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Over recent decades, the historico-geographical approach to urban morphology has been prominent in the debate on the physical form of our cities and on the agents and processes shaping that form over time.

This book, based on conference excerpts, investigates various aspects of contemporary Iranian urbanism. The topics covered range from the impacts of political developments on the cities¿ rapid socio-economic developments, to the cities¿ troubled relationship with the country¿s built-environment history and their frequently ill-managed exposure to Western notions of development and globalisation. Last but not least, the country¿s vulnerability to natural disasters in an age of increasing urban-population densification is also considered. Alongside more theoretically and artistically oriented debates, the book¿s individual contributions turn their attention to the now much higher proportion of urban dwellers in the country¿s rising population. It also discusses the policies designed in response to these demographic moves, including those to develop new towns, find housing for the excess population in existing cities, renovate historic buildings and create new public spaces. The practice-policy oriented contributions also include those concerning the country¿s responses to natural disasters.

The goal of the research is to contribute to the enhancement of past cultural heritage renovation and enhancement methods, improve the methods of spatial protection of heritage and contribute to the development of the local community through the use of cultural, and in particular, architectural heritage.

This volume analyzes sustainability-related innovations in the building sector and discusses how regional contexts articulate transition trajectories toward green building.

This edited volume discuses urban transport issues, policies, and initiatives in twelve of the world's major emerging economies - Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam - countries with large populations that have recently experienced large changes in urban structure, motorization and all the associated social, economic, and environmental impacts in positive and negative senses. Contributions on each of these twelve countries focus on one or more major cities per country. This book aims to fill a gap in the transport literature that is crucial to understanding the needs of a large portion of the world's urban population, especially in view of the southward shift in economic power. Readers will develop a better understanding of urban transport problems and policies in nations where development levels are below those of richer countries (mainly in the northern hemisphere) but where the rate of economic growth is often increasing at a faster rate than the wealthiest nations.

This volume analyzes sustainability-related innovations in the building sector and discusses how regional contexts articulate transition trajectories toward green building.

Richly illustrated with photographs for a better visual understanding of the topic, the book will benefit a broad readership, ranging from researchers and students of urban planning, urban geography, urban economics, urban sociology and urban design, to practitioners in the areas of urban planning and design.

This book argues that close and disciplined scrutiny of the Asian megacity regions is of critical importance to understanding Asian urbanization. However, any approach to studying these regions must adopt a multi-dimensional and trans-urban perspective; otherwise, we Without such an approach, we cannot truly make meaningful decisions about growth management and sustainable development for such regions. Amidst the sweeping demographic and structural shifts produced by global urbanization, Asian urbanization has a fascinating and prominent role. Asian urbanization is heterogeneous, and more accurately constitutes ¿phenomenä than a ¿phenomenon.¿ However, despite this diversity, there are certain common features that we can identify. One of them is the Asian ¿megacity region¿¿ the administrative and/or delineated territory of mixed urban-rural landscape surrounding a giant metropolis.The purpose of this book is to: Understand the main features of 21st century urbanization Note the limitations of current approaches (e.g. disparate scales, city-centric views, inadequate data sets)Articulate a pragmatically framed three-pronged approach (scale-based, trans-urban, multi-dimensional)Demonstrate the application of such an approach with a case study of one of the most important megacity regions in South Asia, the Delhi National Capital Region, underscoring the methodological requirements of such an approach Discuss the next steps for the field as a whole: questions to be raised and directions to be explored for further study. This timely, conceptual and empirical book will appeal to students of urbanization, architects involved in urban policy and planning, and researchers alike.

