Community developer and urban activist Robert D. Lupton looks to the Old Testament example of Nehemiah as a role model for community transformation and renewal.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize In twenty-first-century America, some cities are flourishing and others are struggling, but they all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. Cities have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good. It wasn’t always this way. For almost three decades after World War II, even as national policies promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents into the suburbs. In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal. He worked to revive a declining New Haven, became the architect of the “New Boston” of the 1960s, and, later, led New York State’s Urban Development Corporation, which built entire new towns, including Roosevelt Island in New York City. Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy: Neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes and progressive goals. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness, opening up possibilities for our own time.

At a time when incivility appears to be on the rise and increasingly tolerated, Diane Kalen-Sukra's new book, Save Your City, is a vital call to action for communities and leaders everywhere. The book takes readers from the very beginning of democracy to the challenges being addressed by communities today. This special Municipal World edition contains a forward by George B. Cuff and an exclusive companion workbook.

"In The Regional City, two of the most innovative thinkers in the field of urban design and land use planning offer a detailed look at this new metropolitan form: its genesis, physical structure, and policy foundation. Using full-color graphics and in-depth case studies, they provide a thorough examination of the emerging field of regional design, explaining how new forms of smart growth and neighborhood design can help put an end to sprawl, urban disinvestment, and squandered resources." "This book is a must read for environmentalists, planners, architects, landscape architects, local officials, real estate developers, community development advocates, and students in architecture, urban planning, and policy."--BOOK JACKET.

The book offers a model for city development and renewal based on land value capture (called ‘value capture’). Firstly, a review is presented of cities around the world that are currently using value capture. From these city examples the author shows how any state, city or regional government can adopt value capture policies. Looking at recent events the author reviews the implications of the coronavirus pandemic (2020) for future planning (including value capture) of cities and regions (particularly noting healthy cities planning). The development of a value capture planning (VCP) model is then outlined. The basis of the model is reflected in its planning components, being: Housing (affordable, social and market housing); Public and Open Spaces (natural areas, open spaces and public spaces); and, Sustainable Transport (rail, bus, and active transport). The VCP model is devised to provide an economic and planning tool that can be utilised in addressing each of these planning components. This tool includes data entry tables and explanations of how these tables are applied. Four case study cities (within Australia) currently undergoing renewal are selected for the model to be applied to. The areas were chosen to represent contrasting urban settings and types of development and renewal, including: inner city, middle ring city; growth centre city; and, regional capital city. The current (2020) active renewal programs within these areas include (city in brackets): Central to Eveleigh Renewal Area (CERA) (City of Sydney); Sydenham to Bankstown Urban Renewal Corridor (SBURC) (Canterbury Bankstown City); Gosford City Centre Revitalisation (GCCR) area (Gosford City); and, Newcastle City Renewal Area (NCRA) (Newcastle City). The reader is walked through (graphically) the backgrounds of these case study cities, including geography, development trends and details of renewal plans. Conclusions on the VCP model application are outlined for each study area (within that chapter) and for the cumulative results across all study areas (final chapter). With these conclusions, the application of the model to any city or region anywhere in the world is outlined. Finally, on a practical level the reader would be interested in how value capture is administered through programs (including the roles of government, developers and the community). Summing up, the book offers the reader an understanding of current city planning and the tools (like value capture) that will be required for future planning.

ReNew Town puts forth an innovative vision of performative design and planning for low-carbon sustainable development, and illustrates practicable strategies for balancing environmental systems with urban infrastructure and new housing prototypes. To date, much of the discourse on the design of sustainable communities and ‘eco-cities’ has been premised on using previously undeveloped land. In contrast, this book and the project it showcases focus on the retrofitting and adaptation of an existing environment – a more common problem, given the extent of the world’s already-built infrastructure. Employing a ‘research through design’ model of inquiry, the book focuses on large-scale housing developments – especially those built around the world between the 1960s and the early 1980s – with the aim of understanding how best to reinvent them. At the center of the book is Tama New Town, a planned community outside Tokyo that faces a range of challenges, such as an aging population, the deterioration of homes and buildings, and economic stagnation. The book begins by outlining a series of principles that structure the ecological and energy goals for the community. It then develops prototypical solutions for designing, building and retrofitting neighborhoods. The intent is that these prototypes could be applied to similar urban conditions around the world. ReNew Town is the product of a collaborative design research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) School of Architecture and Planning, and Japan’s Sekisui House LTD.

This book reveals how the Aga Khan Development Network and its Historic Cities Programme transformed an area of Cairo’s urban blight into a dynamic public space. Once a city of verdant gardens and parks, Cairo in the 1980s was severely overcrowded, economically struggling, and many of its inhabitants lived in unsanitary conditions. Historic Cairo, a World Heritage Site centered on the original Fatimid settlement of Cairo, has presented a challenge to conservationists and urban planners over the years as they have sought to protect the city’s heritage while it remains a living city. Understanding how the process of decline could be reversed by restoring monuments and building a new park, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) set about revitalizing the Darb al Ahmar area and creating Al Azhar Park. This book features numerous scholarly contributors and authors who participated in the program, and shows how the conservation effort paid off in countless ways.