Books about Urbanism from Amazon.com

Written by the chair of the LEED-Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) initiative, Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature is both an urgent call to action and a comprehensive introduction to "sustainable urbanism"--the emerging and growing design reform movement that combines the creation and enhancement of walkable and diverse places with the need to build high-performance infrastructure and buildings.

Providing a historic perspective on the standards and regulations that got us to where we are today in terms of urban lifestyle and attempts at reform, Douglas Farr makes a powerful case for sustainable urbanism, showing where we went wrong, and where we need to go. He then explains how to implement sustainable urbanism through leadership and communication in cities, communities, and neighborhoods. Essays written by Farr and others delve into such issues as:

• Increasing sustainability through density.
• Integrating transportation and land use.
• Creating sustainable neighborhoods, including housing, car-free areas, locally-owned stores, walkable neighborhoods, and universal accessibility.
• The health and environmental benefits of linking humans to nature, including walk-to open spaces, neighborhood stormwater systems and waste treatment, and food production.
• High performance buildings and district energy systems.

Enriching the argument are in-depth case studies in sustainable urbanism, from BedZED in London, England and Newington in Sydney, Australia, to New Railroad Square in Santa Rosa, California and Dongtan, Shanghai, China. An epilogue looks to the future of sustainable urbanism over the next 200 years.

At once solidly researched and passionately argued, Sustainable Urbanism is the ideal guidebook for urban designers, planners, and architects who are eager to make a positive impact on our--and our descendants'--buildings, cities, and lives..
Price: $54.16 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With populations decentralizing and cities sprawling ever-outward, twenty-first- century urban planners are challenged by the need to organize not just people but space itself. Hence a new architectural discipline has emerged: landscape urbanism.

In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim — long at the forefront of this new movement — has assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the field’s top practitioners. Fourteen essays written by leading figures across a range of disciplines and from around the world — including James Corner, Linda Pollak, Alan Berger, Pierre Bélanger, Julia Czerniak, and more — capture the origins, the contemporary milieu, and the aspirations of this relatively new field. The Landscape Urbanism Reader is an inspiring signal to the future of city making as well as an indispensable reference for students, teachers, architects, and urban planners.

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Price: $18.73 [Notify me when price goes down.]

* A hands-on, well-illustrated reference that helps architects and contractors avoid making common errors in traditional construction details

* Graphical approach allows users to quickly visualize design solutions

* Lists the rules-of-thumb for each detail, and correct and incorrect examples of how to design or construct each detail.
Price: $29.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Kerb is an annual, limited release, not-for-profit publication which focuses on contemporary issues regarding the Landscape, Urbanism and Architectural disciplines and discourses. The fifteenth, issue of Kerb focuses on the theme of landscape urbanism. We have brought together, leading editors of the key landscape urbanism publications, The Landscape Urbanism Reader - Charles Waldheim and Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape - Mohsen Mostafavi. In conjunction with leading architectural (FOA) and landscape architectural practices (Karres en Brands and Kathryn Gustafson) research laboratory founders, ecologists, urban designers, journalists and activists; graduates and academics. To consider how can we reconceptualise the design and growth of future cities?.
Price: $19.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The theme of this volume is Landscape Urbanism with the agenda of linking emergent theories of Landscape Urbanism with its contemporary practice. While a few recent symposiums and articles have addressed components of the subject, the underlying theoretical trajectory of this emergent field has still not been codified in an accessible way. The publication of Volume 14 of CENTER will fill this void with the inclusion of a reprint series of historically significant texts, combined with original articles by noted authors and emerging practitioners..
Price: $27.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Charged Void: Urbanism is the companion volume to The Charged Void: Architecture; the two together comprise the complete works of Alison and Peter Smithson For the designers, architecture and urbanism were inseparable: buildings encapsulate urban ideas; urban systems are the means by which buildings function effectively. This second book collects both urban and architectural designs that have specific implications for city form into fourteen thematic chapters: the Team X Doorn Manifesto with its worked examples (Close Houses, Fold Houses, Terraced Crescent Houses); large-scale designs such as the Berlin Hauptstadt, Hamburg Steilshoop, and the Kuwait Urban Form Study; and built manifestations of urban ideas, notably the Economist Building of 1959-64. More than a collection of work, The Charged Void: Urbanism represents a record of a focused thought process concerned with the qualities of urban life—a thoughtful and witty collection of observations, decipherings, and recommendations for understanding and improving the complex nature of the city..
Price: $15.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Flashing facades, high-end-casinos and neon lights - isn't that how one knows the gambling metropolis of Las Vegas? But what picture does the city have to offer beyond the pulsing pleasure boulevard The Strip? Urbanizing the Mojave Desert: Las Vegas shows us the unknown, desolate side of Las Vegas and its environs There, where the suburbs in the desert encroach on nature and change it, the book reveals the surprising connections between the abstract architectonic sculptures which mark the image of Las Vegas, and the spacious abstractions of nature in the Mojave Desert..
Price: $21.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

UN Studio is the innovative firm founded by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, two Dutch designers creating some of the most ambitious and celebrated architecture of their generation. Fluidity and flexibility are hallmarks of UN Studio projects, and many of these projects have literally reinvented a number of standard building types, such as power stations, museums, bridges, transportation hubs, and live-work residences (including one based on a Möbius strip). UN Studio projects fuse a sophisticated understanding of digital design with a formal and material exploration that has ensured that their work reaches far beyond the "supermodernism" associated with other Dutch firms. This book presents the firm's complete body of work, including several major projects in Germany (Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart), Italy (Pierodi Pier, Genoa harbor), Switzerland (Hotel Castell, Zuoz), Korea (Galleris Hallin, Seoul) and many in the Netherlands..
Price: $46.08 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The move to liveable communities--ideal ``small towns'' and neighborhoods where people work, live, play, and walk from place to place--is on. Profit from what a visionary group of architects leading this movement has learned about designing new ``small towns'' in Peter Katz's The New Urbanism. You'll discover the amazing potential for this kind of work as well as case studies, site plans, project analyses, and 180 beautiful photographs. This unique reference also tackles--and answers--the critical issues of crime, health, traffic, environmental degradation, and economic vitality and opens a startling window on the look and feel of future communities. Every designer can profit from this guide to building the utopias of tomorrow--today!.
Price: $32.61 [Notify me when price goes down.]