Taner Oc

Matthew Carmona

Tim Heath

Steven Tiesdell

This comprehensive introductory guide to urban design takes the reader systematically and logically through the many interacting theoretical, policy and practice-based dimensions of the subject.

The Dimensions of Urban Design

Public Places, Urban Spaces

Claudio De Magalhaes

Lucy Natarajan

Design Governance focuses on how we design the built environment where most of us live, work, and play and the role of government in that process. To do so, it draws on the experience of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), a decade-long, globally unique experiment in the governance of design. This book theorises design governance as an arm and aspiration of the state; tells the story of CABE, warts and all, and what came before and after; unpacks CABE’s ‘informal’ toolbox: its methods and processes of design governance; and reflects on the effectiveness and legitimacy of design as a tool of modern-day government. The result is a new set of concepts through which to understand the governance of design as a distinct and important sub-field of urban design.

The CABE Experiment

Design Governance

Public Places Urban Spaces provides a comprehensive overview of the principles, theory and practices of urban design for those new to the subject and for those requiring a clear and systematic guide. In this new edition the book has been extensively revised and restructured. Carmona advances the idea of urban design as a continuous process of shaping places, fashioned in turn by shifting global, local and power contexts. At the heart of the book are eight key dimensions of urban design theory and practice—temporal, perceptual, morphological, visual, social, functional—and two new process dimensions—design governance and place production. This extensively updated and revised third edition is more international in its scope and coverage, incorporating new thinking on technological impact, climate change adaptation, strategies for urban decline, cultural and social diversity, place value, healthy cities and more, all illustrated with nearly 1,000 carefully chosen images. Public Places Urban Spaces is a classic urban design text, and everyone in the field should own a copy.

Public Places Urban Spaces

Nick Gallent

Sarah Carmona

Planners and housing providers have to contend with very different constraints on their activities - inevitably leading to a certain amount of disagreement and tension. It is not always easy to reconcile the demands of local public opinion and government policy on the one hand with financial demands on the other. Working Together endeavours to help ease these tensions. It examines the working relationships between housing providers (private housebuilders, registered social landlords (RSLs) and local authority housing departments) and planners. Based on research conducted by the Bartlett School of Planning, the guide identifies and explains the motivations and constraints of the different groups involved in providing housing. The aim of this publication is to help all parties meet their own objectives in a mutually supportive and positive manner and to promote sharing of ideas across organisations. This is achieved through the assembly of twelve in-depth good practice examples, which have identified five routes to better practice. The guide offers practical solutions to overcoming the stresses inherent in housebuilding. More positive working relationships will deliver more efficient and effective development and planning processes as well as creating better quality housing. Working Together is supported jointly by The Royal Town Planning Institute, The Housing Corporation, House Builders Federation, National Housing Federation and Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions. It is their belief that by adopting the principles outlined in Working Together, benefits will accrue not only to housing consumers, but also to all the parties involved in housing development.

A Guide for Planners and Housing Providers

Working Together

Claudio de Magalhães

Leo Hammond

In both the UK and the US there is a sense of dissatisfaction and pessimism about the state of urban environments, particularly with the quality of everyday public spaces. Explanations for this have emphasized the poor quality of design that characterizes many new public spaces; spaces that are dominated by parking, roads infrastructure, introspective buildings, a lack of enclosure and a poor sense of place, and which in different ways for different groups are too often exclusionary. Yet many well designed public spaces have also experienced decline and neglect, as the services and activities upon which the continuing quality of those spaces have been subject to the same constraints and pressures for change as public services in general. These issues touch upon the daily management of public space, that is, the coordination of the many different activities that constantly define and redefine the characteristics and quality of public space. This book draws on three empirical projects to examine the questions of public space management on an international stage. They are set within a context of theoretical debates about public space, its history, contemporary patterns of use and changing nature in western society, and about the new management approaches that are increasingly being adopted.

The Management Dimension

Public Space

This book directly addresses the major planning debate of our time - the delivery and quality of new housing development. As pressure for new housing development in England increases, a widespread desire to improve the design of the resulting residential environments becomes evermore apparent with increasing condemnation of the standard products of the volume housebuilders. In recent years central government has come to accept the need to deliver higher quality living environments, and the important role of the planning system in helping to raise design standards. Housing Design Quality focuses on this role and in particular on how the various policy instruments available to public authorities can be used in a positive manner to deliver higher quality residential developments.

Through Policy, Guidance and Review

Housing Design Quality

'Public Places, Urban Spaces' provides a thorough introduction to the principles of urban design theory and practice. Authored by experts in the fields of urban design and planning, this edition has been updated with relevant examples to show students how principles have been put into practice.

John Punter

This book examines the design policies in current development plans. With design quality of growing importance to the public, consumers, developers and their clients, and high on the Secretary of State's agenda, this book makes an important practical contribution to improving design control. With the increasing importance attached to district-wide development plan policies since 1991, local planning authorities and community groups have an important opportunity to improve their control over the built environment. This research text explains how clear, comprehensive and effective policies can be researched, written and implemented.

