Urban Coding and Planning


Book Description

Urban codes have a profound influence on urban form, affecting the design and placement of buildings, streets and public spaces. Historically, their use has helped create some of our best-loved urban environments, while recent advances in coding have been a growing focus of attention, particularly in Britain and North America. However, the full potential for the role of codes has yet to be realized. In Urban Coding and Planning, Stephen Marshall and his contributors investigate the nature and scope of coding; its purposes; the kinds of environments it creates; and, perhaps most importantly, its relationship to urban planning. By bringing together historical and ongoing traditions of coding from around the world – with chapters describing examples from the United Kingdom, France, India, China, Japan, Australia, South Africa, the United States and Latin America – this book provides lessons for today’s theory and practice of place-making.




The Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning


Book Description

Why plan? How and what do we plan? Who plans for whom? These three questions are then applied across three major topics in planning: States, Markets, and the Provision of Social Goods; The Methods and Substance of Planning; and Agency, Implementation, and Decision Making.




Doing Research in Urban and Regional Planning


Book Description

Doing Research in Urban and Regional Planning provides a basic introduction to methodology and methods in planning research. It brings together the methods most commonly used in planning, explaining their key applications and basic protocols. It addresses the unique needs of planners by dealing with concerns which cut across the social, economic, and physical sciences, showing readers how to mobilise fresh combinations of methods, theoretical frameworks and techniques to address the complex needs of urban and regional development. It includes illustrative case studies throughout to help planning students see how methods can be operationalised on the ground and connect research with urban and regional planning practice to build foundations for action. The book pays attention to contemporary trends – such as the growth in information technology, and general shifts in urban and environmental governance – that are affecting the practicalities and protocols of doing planning research. Doing Research in Urban and Regional Planning also encourages ethical reflection and discusses the ethical issues specific to planning research. Each chapter begins with a chapter outline with learning outcomes and concludes with take-home messages and suggested further readings. It also suggests a range of learning activities and discussion points for each method.




Standard Land Use Coding Manual


Book Description




City Rules


Book Description

City Rules offers a challenge to students and professionals in urban planning, design, and policy to change the rules of city-building, using regulations to reinvigorate, rather than stifle, our communities. Emily Talen demonstrates that regulations are a primary detriment to the creation of a desirable urban form. While many contemporary codes encourage sprawl and even urban blight, that hasn't always been the case-and it shouldn't be in the future. Talen provides a visually rich history, showing how certain eras used rules to produce beautiful, walkable, and sustainable communities, while others created just the opposite. She makes complex regulations understandable, demystifying city rules like zoning and illustrating how written codes translate into real-world consequences. Most importantly, Talen proposes changes to these rules that will actually enhance communities' freedom to develop unique spaces.




Urban Coding and Planning


Book Description

In Urban Coding and Planning, Stephen Marshall and his contributors investigate the nature and scope of coding; its purposes; the kinds of environments it creates; and, perhaps most importantly, its relationship to urban planning. --




Strong Towns


Book Description

A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you’ll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles—and why it just doesn’t work. New development and high-risk investing don’t generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens’ quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the “traditional” search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.




Basic Quantitative Research Methods for Urban Planners


Book Description

In most planning practice and research, planners work with quantitative data. By summarizing, analyzing, and presenting data, planners create stories and narratives that explain various planning issues. Particularly, in the era of big data and data mining, there is a stronger demand in planning practice and research to increase capacity for data-driven storytelling. Basic Quantitative Research Methods for Urban Planners provides readers with comprehensive knowledge and hands-on techniques for a variety of quantitative research studies, from descriptive statistics to commonly used inferential statistics. It covers statistical methods from chi-square through logistic regression and also quasi-experimental studies. At the same time, the book provides fundamental knowledge about research in general, such as planning data sources and uses, conceptual frameworks, and technical writing. The book presents relatively complex material in the simplest and clearest way possible, and through the use of real world planning examples, makes the theoretical and abstract content of each chapter as tangible as possible. It will be invaluable to students and novice researchers from planning programs, intermediate researchers who want to branch out methodologically, practicing planners who need to conduct basic analyses with planning data, and anyone who consumes the research of others and needs to judge its validity and reliability.




Zoned in the USA


Book Description

Why are American cities, suburbs, and towns so distinct? Compared to European cities, those in the United States are characterized by lower densities and greater distances; neat, geometric layouts; an abundance of green space; a greater level of social segregation reflected in space; and—perhaps most noticeably—a greater share of individual, single-family detached housing. In Zoned in the USA, Sonia A. Hirt argues that zoning laws are among the important but understudied reasons for the cross-continental differences.Hirt shows that rather than being imported from Europe, U.S. municipal zoning law was in fact an institution that quickly developed its own, distinctly American profile. A distinct spatial culture of individualism—founded on an ideal of separate, single-family residences apart from the dirt and turmoil of industrial and agricultural production—has driven much of municipal regulation, defined land-use, and, ultimately, shaped American life. Hirt explores municipal zoning from a comparative and international perspective, drawing on archival resources and contemporary land-use laws from England, Germany, France, Australia, Russia, Canada, and Japan to challenge assumptions about American cities and the laws that guide them.




Streets and Patterns


Book Description

There is an emerging consensus that urban street layouts should be planned with greater attention to ‘placemaking’ and urban design quality, while maintaining the conventional transport functions of accessibility and connectivity. However, it is not always clear how this might be achieved: we still tend to have different sets of guidance for main road networks and for local streetgrids. What is needed is a framework that addresses both of these, plus main streets – that don’t easily fit either set of guidance – in an integrative manner. Streets and Patterns takes up this challenge to create a coherent rationale to underpin today’s streets-oriented urban design agenda. Informed by recent research, the book looks behind existing design conventions and beyond immediate policy rhetoric, and analyses a range of first principles – from Le Corbusier and Colin Buchanan to New Urbanism. The book provides a new framework for the design and planning of urban layouts, integrating transport issues such as road hierarchy, arterial streets and multi-modal networks with urban design and planning issues such as street type, grid type, mixed-use blocks and urban design coding.