David Sim

Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites—separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources—to support a soft city approach? In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions. Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society. Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond. Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.

Building Density for Everyday Life

Soft City

Sidney is always in a rush! At home and at nursery he keeps getting into a muddle, but finally he finds that sometimes it's good to be speedy! With familiar settings and heart-warming endings, this series is all about negotiating the everyday problems that toddlers encounter.

A Lift-the-flap Book for Busy Toddlers

Slow Down Sidney!

Ruth Louise Symes

Wendy is a sheep with a dream. Like many sheep she mostly eats and sleeps but secretly she wishes she could fly One day Wendy finds a fairy stuck in a bush and being a kind sort of sheep, she frees it. In return, the fairy grants her one wish.

When Wishes Have Wings

The Sheep Fairy

Details and results of the author's experimental Roman iron-artefact production, including a database for comparative study. Contents: The place of iron in the Roman world; technical aspects of iron making; bloom forging experiments; Roman iron artefacts; evaluation of microscopic debris from bloomsmithing and blacksmithing experiments.

Bloom Refining and Iron Artifact Production in the Roman World

Beyond the Bloom

In the mid-nineteenth century the Irish question—the governance of the island of Ireland—demanded attention on both sides of the Atlantic. In A Union Forever, David Sim examines how Irish nationalists and their American sympathizers attempted to convince legislators and statesmen to use the burgeoning global influence of the United States to achieve Irish independence. Simultaneously, he tracks how American politicians used the Irish question as means of furthering their own diplomatic and political ends. Combining an innovative transnational methodology with attention to the complexities of American statecraft, Sim rewrites the diplomatic history of this neglected topic. He considers the impact that nonstate actors had on formal affairs between the United States and Britain, finding that not only did Irish nationalists fail to involve the United States in their cause but actually fostered an Anglo-American rapprochement in the final third of the nineteenth century. Their failures led them to seek out new means of promoting Irish self-determination, including an altogether more radical, revolutionary strategy that would alter the course of Irish and British history over the next century.

David Sim

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