Download Free Transforming Our Cities Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Transforming Our Cities and write the review.

A globe-trotting, eye-opening exploration of how cities can—and do—make us happier people Charles Montgomery's Happy City will revolutionize the way we think about urban life. After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and tower dwelling an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl? The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, and during an exhilarating journey through some of the world's most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a "sexy" lipstick-red bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris's urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have transformed their lives by hacking the design of their streets and neighborhoods. Full of rich historical detail and new insights from psychologists and Montgomery's own urban experiments, Happy City is an essential tool for understanding and improving our own communities. The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting our cities for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city, the green city, and the low-carbon city are the same place, and we can all help build it.
Renowned economist Isher Judge Ahluwalia addresses India's urban issuesIndian cities are desperately in need of transformation.Whether it is the lack of public parks, playgrounds for children, easy and affordable means of public transport, footpaths wide enough for pedestrians to walk on, or indeed the basic amenities of water and sanitation, our cities and towns present a sorry sight. Urban planning in our cities is conspicuous by its absence with congested roads, chaotic traffic, crowded commercial areas and cramped housing as their hallmarks.On an average, 25 per cent of India's urban population lives in slums.This book documents how things have gone from bad to worse and how we have not seen the worst yet. On the brighter side, it shows glimpses of some cities solving their problems and bringing about perceptible improvements in the standards of living they offer their residents. They are pulling up their socks and transforming themselves, and therein lies the hope that the rest of us can shape up and learn from their example.
An exploration of the ways that everyday life in the city is defined by commuting. We spend much of our lives in transit to and from work. Although we might dismiss our daily commute as a wearying slog, we rarely stop to think about the significance of these daily journeys. In Transit Life, David Bissell explores how everyday life in cities is increasingly defined by commuting. Examining the overlooked events and encounters of the commute, Bissell shows that the material experiences of our daily journeys are transforming life in our cities. The commute is a time where some of the most pressing tensions of contemporary life play out, striking at the heart of such issues as our work-life balance; our relationships with others; our sense of place; and our understanding of who we are. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork with commuters, journalists, transit advocates, policymakers, and others in Sydney, Australia, Transit Life takes a holistic perspective to change how we think about commuting. Rather than arguing that transport infrastructure investment alone can solve our commuting problems, Bissell explores the more subtle but powerful forms of social change that commuting creates. He examines the complex politics of urban mobility through multiple dimensions, including the competencies that commuters develop over time; commuting dispositions and the social life of the commute; the multiple temporalities of commuting; the experience of commuting spaces, from footpath to on-ramp, both physical and digital; the voices of commuting, from private rants to drive-time radio; and the interplay of materialities, ideas, advocates, and organizations in commuting infrastructures.
How do cities transform over time? And why do some cities change for the better while others deteriorate? In articulating new ways of viewing urban areas and how they develop over time, Peter Bosselmann offers a stimulating guidebook for students and professionals engaged in urban design, planning, and architecture. By looking through Bosselmann’s eyes (aided by his analysis of numerous color photos and illustrations) readers will learn to “see” cities anew. Bosselmann organizes the book around seven “activities”: comparing, observing, transforming, measuring, defining, modeling, and interpreting. He introduces readers to his way of seeing by comparing satellite-produced “maps” of the world’s twenty largest cities. With Bosselmann’s guidance, we begin to understand the key elements of urban design. Using Copenhagen, Denmark, as an example, he teaches us to observe without prejudice or bias. He demonstrates how cities transform by introducing the idea of “urban morphology” through an examination of more than a century of transformations in downtown Oakland, California. We learn how to measure quality-of-life parameters that are often considered immeasurable, including “vitality,” “livability,” and “belonging.” Utilizing the street grids of San Francisco as examples, Bosselmann explains how to define urban spaces. Modeling, he reveals, is not so much about creating models as it is about bringing others into public, democratic discussions. Finally, we find out how to interpret essential aspects of “life and place” by evaluating aerial images of the San Francisco Bay Area taken in 1962 and those taken forty-three years later. Bosselmann has a unique understanding of cities and how they “work.” His hope is that, with the fresh vision he offers, readers will be empowered to offer inventive new solutions to familiar urban problems.
'Transforming Cities with Transit' explores the complex process of transit and land-use integration and provides policy recommendations and implementation strategies for effective integration in rapidly growing cities in developing countries.
Transforming Cities examines the profound changes that have characterised cities of the advanced capitalist societies in the final decades of the twentieth century. It analyses ways in which relationships of contest, conflict and co-operation are realised in and through the social and spatial forms of contemporary urban life. This book focuses on the impact of economic restructuring and changing forms of urban deprivation and social exclusion. It contends that these processes are creating new patterns of social division and new forms of regulation and control.
No discussion on mobility can exclude the broader context – the cities, the countryside, the local and national economic, political and social environments, as well as, of course, the technological progress that is being made in industries that are associated with this revolution.
A toolkit for realising a more sustainable and co-operative urban future.
A path-breaking book--the first to examine the evolution of community organizing in U.S. cities. While embracing mobilization, the contributors acknowledge the challenges inherent in globalization and the norms and values that shape contemporary American culture. Still, they reaffirm that community organizing has an important role to play as part of a broader progressive movement.
1.Introduction; 2. Today's Technologies; 3. Methods (Materials, Modelling, Making); 4. Climate Solutions; 5. Location Solutions; 6. Structural Solutions; 7. Data Cities; 8. Light, Art and Games; 9. Space Architecture; 10. Tomorrow's Architectures