Cities in Layers


Book Description

The world's most famous cities through the ages! Walk around any famous city and layers of history start to emerge. In London, Roman walls are dwarfed by office blocks. In Rome, ancient treasures like the Colosseum stand shoulder to shoulder with buildings from the Renaissance. In New York, skyscrapers from the 1920s and 1930s predate enormous glass towers. In Cities in Layers: Six Famous Cities Through Time, six major world cities are shown at different stages throughout history. A clever die-cut element allows readers to really peel back layers of time.




Stickmen's Guide to Earth's Atmosphere in Layers


Book Description

Teeter on the edge of outer space with the Stickmen. Then fly down, down, down to atmospheric layers that wrap around Earth. Follow the Stickmen to view the galaxies through the Hubble Space Telescope and stop by the International Space Station. The Stickmen will take you on a tour of satellites in orbit, aircraft riding jet streams, and storms in the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. With phenomenal facts, cool diagrams, and photos from space, this will be a dizzy, action-packed ride!




24-Hour Cities


Book Description

Winner of the Gold Award in the Tenth Annual Robert Bruss Real Estate Book Competition 24 Hour Cities is the very first full length book about America’s cities that never sleep. Over the last fifty years, the nation’s top live-work-play cities have proven themselves more than just vibrant urban environments for the elite. They are attracting a cross-section of the population from across the U.S. and are preferred destinations for immigrants of all income strata. This is creating a virtuous circle wherein economic growth enhances property values, stronger real estate markets sustain more reliable tax bases, and solid municipal revenues pay for better services that further attract businesses and talented individuals. Yet, just a generation ago, cities like New York, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, and Miami were broke (financially and physically), scarred by violence, and prime examples of urban dysfunction. How did the turnaround happen? And why are other cities still stuck with the hollow downtowns and sprawling suburbs that make for a 9-to-5 urban configuration? Hugh Kelly’s cross-disciplinary research identifies the ingredients of success, and the recipe that puts them together.




The Spirit of Cities


Book Description

A lively and personal book that returns the city to political thought Cities shape the lives and outlooks of billions of people, yet they have been overshadowed in contemporary political thought by nation-states, identity groups, and concepts like justice and freedom. The Spirit of Cities revives the classical idea that a city expresses its own distinctive ethos or values. In the ancient world, Athens was synonymous with democracy and Sparta represented military discipline. In this original and engaging book, Daniel Bell and Avner de-Shalit explore how this classical idea can be applied to today's cities, and they explain why philosophy and the social sciences need to rediscover the spirit of cities. Bell and de-Shalit look at nine modern cities and the prevailing ethos that distinguishes each one. The cities are Jerusalem (religion), Montreal (language), Singapore (nation building), Hong Kong (materialism), Beijing (political power), Oxford (learning), Berlin (tolerance and intolerance), Paris (romance), and New York (ambition). Bell and de-Shalit draw upon the richly varied histories of each city, as well as novels, poems, biographies, tourist guides, architectural landmarks, and the authors' own personal reflections and insights. They show how the ethos of each city is expressed in political, cultural, and economic life, and also how pride in a city's ethos can oppose the homogenizing tendencies of globalization and curb the excesses of nationalism. The Spirit of Cities is unreservedly impressionistic. Combining strolling and storytelling with cutting-edge theory, the book encourages debate and opens up new avenues of inquiry in philosophy and the social sciences. It is a must-read for lovers of cities everywhere. In a new preface, Bell and de-Shalit further develop their idea of "civicism," the pride city dwellers feel for their city and its ethos over that of others.




Soft City


Book Description

Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites—separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources—to support a soft city approach? In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions. Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society. Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond. Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.




Invisible Cities


Book Description

Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted novel about an Emperor's travels—a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory. “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.




