Becoming an Urban Planner


Book Description

Becoming an URBAN PLANNER Are you considering a career in urban planning? Becoming an Urban Planner is the best place to start. Through in-depth interviews with more than eighty urban planners across the United States and Canada, this book gives you a valuable insider’s look at your future profession as it is lived and practiced. Becoming an Urban Planner introduces you to the urban planning profession—its history, what you must know to prepare for a career in planning, and the different types of planning jobs. Beyond the basics, though, it shows you the realities of what it’s really like to be a planner today. You’ll learn about: The skills you’ll need and how to hone them in school and on the job Potential career paths and what people in these positions do Using internships, job shadowing, and other opportunities to break into the field Deciding among planning specialties and moving between public and private sectors How to search for and get your first position Emerging areas in planning, including sustainability and climate change Each topic is explored through in-depth interviews with both generalists and others who have devoted their careers to a particular aspect of planning. These professionals share their insights and describe how they have arrived at where they are and how beginners like you can learn from their experiences. With the information from this book to guide and inspire you, you will be able to chart your own path to success as an urban planner.




Urban Design


Book Description

Collects essays written on the establishment and cultivation of urban design as a distinct architectural and planning practice.




Rebuilding the American City


Book Description

Urban redevelopment in American cities is neither easy nor quick. It takes a delicate alignment of goals, power, leadership and sustained advocacy on the part of many. Rebuilding the American City highlights 15 urban design and planning projects in the U.S. that have been catalysts for their downtowns—yet were implemented during the tumultuous start of the 21st century. The book presents five paradigms for redevelopment and a range of perspectives on the complexities, successes and challenges inherent to rebuilding American cities today. Rebuilding the American City is essential reading for practitioners and students in urban design, planning, and public policy looking for diverse models of urban transformation to create resilient urban cores.




The New Companion to Urban Design


Book Description

The New Companion to Urban Design continues the assemblage of rich and critical ideas about urban form and design that began with the Companion to Urban Design (Routledge, 2011). With chapters from a new set of contributors, this sequel offers a more comparative perspective representing multiple voices and perspectives from the Global South. The essays in this volume are organized in three parts: Part I: Comparative Urbanism; Part II: Challenges; and Part III: Opportunities. Each part contains distinct sections designed to address specific themes, and includes a list of annotated suggested further readings at the end of each chapter. Part I: Comparative Urbanism examines different variants of urbanism in the Global North and the Global South, produced by a new economic order characterized by the mobility of labor, capital, information, and technology. Part II: Challenges discusses some of the contemporary challenges that cities of the Global North and the Global South are facing and the possible role of urban design. This part discusses spatial claims and conflicts, challenges generated by urban informality, explosive growth or dramatic shrinkage of the urban settlement, gentrification and displacement, and mimesis, simulacra and lack of authenticity. Part III: Aspirations discusses some normative goals that urban design interventions aspire to bring about in cities of the Global North and the Global South. These include resilience and sustainability, health, conservation/restoration, justice, intelligence, access and mobility, and arts and culture. The New Companion to Urban Design is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students interested in cities and their built environment. It offers an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across a range of disciplines including urban design, planning, urban studies, and geography.




Explorations in Urban Design


Book Description

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.




Research Handbook on Urban Design


Book Description

With the UN-Habitat estimating that by 2035 the majority of the world’s population will be living in metropolitan areas, this cutting-edge Research Handbook explores the emerging field of urban design and its place in contemporary scholarship.