen farmers tending plots laid out across the continent in a grid of enlightened rationality. As industrialization brought urbanization, reformers answered emerging slums with a zealous crusade of grand civic architecture and designed the vast urban parks vital to so many cities today. The twentieth century brought cycles of suburban dreaming and urban renewal—one generation’s utopia forming the next one’s nightmare—and experiments as diverse as Walt Disney’s EPCOT, hippie communes, and Las Vegas. Krieger’s compelling and richly illustrated narrative reminds us, as we formulate new ideals today, that we chase our visions surrounded by the glories and failures of dreams gone by.
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.
This book is a critical reappraisal of contemporary theories of urban planning and design and of the role of the architect-planner in an urban context. The authors, rejecting the grand utopian visions of "total planning" and "total design," propose instead a "collage city" which can accommodate a whole range of utopias in miniature.
Winner of the Gold Award in the Tenth Annual Robert Bruss Real Estate Book Competition 24 Hour Cities is the very first full length book about America’s cities that never sleep. Over the last fifty years, the nation’s top live-work-play cities have proven themselves more than just vibrant urban environments for the elite. They are attracting a cross-section of the population from across the U.S. and are preferred destinations for immigrants of all income strata. This is creating a virtuous circle wherein economic growth enhances property values, stronger real estate markets sustain more reliable tax bases, and solid municipal revenues pay for better services that further attract businesses and talented individuals. Yet, just a generation ago, cities like New York, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, and Miami were broke (financially and physically), scarred by violence, and prime examples of urban dysfunction. How did the turnaround happen? And why are other cities still stuck with the hollow downtowns and sprawling suburbs that make for a 9-to-5 urban configuration? Hugh Kelly’s cross-disciplinary research identifies the ingredients of success, and the recipe that puts them together.
This book gathers more than 150 peer-reviewed papers presented at the 5th INTBAU International Annual Event, held in Milan, Italy, in July 2017. The book represents an invaluable and up-to-date international exchange of research, case studies and best practice to confront the challenges of designing places, building cultural landscapes and enabling the development of communities. The papers investigate methodologies of representation, communication and valorization of historic urban landscapes and cultural heritage, monitoring conservation management, cultural issues in heritage assessment, placemaking and local identity enhancement, as well as reconstruction of settlements affected by disasters. With contributions from leading experts, including university researchers, professionals and policy makers, the book addresses all who seek to understand and address the challenges faced in the protection and enhancement of the heritage that has been created.
A visionary tract of 1960s Soviet urbanism in a handsome facsimile edition In 1968, lauded American architect Mary Otis Stevens (born 1928) and her partner, fellow architect Thomas McNulty (1919-84), initiated i Press, the influential imprint that focuses on the social context of architecture. Over the next five years, the duo released five books under the thematic umbrella of "Human Environment" with the publisher George Braziller. The first of this series, The Ideal Communist City(1969) is an English translation of urban concepts advanced by architects and planners from the University of Moscow. The book was first published in a Soviet journal of a communist youth organization in 1960 and was then republished in Italy in 1968. Offering a new way of thinking about mobility, equity and social interaction in neighborhood planning, The Ideal Communist Citywas a direct response to suburban development and its focus on private spaces for family life: "the new city is a world belonging to all and each" where life is "structured by freely chosen relationships representing the fullest, most well-rounded aspects of each human personality." This publication is a facsimile of The Ideal Communist City, with additional texts by architectural historians and the editors.