Theory, content and best practice for design policies

The Design Dimension of Planning

Steve Tiesdell

Essential reading for students and practitioners of urban design, this collection of essays introduces the 6 dimensions of urban design through a range of the most important classic and contemporary key texts. Urban design as a form of place making has become an increasingly significant area of academic endeavour, of public policy and professional practice. Compiled by the authors of the best selling Public Places Urban Spaces, this indispensable guide includes all the crucial definitions and various understandings of the subject, as well as a practical look at how to implement urban design that readers will need to refer to time and time again. Uniquely, the selections of essays that include the works of Gehl, Jacobs, and Cullen, are presented substantially in their original form, and the truly accessible dip-in-and-out format will enable readers to form a deeper, practical understanding of urban design.

Urban Design Reader

Whilst recognising that distinctly different traditions exist within the study and practice of urban design, this book advances an interdisciplinary and innovative approach, which is of direct importance to understanding the urban forms, conditions, practices and processes. It enthuses and inspires users who are grappling with urban design research problems, but who need inspiration to move from idea to methodological approach. Through the work of 32 urban researchers from the arts, sciences and social sciences, it demonstrates a wide range of problems and approaches and shows how the diverse range of complementary approaches can come together to provide a holistic understanding to the design of cities. While each of the contributors presents a particular approach to researching the field, sometimes focusing centrally on particular research methodologies, others cutting across methods, or focusing on theory, all include discussion of actual research projects to illustrate their application to 'real world' problems. This book will be valuable to everyone from the informed undergraduate student about to embark on their first dissertation, to PhD students and seasoned researchers immersed in methodological and conceptual complexity and wishing to compare available and appropriate methodological paths.

An Urban Design Research Primer

Explorations in Urban Design

Public Places - Urban Spaces provides a comprehensive overview of the principles and theory of urban design. This new edition reviews the latest debates, practice and research, and includes expanded discussions on key areas such as sustainability, health and inclusion. Full colour illustrations help demonstrate the application of the concepts discussed in the text, and the clear structure and holistic approach to the subject makes it suitable for dipping into or reading cover to cover. The authors explain the catalysts of change and renewal, and explore the global and local contexts and processes within which urban design as `place-making' occurs. The book presents six key dimensions of urban design theory and practice -the social, visual, functional, temporal, morphological and perceptual - and relates these to discussions of the market, regulatory processes and how urban design is communicated. This is a clear and accessible text that provides a comprehensive discussion of this complex subject.

This book examines the processes and relationships that underpin the delivery of new homes across the United Kingdom, focussing primarily on the land use planning system in England, the way that housing providers engage with that system, and how the processes of engagement are changing or might change in the future. Planning, market and social house building - the three key processes - are first dissected and explored individually, then brought together to study the key areas of interaction between planning and the providers of social and market housing by way of the range of tensions that have consistently dogged those interactions. Extensive illustrative case study material provides a platform to the consideration of developing more integrated, realistic and proactive approaches to planning. Proposing evolutionary, and sometimes radical proposals for change, Delivering New Homes makes a bold contribution to finding a better way of delivering the new homes that the nation increasingly needs.

Processes, Planners and Providers

Delivering New Homes

Filipa Matos Wunderlich

In recent years it has become common-place to hear claims that public space in cities across the globe has become the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and privileged, at the expense of the needs of wider society. Whether it is the privatization of public space through commerical developments like shopping malls and business parks, the gentrification of existing spaces by campaigns against perceived anti-social behaviour or the increasing domination of public areas by private transport in the form of the car, the urban public space is seen as under threat. But are things really that bad? Has the market really become the sole factor that influences the treatment of public space? Have the financial and personal interests of the few really come to dominate those of the many? To answer these questions Matthew Carmona and Filipa Wunderlich have carried out a detailed investigation of the modern public spaces of London, that most global of cities. They have developed a new typology of public spaces applicable to all cities, a typology that demonstrates that to properly assess contemporary urban places means challenging the over-simplification of current critiques. Global cities are made up of many overlapping public spaces, good and bad; this book shows how to analyze this complexity, and to understand it.

The Multiple Complex Public Spaces of a Global City

Capital Spaces

Public Places - Urban Spaces is a holistic guide to the many complex and interacting dimensions of urban design. The discussion moves systematically through ideas, theories, research and the practice of urban design from an unrivalled range of sources. It aids the reader by gradually building the concepts one upon the other towards a total view of the subject. The author team explain the catalysts of change and renewal, and explore the global and local contexts and processes within which urban design operates. The book presents six key dimensions of urban design theory and practice - the social, visual, functional, temporal, morphological and perceptual - allowing it to be dipped into for specific information, or read from cover to cover. This is a clear and accessible text that provides a comprehensive discussion of this complex subject.

Matthew Carmona

Books

Your next favorite book is out there