It has become conventional to think of urbanism and landscape as opposing one another--or to think of landscape as merely providing temporary relief from urban life as shaped by buildings and infrastructure. But, driven in part by environmental concerns, landscape has recently emerged as a model and medium for the city, with some theorists arguing that landscape architects are the urbanists of our age. In Landscape as Urbanism, one of the field's pioneers presents a powerful case for rethinking the city through landscape.

The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure investigates how infrastructure design determines the organization and flow of the inhabited landscape--as an agency of enhanced mobility, as a design feature contributing to the character of a city and as a sound theoretical approach to a positive experience of collective space. These issues are explored in four chapters that catalogue these approaches, each chapter buttressed with key projects from the world's most important designers in this field.

In 1980, William H. Whyte published the findings from his revolutionary Street Life Project in 'The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces'. Both the book and the accompanying film were instantly labeled classics, and launched a mini-revolution in the planning and study of public spaces. They have since become standard texts, and appear on syllabi and reading lists in urban planning, sociology, environmental design, and architecture departments around the world.

A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured. In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves.

For E. C. Relph, the landscape of late twentieth-century cities must be envisioned as a total environment--not just streets and buildings but billboards and parking meters as well. The Modern Urban Landscape traces the developments since 1880 in architecture, technology, planning, and society that have formed the visual context of daily life. Each of these shaping influences is often viewed in isolation, but Relph surveys the ways in which they have operated independently to create what we see when we walk down a street, shop in a mall, or stare through a windshield on an expressway.

With populations decentralizing and cities sprawling ever-outward, twenty century urban planners are challenged by the need to organize not just people but space itself. Hence a new architectural discourse has emerged: landscape urbanism. In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim who is at the forefront of this new movement has assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the world's top practitioners.

First published in 1999, Everyday Urbanism has become a classic in the discussion of cities and real life. Within the context of history, theory, and practice of urban design, the essays explore the city as a social entity that must be responsive to daily routines and neighborhood concerns and offer both an analysis of and a method for working within the social and political urban framework. This expanded edition builds on the original essays focusing on the urban vernacular in Los Angeles with new material on interventions in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hoogvliet, near Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

This anthology of writings on urban studies and planning for students, practitioners, and anyone fascinated by cities contains essays by Ebenezer Howard, Robert Park, Lewis Mumford, Raymond Unwin, Peter Hall and Mike Davis. The text includes an interdisciplinary introduction to how cities have evolved, what they are like, and where they may be headed. Topics covered include urban geography, economics, sociology, politics, the humanities, cultural studies and urban design and planning.

The author of the bestselling The Organization Man humanizes the city by artfully dissecting its elements and offering an eye-opening perspective on its components.

An interdisciplinary account of the environmental history and changing landscape of New York City. In this innovative account of the urbanization of nature in New York City, Matthew Gandy explores how the raw materials of nature have been reworked to produce a "metropolitan nature" distinct from the forms of nature experienced by early settlers. The book traces five broad developments: the expansion and redefinition of public space, the construction of landscaped highways, the creation of a modern water supply system, the radical environmental politics of the barrio in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the contemporary politics of the environmental justice movement.

This award-winning book by a Harvard landscape architect proves how important it is to understand the natural settings of cities--their air, water, geology, plant, and animal life--to create better, more habitable urban environments.

Cities and Natural Process is a discussion of the fundamental conflict in the perception of nature and an expression of the essential need for an environmental view when approaching urban design. Whilst retaining the existing structure, each of the chapters has been revised to take into account recent theoretical and practical developments. A completely new concluding chapter has been added which draws together the themes of the volume and links these to broader landscape issues such as greenway systems, landscape ecology and green infrastructure.

In this essential new book, Speck reveals the invisible workings of the city, how simple decisions have cascading effects, and how we can all make the right choices for our communities. Bursting with sharp observations and real-world examples, giving key insight into what urban planners actually do and how places can and do change, Walkable City lays out a practical, necessary, and eminently achievable vision of how to make our normal American cities great again.

Explores history, economics, architecture, urban planning, and popular culture to explain why a nation so rich in natural beauty created such an ugly, depressing environment.

Cities in Time aims to explore and understand the phenomenon, offering a first critical and theoretical evaluation of temporary urbanism and its implications for the present and future of our cities. The book argues that temporary urbanism needs to be understood within the broader context of how different concepts of time are embedded in the city. In any urban place, multiple, discordant and diverse timeframes are at play - and the chapters here explore these different conceptions of temporality, their causes and their effects.

In the twenty-first century, cities worldwide must respond to a growing and diverse population, ever-shifting economic conditions, new technologies, and a changing climate. Short-term, community-based projects--from pop-up parks to open streets initiatives--have become a powerful and adaptable new tool of urban activists, planners, and policy-makers seeking to drive lasting improvements in their cities and beyond. These quick, often low-cost, and creative projects are the essence of the Tactical Urbanism movement. Whether creating vibrant plazas seemingly overnight or re-imagining parking spaces as neighborhood gathering places, they offer a way to gain public and government support for investing in permanent projects, inspiring residents and civic leaders to experience and shape urban spaces in a new way.

An empowering road map for rethinking, reinvigorating, and redesigning our cities, from a pioneer in the movement for safer, more livable streets. As New York City's transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan managed the seemingly impossible and transformed the streets of one of the world's greatest, toughest cities into dynamic spaces safe for pedestrians and bikers. Her approach was dramatic and effective: Simply painting a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, but it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom line of businesses.

First published in 1999, Everyday Urbanism has become a classic in the discussion of cities and real life. Within the context of history, theory, and practice of urban design, the essays explore the city as a social entity that must be responsive to daily routines and neighborhood concerns and offer both an analysis of and a method for working within the social and political urban framework. This expanded edition builds on the original essays focusing on the urban vernacular in Los Angeles with new material on interventions in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hoogvliet, near Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

"Brings together urban history, urban form, public planning history, the literature of utopianism, and the architecture of cities in an intelligent, coherent, lively, and controversial portrayal of the evolution of the physical characteristics of Anglo-American urban environments since 1880."-- Landscape Journal

What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion - imageability - and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form.

Which are the world's best streets, and what are the physical, designable characteristics that make them great? To answer these questions, Allan Jacobs has surveyed street users and design professionals and has studied a wide array of street types and urban spaces around the world.

The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure investigates how infrastructure design determines the organization and flow of the inhabited landscape--as an agency of enhanced mobility, as a design feature contributing to the character of a city and as a sound theoretical approach to a positive experience of collective space. These issues are explored in four chapters that catalogue these approaches, each chapter buttressed with key projects from the world's most important designers in this field, including Arata Isozaki, Paul Andreu, Xaveer De Geyter, Jean Nouvel and Ricardo Bofill.

From plazas to parks, waterfronts to rooftops, The Sourcebook of Contemporary Urban Design by art and architecture editor Francesc Zamora Mola, showcases an outstanding collection of more than 300 global examples of contemporary urban design from around the world.