Positioning design at the center of the debate, The Urbanism Reader brings together classic and contemporary readings to help designers understand the complexities of cities and urban design in the 21st century.
The selection of readings presented here is uniquely tailored to a design perspective for architects and urban designers – balancing social issues in urbanism with a clear focus on foregrounding design as an instrument for change in cities, and examining the outcomes and challenges of recent design theories, design methods, and technologies in the built urban environment.
Covering today’s most urgent issues, 45 texts explore key topics in urbanism – from digital design technologies to smart cities, from the ongoing ecological crisis to public health and the impact of Covid-19, and from emergence and informality to economic inequity in global cities. Chapters cover cultural issues including diversity, indigenous knowledge, decolonization, social justice, and inclusion alongside technological developments, while a final chapter speculates on the future of urbanism through readings in AI, virtual reality, and the frontiers of current thinking in architecture and urban design.
The extracts are grouped by theme, each with an introduction to the historical contexts and guiding paradigms – helping design students, researchers, and professionals to make sense of the diverse field of theory and practice in the past, present, and future of global urbanism.
Edited by:
Stefan Al (City University of New York USA),
Tom Verebes (New York Institute of Technology)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 238mm,
Width: 180mm,
Spine: 4mm
Weight: 968g
ISBN: 9781350377912
ISBN 10: 1350377910
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 20 February 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
"List of Figures Introduction Chapter 1: Spatial Heterogeneity, Diversity and Difference After Modernist Planning Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown - Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter -Collage City Kenneth Frampton - Modern Architecture: A Critical History Chapter 2: Urbanism and Models of Design Complexity Christopher Alexander - ""The City is Not a Tree"" Manuel De Landa - A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History Jeffrey Kipnis - Folding in Architecture Stan Allen - Architecture After Geometry Peter Eisenman - Diagram Diaries Sanford Kwinter -Far from Equilibrium: Essays on Technology and Design Culture. Chapter 3: Intensities, Flows, Connectivity, and Networked Urbanism Frei Otto - Occupying and Connecting: Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence with Particular Reference to Human Settlement Michael Weinstock - The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation Manuel Castells - The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Jonathan D. Solomon - Shaping the City: Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design Michael Kubo, Farshid Moussavi, and Alejandro Zaera Polo - The Yokohama Project Chapter 4: Density, the Compact City and Metropolitan Culture Richard Rogers - Cities for a Small Planet Rem Koolhaas - ""The Future's Past"" Winy Maas - “Datascape: The Final Extravaganza” Chapter 5: Ecology, Resilience, and Green Infrastructure Anne Whiston Spirn - The Granite Garden Charles Waldheim - The Landscape Urbanism Reader Kongjian Yu - ""Beautiful Big Feet: Toward a New Landscape Aesthetic"" Watson, J., H. Abukhodair, N. A. Naeema Ali, A. Robertson, H. Issaoui, and C. Sun - ""Design by Radical Indigenism: Equitable Underwater & Intertidal Technologies of the Global South"" Chapter 6: Health, Equity, and Liveable Cities Jan Gehl - Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space Nicole Kalms - She City Walter Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada - Black Landscapes Matter Chapter 7: Emergent, Tactical, and Informal Urbanism Ananya Roy - ""Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning"" Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner - ""Rules of Engagement: Caracas and the Informal City"" Alejandro Aravena - ""Elemental: A Do Tank"" Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia - Tactical Urbanism Chapter 8: Evolutionary, Computational, and Parametric Urbanism Gordon Pask - “The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics” John Frazer - An Evolutionary Architecture Tom Verebes - Masterplanning the Adaptive City: Computational Urbanism in the Twenty-first Century Patrik Schumacher - The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Agenda for Architecture Benjamin H. Bratton - ""Parametricist Architecture Would Be a Good Idea"" Michael Batty - Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent-Based Models, and Fractals Chapter 9: Virtuality, Extended Realities, and the Metaverse William J. Mitchell - Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel - The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life Andrea Moneta - ""Architecture, Heritage, and the Metaverse"" Chapter 10: Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, and Technological Determinism Areti Markopoulou - Learning Cities: Collective Intelligence in Urban Design Neil Leach - Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction to AI for Architects Matias del Campo - Neural Architecture: Design and Artificial Intelligence Kate Crawford - Atlas of AI: Power, Politics and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence Bibliography Index"
Stefan Al is an architect, urban designer and author, and Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, City University of New York, USA. His previous books include The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream which was a Wall Street Journal “best book to read” and Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places which won the 2019 National Urban Design Award. Tom Verebes is Tenured Professor in the School of Architecture and Design at the New York Institute of Technology, USA, and Director of OCEAN CN, based in New York. He is the author of over 150 books, chapters, articles and project features.
Reviews for The Urbanism Reader: Design, Technology, Culture and the Future of Cities
This reader brings coherence, a sense of continuity, and contemporary context to a particularly dense and conceptually challenging period of urban theory. It is an invaluable resource that balances summary, insight and original texts with exceptional clarity and finesse–I wish I’d had it to hand as a student. * Ingrid Schroder, Director of the Architectural Association, UK * This is the collection of essays many of us have been waiting for: thematically organized, critically framed, bite-sized excerpts, global reach, well-known essays, writing gems that we’re glad to discover. The Urbanism Reader will stand as the compilation of urban thinking after modernism. * Dana Cuff, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *
