Urban Design Ecologies

The discipline of urban design is undergoing a rapid expansion
and realignment. It is experiencing a shift from a profession
dominated by architects and planners, directed at urban
development, to a more expansive set of practices engaging new
forms of social and environmental ecologies, as cities worldwide
adapt to economic restructuring, mass migrations and climate
change. Bringing together classic and new texts from the last 40
years, this AD Reader focuses attention on the critical tools
needed to understand how cities have been designed and constructed
and then changed over time. This enables new ways of envisioning
how cities must be conceived and adapted in the future to the dual
conditions of rapid urbanisation and economic restructuring,
coupled with unpredictable environmental conditions due to climate
change.

With its emphasis on both urban design and the ecological, this
book brings together key articles that point the way forward for
reconciling the often conflicting concerns of urbanism and
environmentalism. Twenty-three texts are organised into four
distinct sections, covering metropolitan architecture, the
sprawling megalopolis, the megacity and the recently emerging
metacity. These are broadly chronological and highlight the recent
thinking behind some of the key urban developments, ranging from
the art of traditional city-making covered by European architects
and historians in the late 20th century to contemporary Tokyo
described by Atelier Bow-Wow.

* Features original texts from: Reyner Banham, Rem Koolhaas, Aldo
Rossi, Colin Rowe, David Grahame Shane, Bernard Tschumi, Oswald
Mathias Ungers, and Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven
Izenour.

* Contains newly commissioned texts from: Mary Cadenasso, Sharon
Haar and Victoria Marshall, Carlos Leite, Steward TA Pickett and
Albert Pope.

* Includes new translations of important essays by Vittorio
Gregotti and Paola Viganò.

* Topics range from the European historic city to the Las Vegas
Strip and the megacity of São Paulo, taking in the global
sustainable city.