This book provides a simple but comprehensive framework for the emerging academic discipline of urban design, from its origins in Europe and America, to contemporary issues of imagery, finance and marketing in an age of globalisation There is currently no contemporary textbook for urban design that includes a general history and theory of the subject.
Internationally, urban design is more and more becoming a core subject taught in architecture schools. The AIA (US) and the RIBA (UK) both require undergraduates and graduates to study the urban dimension of architectural design. On a wider scale, in Europe, the EU is developing a common architectural curriculum, which includes an urban component for under-graduates. The situation is similar in schools across Asia and Australia.
Aimed at both students and teachers, this book provides a simple and accessible framework, from the origins of urban design and the main techniques developed to deal with the design of fragments of cities, to participatory planning processes, codes, imagery, finance and marketing. Finally, it proposes an innovative vision of contemporary practice based on the work of leading actors and projects in the field.
- This book is set to become the key textbook at undergraduate and graduate levels
- It is written in an accessible and direct tone, and highly illustrated with many colour and black and white diagrams
- It includes a general history and theory of urban design and provides an up-to-date account of contemporary urban conditions
Praise for Recombinant Urbanism:
"Documents a major intellectual advance...eagerly awaited by academics and practitioners all around the world... should become a standard text for schools of architecture and urbanism." Leon Van Schaik, Innovation Professor of Architecture, RMIT, Australia
" ...both unique and instrumentally positive. The book is the result of many years of research and writing, and is a small masterpiece in urban studies. It has already proved its worth in the teaching of urban studies, at Columbia, the AA, the Bartlett School, and Cooper Union, to mention only a few of the universities where Dr Shane has had a powerful influence...It is, indeed, one of the very best manuscripts I have read in the field in the last few years." Anthony Vidler, Professor and Dean, Irwin S Chanin School of Architecture, Cooper Union, New York, USA
"I can say without hesitation that I fully endorse Grahame’s work...the issues it covers are highly topical and such a book would indeed be widely read by architecture students, urban designers and planners." Colin Fournier, Professor of Architecture &Urbanism, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK
"Of great necessity for undergraduate and postgraduate students, scientists and professionals in urban planning and design [This] publication will certainly inspire work with city models in a wide range of practice." Henrik W Jensen, Associate Professor in Town Planning, Aarhus School of Architecture, The Netherlands
"A very important book. Shane ... has made legible and sensible the reams of recent urban discourse for a general college reader. Because of this labor-intensive effort, this book will be accessible by undergrad architecture programs as well as graduate seminars in urban design and planning. Additionally there is a big interest in UD and UP theory in ecology and social science now, and because of Grahame’s generous writing style the book will cross over to these other disciplines. ... I can also speak to the international interest in this book; ... again Shane has made important urban theories and thinking more widely available to an inter
Recombinant Urbanism develops the urban-modeling techniques, first pioneered by Kevin Lynch, into a comprehensive framework for the fast-growing discipline of urban design. Covering the origins of urban design in North America and Europe, it discusses the main approaches that have evolved to deal with the fragmented contemporary city. It also looks at the influence of participatory planning processes, zoning codes, imagery, finance, and marketing on urban form. Shane describes how the very same forces at work behind the freedom of the individual have also led to a widespread urban dispersal. In the final chapters, Shane brings his argument up to date with an exciting and innovative vision of contemporary practice, in which urban actors combine urban elements in networked cities. While the urban-planning touchstones of pattern recognition, scaling, urban morphologies, and zoning codes remain at the fore, their role is stressed as a transient one. They are presented as ever-changing structures, subject to constant feedback and alteration by a changing cast of catalytic urban actors.
Providing a sophisticated and potent set of tools for urban designers and urban-design students, recombinant Urbanism also recasts urban modeling as an effective method of augmenting standard architectural design practices in an urban context.
