Matthew Frederick

Vikas Mehta

Providing unique, accessible lessons on urban design, this title in the bestselling 101 Things I Learned® series is a perfect resource for students, recent graduates, general readers, and even seasoned professionals. Students of urban design often find themselves lost between books that are either highly academic or overly formulaic, leaving them with few tangible tools to use in their design projects. 101 Things I Learned® in Urban Design School fills this void with provocative, practical lessons on urban space, street types, pedestrian experience, managing the design process, the psychological, social, cultural, and economic ramifications of physical design decisions, and more. Written by two experienced practitioners and instructors, this informative book will appeal not only to students, but to seasoned professionals, planners, city administrators, and ordinary citizens who wish to better understand their built world.

101 Things I Learned® in Urban Design School

Danilo Palazzo

The Companion to Public Space draws together an outstanding multidisciplinary collection of specially commissioned chapters that offer the state of the art in the intellectual discourse, scholarship, research, and principles of understanding in the construction of public space. Thematically, the volume crosses disciplinary boundaries and traverses territories to address the philosophical, political, legal, planning, design, and management issues in the social construction of public space. The Companion uniquely assembles important voices from diverse fields of philosophy, political science, geography, anthropology, sociology, urban design and planning, architecture, art, and many more, under one cover. It addresses the complete ecology of the topic to expose the interrelated issues, challenges, and opportunities of public space in the twenty-first century. The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines that converge in the study of public space. The Companion will also be of use to practitioners and public officials who deal with the planning, design, and management of public spaces.

Companion to Public Space

Received the Environmental Design Research Association's 2014 Place Book Award Shortlisted for the UDG Francis Tibbalds Book Award 2014 Good cities are places of social encounter. Creating public spaces that encourage social behavior in our cities and neighborhoods is an important goal of city design. One of the cardinal roles of the street, as public space, is to provide a setting for sociability. How do we make sociable streets? This book shows us how these ordinary public spaces can be planned and designed to become settings that support an array of social behaviors. Through carefully crafted research, The Street systematically examines people's actions and perceptions, develops a comprehensive typology of social behaviors on the neighborhood commercial street and provides a thorough inquiry into the social dimensions of streets. Vikas Mehta shows that sociability is not a result of the physical environment alone, but is achieved by the relationships between the physical environment, the land uses, their management, and the places to which people assign special meanings. Scholars and students of urban design, planning, architecture, geography and sociology will find the book a stimulating resource. The material is also directly applicable to practice and should be widely read by professional urban designers, planners, architects, and others involved in the design, planning, and implementation of commercial streets.

A Quintessential Social Public Space

The Street

Miodrag Mitrašinović

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.

Vikas Mehta

About

Books

Join the club