San Francisco is known and loved around the world for its iconic man-made structures, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Transamerica Pyramid. Yet its Civic Center, with the grandest collection of monumental municipal buildings in the United States, is often overlooked, drawing less global and local interest, despite its being an urban planning marvel featuring thirteen government office and cultural buildings. In The San Francisco Civic Center, James Haas tells the complete story of San Francisco’s Civic Center and how it became one of the most complete developments envisioned by any American city. Originally planned and designed by John Galen Howard in 1912, the San Francisco Civic Center is considered in both design and materials one of the finest achievements of the American reformist City Beautiful movement, an urban design movement that began more than a century ago. Haas meticulously unravels the Civic Center’s story of perseverance and dysfunction, providing an understanding and appreciation of this local and national treasure. He discusses why the Civic Center was built, how it became central to the urban planning initiatives of San Francisco in the early twentieth century, and how the site held onto its founders’ vision despite heated public debates about its function and achievement. He also delves into the vision for the future and related national trends in city planning and the architectural and art movements that influenced those trends. Riddled with inspiration and leadership as well as controversy, The San Francisco Civic Center, much like the complex itself, is a stunning manifestation of the confident spirit of one of America’s most dynamic and creative cities.

The Plan of Nashville is a community-based vision of how the urban core of Nashville should look and work in the 21st century. The purpose is to help the central city hold its place in civic life. Since Nashville assumed a metropolitan form of government - merging city and county - there have been almost a hundred plans that dealt with some aspect of the center city. This plan is different. The Plan was conceived and orchestrated by the Nashville Civic Design Center, which is committed to the practice of urban design. This three-dimensional discipline integrates streets and buildings, land use and transportation - a new approach for Nashville. As a private not-for-profit, the center listens with independent ears and speaks with an independent voice. Previous plans by Metro government departments and their consultants were constrained by politics and patronage, by available funding or the need to solve specific problems. Plan of Nashville is not an island bound by the noose of the interstate loop. The Plan integrates downtown with the areas that frame it via the spoke roads that are the historic entries into downtown. Rather than taking a top down approach, the design center organized the process of listening to the community. Over 400 citizens attended a series of workshops in downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods to express their opinions and draw their dreams. The center's staff translated the results into a series of maps and illustrations, with explanatory text - that articulate a three-dimensional vision for the city that will serve as a litmus test for current and future development.

"Reviews the history of various aspects of planning in St. Louis City and County and provides insight into planning successes and challenges"--Provided by publisher.