An authoritative - and fascinating - investigation into the spatial and social dynamics of cities at a global scale Shaping Cities in an Urban Age is the third addition to Phaidon's hugely successful Urban Age series, published in collaboration with the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft (AHG). Generously illustrated with photographs, visual data, and statistics, and featuring a series of essays written by leading people in their fields, Shaping Cities in an Urban Age addresses our most urgent contemporary and future urban issues by examining a set of key forces that have combined to create the city as we know it today. From the publisher of The Endless City and Living in the Endless City.

Shaping Smart for Better Cities powerfully demonstrates the range of theoretical and practical challenges, opportunities and success factors involved in successfully deploying digital technologies in cities, focusing on the importance of recognizing local context and multi-layered urban relationships in designing successful urban interventions. The first section, ‘Rethinking Smart (in) Places’ interrogates the smart city from a theoretical vantage point. The second part, ‘Shaping Smart Places’ examines various case studies critically. Hence the volume offers an intellectual resource that expands on the current literature, but also provides a pedagogical resource to universities as well as a reflective opportunity for practitioners. The cases allow for an examination of the practical implications of smart interventions in space, whilst the theoretical reflections enable expansion of the literature. Students are encouraged to learn from case studies and apply that learning in design. Academics will gain from the learning embedded in the documentation of the case studies in different geographic contexts, while practitioners can apply their learning to the conceptualisation of new forms of technology use. Demonstrates how to adapt smart urban interventions for hyper-local context in geographic parameters, spatial relationships, and socio-political characteristics Provides a problem-solving approach based on specific smart place examples, applicable to real-life urban management Offers insights from numerous case studies of smart cities interventions in real civic spaces

Picture your downtown vacant, boarded up, while the malls surrounding your city are thriving. What would you do? In 1974 the politicians, merchants, community leaders, and business and property owners, of Ithaca, New York, joined together to transform main street into a pedestrian mall. Cornell University began an Industrial Research Park to keep and attract jobs. Developers began renovating run-down housing. City Planners crafted a long-range plan utilizing State legislation permitting a Business Improvement District (BID), with taxing authority to raise up to 20 percent of the City tax rate focused on downtown redevelopment. Shaping a City is the behind-the-scenes story of one developer’s involvement, from first buying and renovating small houses, gradually expanding his thinking and projects to include a recognition of the interdependence of the entire city—jobs, infrastructure, retail, housing, industry, taxation, banking and City Planning. It is the story of how he, along with other local developers transformed a quiet, economically challenged upstate New York town into one that is recognized nationally as among the best small cities in the country. The lessons and principles of personal relationships, cooperation and collaboration, the importance of density, and the power of a Business Improvement District to catalyze change, are ones you can take home for the development and revitalization of your city.

The topic of streets and street design is of compelling interest today as public officials, developers, and community activists seek to reshape urban patterns to achieve more sustainable forms of growth and development. Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities traces ideas about street design and layout back to the early industrial era in London suburbs and then on through their institutionalization in housing and transportation planning in the United States. It critiques the situation we are in and suggests some ways out that are less rigidly controlled, more flexible, and responsive to local conditions. Originally published in 1997, this edition includes a new introduction that addresses topics of current interest including revised standards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers; changes in city plans and development standards following New Urbanist, Smart Growth, and sustainability principles; traffic calming; and ecologically oriented street design.

Taking on the key issues in urban design, Shaping the City examines the critical ideas that have driven these themes and debates through a study of particular cities at important periods in their development. As well as retaining crucial discussions about cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Brasilia at particular moments in their history that exemplified the problems and themes at hand like the mega-city, the post-colonial city and New Urbanism, in this new edition the editors have introduced new case studies critical to any study of contemporary urbanism – China, Dubai, Tijuana and the wider issues of informal cities in the Global South. The book serves as both a textbook for classes in urban design, planning and theory and is also attractive to the increasing interest in urbanism by scholars in other fields. Shaping the City provides an essential overview of the range and variety of urbanisms and urban issues that are critical to an understanding of contemporary urbanism.

Today's urban environments face ever-increasing flows of human movement, natural disasters, and iterative economic crises. In response, city planning has developed innovative, hybrid forms that go beyond conventional ways of planning. Integrating practices of other disciplines, planning has become increasingly intricate and at the same time dependent on the cross fertilization of data, ideas, and actions across economies, societies, and geographies.This richly illustrated book of edited essays aims at introducing new approaches towards the planning of cities across the world, including Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Covering demographically, politically, culturally, and socially diverse regions, it not only examines the use of conventional planning tools, but also explores more experimental and cross-disciplinary approaches of urban planning.

This original collection examines how architectural ideas, social models and building forms circulate round the world and become mediated and adapted to local conditions. The book shows how types such as skyscrapers, mosques or living history museums are imported, adapted and contested in different societies and how urban landscapes are reshaped by the global circulation of models drawn from elsewhere. Written by scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds –architecture, anthropology, geography, linguistics, science studies and sociology – the book draws its inspiration from a series of different approaches and offers both original theoretical reflection and carefully crafted case-studies.