New towns—large, comprehensively planned developments on newly urbanized land—boast a mix of spaces that, in their ideal form, provide opportunities for all of the activities of daily life. From garden cities to science cities, new capitals to large military facilities, hundreds were built in the twentieth century and their approaches to planning and development were influential far beyond the new towns themselves. Although new towns are notoriously difficult to execute and their popularity has waxed and waned, major new town initiatives are increasing around the globe, notably in East Asia, South Asia, and Africa. New Towns for the Twenty-First Century considers the ideals behind new-town development, the practice of building them, and their outcomes. A roster of international and interdisciplinary contributors examines their design, planning, finances, management, governance, quality of life, and sustainability. Case studies provide histories of new towns in the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe and impart lessons learned from practitioners. The volume identifies opportunities afforded by new towns for confronting future challenges related to climate change, urban population growth, affordable housing, economic development, and quality of life. Featuring inventories of classic new towns, twentieth-century new towns with populations over 30,000, and twenty-first-century new towns, the volume is a valuable resource for governments, policy makers, and real estate developers as well as planners, designers, and educators. Contributors: Sandy Apgar, Sai Balakrishnan, JaapJan Berg, Paul Buckhurst, Felipe Correa, Carl Duke, Reid Ewing, Ann Forsyth, Robert Freestone, Shikyo Fu, Pascaline Gaborit, Elie Gamburg, Alexander Garvin, David R. Godschalk, Tony Green, ChengHe Guan, Rachel Keeton, Steven Kellenberg, Kyung-Min Kim, Gene Kohn, Todd Mansfield, Robert W. Marans, Robert Nelson, Pike Oliver, Richard Peiser, Michelle Provoost, Peter G. Rowe, Jongpil Ryu, Andrew Stokols, Adam Tanaka, Jamie von Klemperer, Fulong Wu, Ying Xu, Anthony Gar-On Yeh, Chaobin Zhou.

Often misunderstood, the New Towns story is a fascinating one of anarchists, artists, visionaries, and the promise of a new beginning for millions of people. New Towns: The Rise Fall and Rebirth offers a new perspective on the New Towns Record and uses case-studies to address the myths and realities of the programme. It provides valuable lessons for the growth and renewal of the existing New Towns and post-war housing estates and town centres, including recommendations for practitioners, politicians and communities interested in the renewal of existing New Towns and the creation of new communities for the 21st century.

The Art of Building a Garden City is a well-researched guide to the history of the garden city movement and the delivery of a new generation of communities for the 21st Century. Bringing together key findings from the TCPA’s campaign work, and drawing on lessons from the first garden cities, the new towns programme and other large-scale developments, it identifies what steps need to be taken in order to deliver the highest standards of design and place making today.

Peter Hall and Colin Ward wrote Sociable Cities to celebrate the centenary of publication of Ebenezer Howard’s To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1998 – an event they then marked by co-editing (with Dennis Hardy) the magnificent annotated facsimile edition of Howard’s original, long lost and very scarce, in 2003. In this revised edition of Sociable Cities, sadly now without Colin Ward, Peter Hall writes: ‘the sixteen years separating the two editions of this book seem almost like geological time. Revisiting the 1998 edition is like going back deep into ancient history’. The glad confident morning following Tony Blair’s election has been followed by political disillusionment, the fiscal crash, widespread austerity and a marked anti-planning stance on the part of the Coalition government. But – closely following the argument of Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism (Routledge 2013), to which this book is designed as a companion – Hall argues that the central message is now even stronger: we need more planning, not less. And this planning needs to be driven by broad, high-level strategic visions – national, regional – of the kind of country we want to see. Above all, Hall shows in the concluding chapters, Britain’s escalating housing crisis can be resolved only by a massive programme of planned decentralization from London, at least equal in scale to the great Abercrombie plan seventy years ago. He sets out a picture of great new city clusters at the periphery of South East England, sustainably self-sufficient in their daily patterns of living and working, but linked to the capital by new high-speed rail services. This is a book that every planner, and every serious student of policy-making, will want to read. Published at a time when the political parties are preparing their policy manifestos, it is designed to make a major contribution to a major national debate.

New towns—large, comprehensively planned developments on newly urbanized land—boast a mix of spaces that, in their ideal form, provide opportunities for all of the activities of daily life. From garden cities to science cities, new capitals to large military facilities, hundreds were built in the twentieth century and their approaches to planning and development were influential far beyond the new towns themselves. Although new towns are notoriously difficult to execute and their popularity has waxed and waned, major new town initiatives are increasing around the globe, notably in East Asia, South Asia, and Africa. New Towns for the Twenty-First Century considers the ideals behind new-town development, the practice of building them, and their outcomes. A roster of international and interdisciplinary contributors examines their design, planning, finances, management, governance, quality of life, and sustainability. Case studies provide histories of new towns in the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe and impart lessons learned from practitioners. The volume identifies opportunities afforded by new towns for confronting future challenges related to climate change, urban population growth, affordable housing, economic development, and quality of life. Featuring inventories of classic new towns, twentieth-century new towns with populations over 30,000, and twenty-first-century new towns, the volume is a valuable resource for governments, policy makers, and real estate developers as well as planners, designers, and educators. Contributors: Sandy Apgar, Sai Balakrishnan, JaapJan Berg, Paul Buckhurst, Felipe Correa, Carl Duke, Reid Ewing, Ann Forsyth, Robert Freestone, Shikyo Fu, Pascaline Gaborit, Elie Gamburg, Alexander Garvin, David R. Godschalk, Tony Green, ChengHe Guan, Rachel Keeton, Steven Kellenberg, Kyung-Min Kim, Gene Kohn, Todd Mansfield, Robert W. Marans, Robert Nelson, Pike Oliver, Richard Peiser, Michelle Provoost, Peter G. Rowe, Jongpil Ryu, Andrew Stokols, Adam Tanaka, Jamie von Klemperer, Fulong Wu, Ying Xu, Anthony Gar-On Yeh, Chaobin Zhou.

The two authors complement each other beautifully, one a visionary and gutsy politician, the other a gifted academic with a deep rooted social conscience. With the benefit of a century of post Letchworth Garden City knowledge and the lessons of two World Wars, their timely released book re-brands the Garden City from a social as well as a technical point of view. It says it's a manifesto for 21st Century Garden Cities of To-Morrow, but it could equally be a manifesto for decent human urban survival on our cherished Planet. It concentrates on the role of each citizen - his or her responsibilities and opportunities. It advocates restoring basic human values back to ordinary people, away from the `I'm doing you a favour' private pro-bono benefaction and/or cash-starved governmental institutions that seem to know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.

Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles. 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.