Site Planning: International Practice (The MIT Press)

A comprehensive, state-of-the-art guide to site planning, covering planning processes, new technologies, and sustainability, with extensive treatment of practices in rapidly urbanizing countries.

Cities are built site by site. Site planning—the art and science of designing settlements on the land—encompasses a range of activities undertaken by architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and engineers. This book offers a comprehensive, up-to-date guide to site planning that is global in scope. It covers planning processes and standards, new technologies, sustainability, and cultural context, addressing the roles of all participants and stakeholders and offering extensive treatment of practices in rapidly urbanizing countries. Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack wrote the classic text on the subject, and this book takes up where the earlier book left off. It can be used as a textbook and will be an essential reference for practitioners.

Site Planning consists of forty self-contained modules, organized into five parts: The Art of Site Planning, which presents site planning as a shared enterprise; Understanding Sites, covering the components of site analysis; Planning Sites, covering the processes involved; Site Infrastructure, from transit to waste systems; and Site Prototypes, including housing, recreation, and mixed use. Each module offers a brief introduction, covers standards or approaches, provides examples, and presents innovative practices in sidebars. The book is lavishly illustrated with 1350 photographs, diagrams, and examples of practice.

Gary Hack has studied, taught, and practiced site planning for more than forty years in the United States, Canada, and other countries. He is Professor Emeritus of Urban Design at MIT, where he headed the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, and Visiting Professor at Tsinghua and Chongqing Universities.