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Dreaming the Rational City is both a history of the city planning profession in the United States and a major polemical statement about the effort to plan and reform the American city. Boyer shows why city planning, which had so much promise at the outset for making cities more liveable, largely failed. She reveals planning's real responsibilities and goals, including the kind of "rational order" that was actually forseen by the planning mentality, and concludes that the planners have continuously served the needs of the dominant capitalist economy.
Los Angeles has grown from a scattered collection of towns and villages to one of the largest megacities in the world. The editors of THE CITY have assembled a variety of essays examining the built environment and human dynamics of this extraordinary modern city, emphasizing the dramatic changes that have occurred since 1960. 58 illustrations.
Surveying four approaches to city-making, the author here gives an assessment of the development of American urbanism, highlighting recurrent themes and how these interact, merge and conflict.
Before Renaissance examines a half-century epoch during which planners, public officials, and civic leaders engaged in a dialogue about the meaning of planning and its application for improving life in Pittsburgh.Planning emerged from the concerns of progressive reformers and businessmen over the social and physical problems of the city. In the Steel City enlightened planners such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and Frederick Bigger pioneered the practical approach to reordering the chaotic urban-industrial landscape. In the face of obstacles that included the embedded tradition of privatism, rugged topography, inherited built environment, and chronic political fragmentation, they established a tradition of modern planning in Pittsburgh.Over the years a melange of other distinguished local and national figures joined in the planning dialogue, among them the park founder Edward Bigelow, political bosses Christopher Magee and William Flinn, mayors George Guthrie and William Magee, industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Howard Heinz, financier Richard King Mellon, and planning luminaries Charles Mulford Robinson, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., Harland Bartholomew, Robert Moses, and Pittsburgh's Frederick Bigger. The famed alliance of Richard King Mellon and Mayor David Lawrence, which heralded the Renaissance, owed a great debt to Pittsburgh's prior planning experience. John Bauman and Edward Muller recount the city's long tradition of public/private partnerships as an important factor in the pursuit of orderly and stable urban growth. Before Renaissance provides insights into the major themes, benchmarks, successes, and limitations that marked the formative days of urban planning. It defines Pittsburgh's key role in the vanguard of the national movement and reveals the individuals and processes that impacted the physical shape and form of a city for generations to come.
Visions of the City is a dramatic history of utopian urbanism in the twentieth century. It explores radical demands for new spaces and ways of living, and considers their effects on planning, architecture and struggles to shape urban landscapes. The author critically examines influential utopian approaches to urbanism in western Europe associated with such figures as Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, uncovering the political interests, desires and anxieties that lay behind their ideal cities. He also investigates avant-garde perspectives from the time that challenged these conceptions of cities, especially from within surrealism. At the heart of this richly illustrated book is an encounter with the explosive ideas of the situationists. Tracing the subversive practices of this avant-garde group and its associates from their explorations of Paris during the 1950s to their alternative visions based on nomadic life and play, David Pinder convincingly explains the significance of their revolutionary attempts to transform urban spaces and everyday life. He addresses in particular Constant's New Babylon, finding within his proposals a still powerful provocation to imagine cities otherwise. The book not only recovers vital moments from past hopes and dreams of modern urbanism. It also contests current claims about the 'end of utopia', arguing that reconsidering earlier projects can play a critical role in developing utopian perspectives today. Through the study of utopian visions, it aims to rekindle elements of utopianism itself. A superb critical exploration of the underside of utopian thought over the last hundred years and its continuing relevance in the here and now for thinking about possible urban worlds. The treatment of the Situationists and their milieu is a revelation. David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, City University of New York Graduate School
Planning theory is currently in a confused state as a consequence of a number of changes over the last ten years in planning practice and social and economic theory. Even prior to these events, planning theory was an uncertain discipline, reflecting planning's precarious position between and resting upon a range of professional subject areas and philosophical roots. Planning Futures is an attempt to pin down the constantly evolving landscape of planning theory and to chart a path through this fast changing field. Planning Futures is an up-to-date reader on planning theory, but adds something more to the subject area than a mere textbook. The contributors have attempted to bridge theory and practice while putting forward new theoretical ideas. By drawing upon examples from planning practice and case study scenarios, the authors ensure that the work discusses planning theory within the context of present planning practice. Case studies are drawn from an international arena, from the UK, Europe, South Africa and Australia.
"In this intriguing study, Patricia Burgess examines how both public and private land use controls affected urban growth and development in Columbus, Ohio. Burgess considers how real estate developers applied restrictive deed covenants in order to shape contemporary metropolitan areas, and she examines the simultaneous application of zoning to determine the role of the public sector. She also outlines the planning theory of zoning and measures the actual zoning against the goals of its earliest and strongest proponents, the reformist planners and lawyers of the early twentieth century." "Using Columbus and seven of its suburbs as a case study, Burgess relies on extensive research in public records - recorded plats, deeds, planning reports, and minutes and records of city and suburban planning commissions and zoning boards - to paint a picture of a changing metropolitan area, subdivision by subdivision, lot by lot. Both the private and public controls applied to these subdivisions and lots do much to explain why people live where they live and how our American cities came to be the way they are." "Planning for the Private Interest has implications for the individual landowner because most urban Americans live in zoned communities but have little understanding of how zoning works until their plans for their own property come into conflict with local ordinances. Moreover, studies of this nature indicate the subtle but formidable forces that influence both class and race relations in metropolitan areas and reveal solutions as well as impediments to resolving potential conflicts. Readable and engaging, Burgess's work will be of great interest to scholars and students of regional history, urban growth and development, city planning, and urban sociology."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This book argues that understanding global urbanism in the twenty-first century requires us to cast our gaze upon vast city-regions without an urban core.
Frank Lloyd Wright : The Early Years : Progressivism : Aesthetics : Cities examines Wright's belief that all aspects of human life must embrace and celebrate an aesthetic experience that would thereby lead to necessary social reforms. Inherent in the theory was a belief that reform of nineteenth-century gluttony should include a contemporary interpretation of its material presence, its bulk and space, its architectural landscape. This book analyzes Wright's innovative, profound theory of architecture that drew upon geometry and notions of pure design and the indigenous as put into practice. It outlines the design methodology that he applied to domestic and non-domestic buildings and presents reasons for the recognition of two Wright Styles and a Wright School. The book also studies how his design method was applied to city planning and implications of historical and theoretical contexts of the period that surely influenced all of Wright's community and city planning.
"Flat-out one of the most interesting books I've read in years. To say that a book about California might rank with Kevin Starr's Americans and the California Dream or Mike Davis' City of Quartz is dangerously high praise, but I think Axelrod's book may someday be in that league."—John Ganim, University of California, Riverside "Inventing Autopia thoughtfully weaves together planning and policy history with cultural history to great effect. It is sure to change our understanding of the ways in which Los Angeles not only grew and developed but envisioned itself in the era."—William Deverell, author of Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past