The city is often depicted as a sort of self-organizing chaos. This collection of essays, edited by Pier Vittorio Aureli, makes the case for the opposite hypothesis: The city is always the result of political intention, often in the form of specific architectural projects. Cities are shaped not only by material forces, but also by cultural and didactic visions. This thesis is s...(展开全部)

The city is often depicted as a sort of self-organizing chaos. This collection of essays, edited by Pier Vittorio Aureli, makes the case for the opposite hypothesis: The city is always the result of political intention, often in the form of specific architectural projects. Cities are shaped not only by material forces, but also by cultural and didactic visions. This thesis is s...(展开全部)

These designs for a "low speed," "rurban," neighborhood in Valencia, Spain, created by 13 international architecture firms (Toyo Ito, MVRDV, FOA, Fran ois Roche and others) under the direction of Vicente Guallart, look again at public housing as a site for architectural utopianism. Each contributor was asked to bring an agricultural sensibility to the high-density project, and ...(展开全部)

From Publishers Weekly: Olsen's thesis is that these three European capitals were each deliberately conceived as a unified work of art to reinforce the values of the dominant class and to serve their leisure pursuits. This is "a delightful and gripping, richly illustrated social history," noted PW. From Library Journal: A sweeping comparative analysis of three great European me...(展开全部)

In this thought-provoking book, Martijn de Waal, Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, discusses the ways in which digital and mobile media are changing urban life and our everyday experience of our physical surroundings. Few would deny the convenient and engaging nature of new media. But, probing deeper, de Waal delves into how the rise of these “urban media” als...(展开全部)

"A clever, uplifting book that entertains and makes you think." --Sophie Kinsella, #1 New York Times bestselling author The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what i...(展开全部)

In the manifesto The City in the City - Berlin: A Green Archipelago, Oswald Mathias Ungers and a number of his colleagues from Cornell University presented the first concepts and intellectual models for the shrinking city. In contrast to the reconstruction of the European city that was popular at the time, they developed the figure of a polycentric urban landscape. However, t...(展开全部)

In the manifesto The City in the City - Berlin: A Green Archipelago, Oswald Mathias Ungers and a number of his colleagues from Cornell University presented the first concepts and intellectual models for the shrinking city. In contrast to the reconstruction of the European city that was popular at the time, they developed the figure of a polycentric urban landscape. However, t...(展开全部)

The City: A World History tells the story of the rise and development of urban centers from ancient times to the twenty-first century. It begins with the establishment of the first cities in the Near East in the fourth millennium BCE, and goes on to examine urban growth in the Indus River Valley in India, as well as Egypt and areas that bordered the Mediterranean Sea. Athens, A...(展开全部)

If humankind can be said to have a single greatest creation, it would be those places that represent the most eloquent expression of our species’s ingenuity, beliefs, and ideals: the city. In this authoritative and engagingly written account, the acclaimed urbanist and bestselling author examines the evolution of urban life over the millennia and, in doing so, attempts to answe...(展开全部)