While designers possess the creative capabilities of shaping cities; their often-singular obsession with form and aesthetics actually reduces their effectiveness as they are at the mercy of more powerful generators of urban form. In response to this paradox; Designing Urban Transformation addresses the incredible potential of urban practice to radically change cities for the better. The book focuses on a powerful question; "What can urbanism be?" by arguing that the most significant transformations occur by fundamentally rethinking concepts; practices; and outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism; the book proposes three conceptual shifts for transformative urban practice: (a) beyond material objects: city as flux; (b) beyond intentions: consequences of design; and (c) beyond practice: urbanism as creative political act. Pragmatism encourages us to consider how we can make deeper and more systemic changes and how urbanism itself can be a design strategy for such transformations. To illuminate how these conceptual shifts operate in vastly different contexts through analysis of transformative urban initiatives and projects in Belo Horizonte; Boston; Cairo; Karachi; Los Angeles; New Delhi; and Paris. The book is a rare integration of theory and practice that proposes essential ways of rethinking city-design-and-building processes; while drawing critical lessons from actual examples of such processes.
#2434890 in eBooks 2013-12-03 2013-11-19File Name: B00G4BUR2U
Review
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy Dr Arie VerburghVery insightful. Even for the non-musician.