City Design: Modernist, Traditional, Green and Systems Perspectives

The world is urbanizing faster than current city design practices can sustain, climate change has introduced a new dynamism into what once appeared to be a stable environment, and -- with effective city design more important than ever - there are controversies and uncertainties about the best way to manage unprecedented urban growth and change. City Design describes the history and current practice of the four most widely accepted approaches to city design: the Modernist city of towers and highways that, beginning in the 1920s, has come to dominate urban development worldwide but is criticized as mechanical and soul-less; the Traditional organization of cities as streets and public places, scorned by the modernists, but being revived today for its human scale; Green city design, whose history can be traced back thousands of years in Asia, but is becoming increasingly important everywhere as sustainability and the preservation of the planet are recognized as basic issues, and finally Systems city design, which includes infrastructure and development regulation but also includes computer aided techniques which give designers new tools for managing the complexity of cities. Jonathan Barnett is a well-known, widely-experienced city design practitioner who also teaches and writes about city design. He writes authoritatively but accessibly about complicated issues of theory and practice, and his approach is objective and inclusive. This is a comprehensive text on city design ideal for planners, landscape architects, urban designers and those who want to understand how to improve cities.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Three City Design Challenges 1. Modernist City Design 2. Traditional City Design and the Modern City 3. Green City Design and Climate Change 4. Systems City Design Conclusion: The Fifth Way

About the Author :
Jonathan Barnett is a professor and director of the Urban Design Program at the University of Pennsylvania, a former director of urban design for the New York City Planning Department, and an advisor on many projects in the United States, China, Korea, Cambodia, and Mexico. He has written extensively about city design theory and practice. Educated at Yale and the University of Cambridge, he is a Fellow of both the American Institute of Architects and the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Review :
"The design of cities is a significant social and environmental issue in this first urban century. In response, Jonathan Barnett provides two valuable syntheses. First, he succinctly identifies three pressing city-design challenges. Next, Barnett analyzes the hopes and shortcomings of modern, traditional, environmental, and systems approaches to urban design. From these masterful syntheses, a new, timely way to design cities emerges." - Frederick Steiner, Dean, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin "Jonathan Barnett has devoted his professional career to the education, theory, practice and intimate understanding of urban design. With City Design, Barnett untangles the complexity of diverse urban design approaches through a careful consideration of four basic design positions on the city; Modernist, Traditional, Green and Systems design. His text provides a much needed sense of perspective for the design of contemporary cities in an increasingly dynamic and globalized urban world." - Alfonso Vegara, President of Fundacion Metropoli, Madrid, Spain