This illustrated notebook highlights the need for a change of paradigm in current flood management practices, one that acknowledges the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary benefits brought by public space design. Reassessing and improving established flood management methods, public spaces are faced with a new and enhanced role as mediators of flood adaptation able to integrate infrastructure and communities together in the management of flood water as an ultimate resource for urban resilience. The book specifically introduces a path towards a new perspective on flood adaptation through public space design, stressing the importance of local, bottom up, approaches. Deriving from a solution-directed investigation, which is particularly attentive to design, the book offers a wide range of systematized conceptual solutions of flood adaptation measures applicable in the design of public spaces. Through a commonly used vocabulary and simple technical notions, the book facilitates and accelerates the initial brainstorm phases of a public space project with flood adaptation capacities, enabling a direct application in contemporary practice. Furthermore, it offers a significant sample of real-case examples that may further assist the decision-making throughout design processes. Overall, the book envisions to challenge established professionals, such as engineers, architects or urban planners, to work and design with uncertainty in an era of an unprecedented climate.

“Maude Barlow is one of our planet’s greatest water defenders.” — Naomi Klein, bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. With its simple, straightforward approach, the movement has been growing around the world for a decade. Today, Paris, Berlin, Bern, and Montreal are just a few of the cities that have made themselves Blue Communities. In Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world. Concluding with a step-by-step guide to making your own community blue, Maude Barlow’s latest book is a heartening example of how ordinary people can effect enormous change.

In New York - wie auch in vielen anderen Großstädten - wächst die Zahl der öffentlichen Plätze, die Privatpersonen gehören und auch privat betrieben werden. Als Gegenleistung für die Schaffung dieser Plätze und Einrichtungen, erhalten die Erbauer von der Stadt Sonderkonzessionen (in der Regel für die Gebäudehöhe). Dieses Buch dokumentiert und beschreibt anhand von Fotos, Lageplänen und Karten über 300 öffentliche Plätze in New York, die in privater Hand sind. Zu den bekanntesten zählen u.a. das Trump Tower Atrium, die Sony Arkade und die Citicorp Mall. Jede Beschreibung enthält Informationen zu Größe, Fertigstellungsdatum, Architekten/Landschaftsarchitekten, Gebäudeeigentümer, Öffnungszeiten und Lage. Zu den Abbildungen gehört jeweils ein Foto sowie eine maßstabsgetreue Zeichnung, die verdeutlichen, wie sich der Bau in die angrenzende Gebäude-/Straßenlandschaft einpaßt. (y05/00)

Recent global appropriations of public spaces through urban activism, public uprising, and political protest have brought back democratic values, beliefs, and practices that have been historically associated with cities. Given the aggressive commodification of public re- sources, public space is critically important due to its capacity to enable forms of public dis- course and social practice which are fundamental for the well-being of democratic societies. Public Space Reader brings together public space scholarship by a cross-disciplinary group of academics and specialists whose essays consider fundamental questions: What is public space and how does it manifest larger cultural, social, and political processes? How are public spaces designed, socially and materially produced, and managed? How does this impact the nature and character of public experience? What roles does it play in the struggles for the just city, and the Right to The City? What critical participatory approaches can be employed to create inclusive public spaces that respond to the diverse needs, desires, and aspirations of individuals and communities alike? What are the critical global and comparative perspectives on public space that can enable further scholarly and professional work? And, what are the futures of public space in the face of global pandemics, such as COVID-19? The readers of this volume will be rewarded with an impressive array of perspectives that are bound to expand critical understanding of public space.

Kimberley Kinder explores how active residents in Amsterdam deployed their cityscape when rallying around civic concerns, turning space into a vehicle for social reform. Amsterdam's development serves as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale for cities across Europe and North America where rapid new growth creates similar pressures.

This book is about understanding, contextualizing and carrying out critical analyzes of the policies intended and/or implemented by the various public and private actors in urban public spaces, as well as the daily, or eventual, politics exercised by the organized civil society and by citizens. It presents a collection of contributions about the public space in different theoretical, conceptual and methodological approaches. Coming from different disciplines, the authors share an understanding about the need to analyze the uses and appropriations of the city by social subjects and groups as they represent difference and see the city as a place to share life experiences; as such, they argue, through their cases studies, that places of public use should be thought of and understood as concept and as social practice. As an analytic tool, the book offers a five-dimension model to explore how people relate to daily life activities and confront imposed inequalities in their meeting places, how they engage in individual and collective manifestations and/or how they symbolically appropriate public spaces in face of the late capitalism led by large corporations and globalization. Together the authors seek to contribute to a city of utopia, where all differences can be seen and dealt with in public spaces and where free individuals can present themselves and engage in a vita activa.

A comprehensive overview of the human rights to water and sanitation, exploring theoretical, conceptual, and practical aspects.