Reconnecting The City

Historic Urban Landscape is a new approach to urban heritage management, promoted by UNESCO, and currently one of the most debated issues in the international preservation community. However, few conservation practitioners have a clear understanding of what it entails, and more importantly, what it can achieve. Examples drawn from urban heritage sites worldwide – from Timbuktu to Liverpool Richly illustrated with colour photographs Addresses key issues and best practice for urban conservation

Historic Urban Landscape is a new approach to urban heritage management, promoted by UNESCO, and currently one of the most debated issues in the international preservation community. However, few conservation practitioners have a clear understanding of what it entails, and more importantly, what it can achieve. Examples drawn from urban heritage sites worldwide – from Timbuktu to Liverpool Richly illustrated with colour photographs Addresses key issues and best practice for urban conservation

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the intellectual developments in urban conservation. The authors offer unique insights from UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and the book is richly illustrated with colour photographs. Examples are drawn from urban heritage sites worldwide from Timbuktu to Liverpool to demonstrate key issues and best practice in urban conservation today. The book offers an invaluable resource for architects, planners, surveyors and engineers worldwide working in heritage conservation, as well as for local authority conservation officers and managers of heritage sites.

1740.161

Cross-disciplinary studies find that reconnections to place and to the natural world, which are emerging through urban sustainability efforts, build community and political action and have important medical and psychological health benefits.

This volume focuses on the implementation of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL approach), designed to foster the integration of heritage management in regional and urban planning and management, and strengthen the role of heritage in sustainable urban development.Earlier publications and research looked at the underlying theory of why the HUL approach was needed and how this theory was developed and elaborated by UNESCO. A comprehensive analysis was carried out in consultation with a multitude of actors in the twenty-first-century urban scene and with disciplinary approaches that are available to heritage managers and practitioners to implement the HUL approach.This volume aims to be empirical, describing, analyzing, and comparing 28 cities taken as case studies to implement the HUL approach. From those cases, many lessons can be learned and much guidance shared on best practices concerning what can be done to make the HUL approach work.Whereas the previous studies served to illustrate issues and challenges, in this volume the studies point to innovations in regional and urban planning and management that can allow cities to avoid major conflicts and to further develop in competitiveness. These accomplishments have been possible by building partnerships, devising financial strategies, and using heritage as a key resource in sustainable urban development, to name but a few effective strategies.For these reasons, this volume is primarily pragmatic, linked to the daily work and challenges of practitioners and administrators, using specific cases to assess what was and is good about current practices and what can be improved, in accordance with the HUL approach and aims.

Water management in industrialised western countries has long been seen as a technical process associated with pipes, drains and bureaucracies. This technical model of water management is now being questioned. This book examines the nature of contemporary water management and the prospects for and barriers to different forms of engagement with the public. In particular, it shows how historical and social scientific understandings develop and question current water management norms in relation to water in the landscape, water in the home and the hidden management of water beneath our streets and behind our walls. It is shown that the four-fold challenges of climate change, urbanisation, changing environmental standards and fiscal accountability mean that we can no longer rely on unseen technical fixes to erase the threats of pollution, water shortages and floods. Such concerns offer two prompts for public engagement and participation. First, on a purely instrumental level, public engagement can complement, or offer an obvious alternative to, technical fixes. Second, public engagement may provide a route to find new ways of addressing water and related challenges. The author offers a unique social science perspective on many of the socio-technical issues facing the management of water in urban settings in developed countries, where urban is interpreted broadly to include all areas served by piped water. Drawing on historical context and an extensive review of the published literature, as well as the author's own empirical studies, the work prompts broader discussions about how we manage water in contemporary society. It is invaluable for students and professionals in water resource management and planning.

The modern city is not only pavement and concrete. Parks, gardens, trees, and other plants are an integral part of the urban environment. Often the focal points of social movements and political interests, green spaces represent far more than simply an effort to balance the man-made with the natural. A city’s history with—and approach to—its parks and gardens reveals much about its workings and the forces acting upon it. Our green spaces offer a unique and valuable window on the history of city life. The essays in Greening the City span over a century of urban history, moving from fin-de-siècle Sofia to green efforts in urban Seattle. The authors present a wide array of cases that speak to global concerns through the local and specific, with topics that include green-space planning in Barcelona and Mexico City, the distinction between public and private nature in Los Angeles, the ecological diversity of West Berlin, and the historical and cultural significance of hybrid spaces designed for sports. The essays collected here will make us think differently about how we study cities, as well as how we live in them. Contributors: Dorothee Brantz, Technische Universität Berlin * Peter Clark, University of Helsinki * Lawrence Culver, Utah State University * Konstanze Sylva Domhardt, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich * Sonja Dümpelmann, University of Maryland * Zachary J. S. Falck, Independent Scholar* Stefanie Hennecke, Technical University Munich * Sonia Hirt, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University * Salla Jokela, University of Helsinki * Jens Lachmund, Maastricht University * Gary McDonogh, Bryn Mawr College * Jarmo Saarikivi, University of Helsinki * Jeffrey Craig Sanders, Washington State University

Given ongoing concerns about global climate change and its impacts on cities, the need for sustainable planning has never been greater. This book explores concrete ways to achieve urban sustainability based on integrated planning, policy development, and decision-making. Urban Sustainability is the first book to provide an applied interdisciplinary perspective on the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead in this area. Bringing together researchers and practitioners to explore leading innovations on the ground, this volume combines the theoretical underpinnings of urban sustainability with current practices through highly readable narrative case studies. The contributors also provide fresh perspectives on how issues related to sustainable urban planning and development can be reconciled through collaborative partnerships and engagement processes.

"Hank lived by the credo, 'first listen, then design'." --Scott Bernstein, Founder and Chief Strategy + Innovation Officer, Center for Neighborhood Technology Hank Dittmar was a globally recognized urban planner, advocate, and policy advisor. He wrote extensively on a wide range of topics, including architectural criticism, community planning, and transportation policy over his long and storied career. In My Kind of City, Dittmar has organized his selected writings into ten sections with original introductions. His observations range on scale from local ("My Favorite Street: Seven Dials, Covent Garden, London") to national ("Post Truth Architecture in the Age of Trump") and global ("Architects are Critical to Adapting our Cities to Climate Change"). Andrés Duany writes of Hank in the book foreword, "He has continued to search for ways to engage place, community and history in order to avoid the tempting formalism of plans." The range of topics covered in My Kind of City reflects the breadth of Dittmar's experience in working for better cities for people. Common themes emerge in the engaging prose including Dittmar's belief that improving our cities should not be left to the "experts"; his appreciation for the beautiful and the messy; and his rare combination of deep expertise and modesty. As Lynn Richards, CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism expresses in the preface, "Hank's writing is smart without being elitist, witty and poetic, succinct and often surprising." My Kind of City captures a visionary planner's spirit, eye for beauty, and love for the places where we live.