Cities' Identity Through Architecture and Arts


Book Description

This book covers a broad range of topics relating to architecture and urban design, such as the conservation of cities’ culture and identity through design and planning processes, various ideologies and approaches to achieving more sustainable cities while retaining their identities, and strategies to help cities advertise themselves on the global market. Every city has its own unique identity, which is revealed through its physical and visual form. It is seen through the eyes of its inhabitants and visitors, and is where their collective memories are shaped. In turn, these factors affect tourism, education, culture & economic prosperity, in addition to other aspects, making a city’s identity one of its main assets. Cities’ identities are constructed and developed over time and are constantly evolving physically, culturally and sociologically. This book explains how architecture and the arts can embody the historical, cultural and economic characteristics of the city. It also demonstrates how cities’ memories play a vital role in preserving their physical and nonphysical heritage. Furthermore, it examines the transformation of cities and urban cultures, and investigates the various new approaches developed in contemporary arts and architecture. Given its scope, the book is a valuable resource for a variety of readers, including students, educators, researchers and practitioners in the fields of city planning, urban design, architecture and the arts.




Digital Cities Roadmap


Book Description

DIGITAL CITIES ROADMAP This book details applications of technology to efficient digital city infrastructure and its planning, including smart buildings. Rapid urbanization, demographic changes, environmental changes, and new technologies are changing the views of urban leaders on sustainability, as well as creating and providing public services to tackle these new dynamics. Sustainable development is an objective by which the processes of planning, implementing projects, and development is aimed at meeting the needs of modern communities without compromising the potential of future generations. The advent of Smart Cities is the answer to these problems. Digital Cities Roadmap provides an in-depth analysis of design technologies that lay a solid foundation for sustainable buildings. The book also highlights smart automation technologies that help save energy, as well as various performance indicators needed to make construction easier. The book aims to create a strong research community, to have a deep understanding and the latest knowledge in the field of energy and comfort, to offer solid ideas in the nearby future for sustainable and resilient buildings. These buildings will help the city grow as a smart city. The smart city has also a focus on low energy consumption, renewable energy, and a small carbon footprint. Audience The information provided in this book will be of value to researchers, academicians and industry professionals interested in IoT-based architecture and sustainable buildings, energy efficiency and various tools and methods used to develop green technologies for construction in smart cities.




Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence


Book Description

Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence offers a comprehensive view of how cities are evolving as smart ecosystems through the convergence of technologies incorporating machine learning and neural network capabilities, geospatial intelligence, data analytics and visualization, sensors, and smart connected objects. These recent advances in AI move us closer to developing urban operating systems that simulate human, machine, and environmental patterns from transportation infrastructure to communication networks. Exploring cities as real-time, living, dynamic systems, and providing tools and formats including generative design and living lab models that support cities to become self-regulating, this book provides readers with a conceptual and practical knowledge base to grasp and apply the key principles required in the planning, design, and operations of smart cities. Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence brings a multidisciplinary, integrated approach, examining how the digital and physical worlds are converging, and how a new combination of human and machine intelligence is transforming the experience of the urban environment. It presents a fresh holistic understanding of smart cities through an interconnected stream of theory, planning and design methodologies, system architecture, and the application of smart city functions, with the ultimate purpose of making cities more liveable, sustainable, and self-sufficient.




Teaching Mathematics Using Interactive Mapping


Book Description

Teaching Mathematics Using Interactive Mapping offers novel ways to learn basic math topics such as simple relational measures or measuring hierarchies through customized interactive mapping activities. These activities focus on interactive web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) and are relevant to today’s problems and challenges. Written in a guided, hands-on, understandable manner, all activities are designed to build practical and problem-solving skills that rest on mathematical principles and move students from thinking about maps as references that focus solely on "where is" something, to analytical tools, focusing primarily on the "whys of where." Success with this transition through interaction permits most readers to master mathematical concepts and GIS tools. FEATURES Offers custom-designed geographical activities to fit with specific mathematical topics Helps students become comfortable using mathematics in a variety of professions Provides an innovative, engaging, and practical set of activities to ease readers through typically difficult, often elementary, mathematical topics: fractions, the distributive law, and much more Uses web-based GIS maps, apps, and other tools and data that can be accessed on any device, anywhere, at any time, requiring no prior GIS background Written by experienced teachers and researchers with lifelong experience in teaching mathematics, geography, and spatial analysis This textbook applies to undergraduate and graduate students in universities and community colleges including those in basic mathematics courses, as well as upper-level undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in geographic information systems, remote sensing, photogrammetry, geography, geodesy, information science, engineering, and geology. Professionals interested in learning techniques and technologies for collecting, analyzing, managing, processing, and visualizing geospatial datasets will also benefit from this book as they refresh their knowledge in mathematics.