Unlike European countries where the consolidation of town planning was based on legislative reforms, Latin America’s urbanismo mainly stemmed from urban plans for national capitals and metropolises. Austrian academic and planner Karl Brunner was hired in Chile, Colombia and Panama from the late 1920s to advise in the professional and academic domains, marking a shift from the so-called École Française d’Urbanisme (EFU) of Haussmannesque descent towards the Austrian-German Städtebau, While coordinating the municipal office and plan for Bogotá, Brunner translated his Manual de Urbanismo – the first textbook published in Latin America about the new discipline and the first to incorporate examples from local cities. Based on his 1924 course at Vienna’s National Faculty of Architecture Brunner’s Manual emphasized the ‘scientific system’ of the discipline. Brunner was the most influential figure of his time in the urban planning of the region, but has become overshadowed by Le Corbusier's and CIAM’s prevailing influence after the Second World War. Complete with a supporting introduction written by Arturo Almandoz, this volume includes the full copy of the original Manual de Urbanismo with an English translation of the synthesis. Further materials, including an extract of Karl Brunner's "Problemas actuales de urbanización" and an accompanying English translation of the text can be accessed at www.routledge.com/9781138778573

These essays, from leading names in the field, weave together the parallels and differences between the past and present of civic art. Offering prospects for the first decades of the twenty-first century, the authors open up a broad international dialogue on civic art, which relates historical practice to the contemporary meaning of civic art and its application to community building within today’s multi-cultural modern cities. The volume brings together the rich perspectives on the thought, practice and influence of leading figures from the great era of civic art that began in the nineteenth century and blossomed in the early twentieth century as documented in the works of Werner Hegemann and his contemporaries and considered fundamental to contemporary practice.

Remodelling to Prepare for Independence: The Philippine Commonwealth, Decolonisation, Cities and Public Works, c. 1935–46 illuminates the implications of the USA’s final phase of colonial rule in the Philippine Islands. It explores the Filipino side of decolonisation and the management of the built environment in the years immediately prior to self-rule. This book shakes off the collaboration vs. resistance paradigm that empire histories generally follow and consequently yields an original vantage point to comprehend transition within an Asian society in the years immediately prior to, during, and after World War Two. This will not only deepen insight of the American Empire, but also grants the opportunity to tie Philippine political-cultural change to the global history of urban planning’s advancement. Accordingly, it opens a new window to rethink Filipino ethno-history and societal evolution, alongside the opportunity to compare the Philippines with other nations that undertook planning projects as part of their decolonisation process and early-postcolonial advancement. The book utilises theoretical frames in order to help creatively excavate the era 1935–46 for the purpose of not just revealing what public works occurred, but to also uncover what those projects meant to the Commonwealth Government, the BPW’s staff, and the public who benefitted from public works projects. The book will be relevant to students and researchers of Urban History, Asian and American (Empire) History, and Imperial and Colonial Studies. Architects, planners, and members of the public who are interested in the form and meaning of urban environments designed/constructed in the past will also find the publication to be of great interest.

Refugees and displaced people are increasingly moving to cities around the world, seeking out the social, economic, and political opportunity that urban areas provide. Against this backdrop digital technologies are fundamentally changing how refugees and displaced people engage with urban landscapes and economies where they settle. Urban Refugees and Digital Technology draws on contemporary data gathered from refugee communities in Bogotá, Nairobi, and Kuala Lumpur to build a new theoretical understanding of how technological change influences the ways urban refugees contribute to the social, economic, and political networks in their cities of arrival. This data is presented against the broader history of technological change in urban areas since the start of industrialization, showing how displaced people across time have used technologized urban spaces to shape the societies where they settle. The case studies and history demonstrate how refugees’ interactions with environments that are often hostile to their presence spur novel adaptations to idiosyncratic features of a city’s technological landscape. A wide-ranging study across histories and geographies of urban displacement, Urban Refugees and Digital Technology introduces readers to the myriad ways technological change creates spaces for urban refugees to build rich political, social, and economic lives in cities.

In this first comprehensive work in English to describe the building of Latin America's capital cities in the postcolonial period, Arturo Almandoz and his contributors demonstrate how Europe and France in particular shaped their culture, architecture and planning until the United States began to play a part in the 1930s. The book provides a new perspective on international planning.

The Festival of Britain is perhaps best known for its South Bank Exhibition promoting British science and art to the post-war world, but one of the most important elements was the Architecture Exhibition, based in Poplar in East London. This exhibition was used to demonstrate the principles of modern town planning that had been laid out by Abercrombie, in particular in his County of London Plan. The project was named after George Lansbury, the Labour MP, London County Council (LCC) member and Poplar councillor. It was an effective demonstration of planning ideas adopted since the 1930s by influential planners, taking the village as a model and retaining the terraced house as a housing option among medium rise flats. Small squares and open spaces were favoured, with paved pedestrian spaces, all at lower than pre-war densities. The guide is revealing of the broader thinking in English planning in the mid century. It provides an opportunity for looking at conflicts among advocates of different planning ideas in the period of reconstruction and the move by architects to regain control of LCC housing from the Valuer’s Department. It offers the model of integrated professional specialisms that was seen as central to Modernism’s mission. It is also an opportunity to describe in more detail the interaction of different professions, including, for example, a sociologist, employed by the LCC in the creation of a model for reconstruction.

Patrick Geddes is one of the most important figures in planning history, variously presented as an inspiration to regional planning, environmental planning and sustainability, grass-roots planning, citizen democracy, historic preservation, neighbourhood upgrading, university–community partnership, lifelong learning, and co-operative housing. Though well-known and often praised by planning historians, his scholarship extended across a much broader range of disciplines, with extensive publication on biology and on civics, and significant contributions to sociology, economics, geography, education, and the arts and humanities. With the exception of his plan of Dunfermline, published in 1904, his plans are very hard to find. Most of his plans were prepared in India between 1915 and 1923, but beyond brief extracts from four of them included by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt in the book Patrick Geddes in India, they are very difficult to obtain. Some are lost altogether and the remainder are available in a handful of libraries, often held in Archives. Of all the plans prepared after Dunfermline, the most extensive is for the city of Indore, originally published in two volumes that combine a comprehensive scheme for the urban development of the city with a detailed plan for the proposed University of Central India.