This book aims to provide bases for reasoning on what challenges urban-architectural design for vulnerable communities will face in the coming years. Several issues, such as technological development, climate change, political crisis and economic uncertainties show as traditional strategies and methodologies are not sufficient to deeply solve the problems of these complex realities. These new changes, which are studied in different fields of knowledge, highlight the fact that the development of effective solutions must be characterized by multidisciplinary approaches and must be based on strategies promoted by different disciplines. For this reason, this contributed volume collects contributions and considerations from experts in various fields of knowledge working in different parts of the world, such as the Americas, Europe and Asia. The goal is precisely to provide the reader with multidisciplinary knowledge and methodologies in order to better reflect and analyze the challenges that designing for vulnerable communities will face in the next few years. These multidisciplinary studies are organized into five sections: Sustainability and Vulnerabilities in Time of the AnthropoceneApproaches, Principles and Paradigms to Contemporary Research and Practice for Vulnerable CommunitiesDesigning for Vulnerabilities: Applications and ActionsSocial Engagement in Vulnerable Communities Between Digital and Humanist VisionsVulnerabilities in Context: Analysis and Projects in the U.S.-Mexico Border RegionDesign for Vulnerable Communities will be of interest primarily to researchers and professionals in the field of urban-architectural design, but it will also be a useful tool to policy makers and members of civil society at large interested in making cities more inclusive.  

This edited volume informs readers about changing norms and meanings of borders and underlines recent scenarios that shape these borders. It focuses mainly on the Mediterranean and Middle East regions through the following questions: What are the social, cultural, philosophical, political, economic and aesthetic reasons for spatial segregation within contemporary territories and cities? In the world of globalization and networks, what are the new limitations of space? What are the alienating differences between interior and exterior, private and public, urban and rural, local and global, and real and virtual? Are spatial definitions and divisions more likely to be weakened (if not totally erased) by effects of globalization and mobility, similar to the dissolution of borders between countries? Or are local practices and measures likely to become more apparent with emerging trends such as sustainability and identity? Authored by international scholars, all chapters are arranged under four main parts: Urban and Rural, Global and Local, Physical and Sensual, Real and Virtual. Hence, different concepts and definitions of borders along with varying methods and tools for questioning their essence in architectural and urban spaces will be introduced. For example, in the rural and urban context, environments, settlements-housing, landscape, transformation, conservation and development; in the global and local context, styles, identity, universal design, sustainability, globalization and networks, mobility and migration; in the physical and sensual context, design studies and methodologies, environmental psychology, aesthetic reasoning, sense of place and well-being, and in the real and virtual context, realities, tools and communities are the main themes of the chapters.This book will be an essential source for professionals, scholars, and students of architecture and urban design with a view to understandingmultidisciplinary perspectives in designing borders as well as the dialectical relationship between borders and space.

This book compares two urban regeneration models, namely piecemeal and comprehensive redevelopments. Tehran, like many cities in the developing world, on the one hand faces extensive deterioration in its inner-city neighbourhoods and on the other hand, faces rapid population growth. Urban regeneration is adapted as a policy that not only accommodates urban growth within the city boundaries, but also tackles the deterioration problems. This book tries to understand how these two redevelopment models operate in run-down neighbourhoods of Tehran, with a specific focus on developers' behaviour regarding these two models.Two neighbourhoods that have undergone redevelopments in Tehran, one piecemeal and one comprehensive, are chosen as case studies. Utilising institutional analysis as a qualitative methodological approach, this book improves our understanding of the process of built environment production, as well as the role of developers and state in the development process. The book demonstrates that the development decision-making cannot be solely understood as the result of economic rationality, as it occurs within institutional contexts structured by dynamic needs and concerns of actors. In advancing institutional analysis, the research demonstrates the different approaches taken by developers, development organisations and planners as they engaged differently with the wider structures set by the government through different policies.

This is a book about cities or, more precisely, about the physical form of cities.

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently - to become 'smart' and 'sustainable'. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of 'big' data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity.

This book offers a resourceful collection of essays examining recent efforts to respond to the challenges of planning, management and conserving landscapes in contemporary Iran, the home of Persian gardens. Drawing on selected recent studies, the chapters discuss the following topics: The sphere of knowledge and theoretical bases, including a survey of recent and ongoing research;Persian gardens remaining from the 6th century BC to the 19th century AD, which have influenced garden design in a vast geographic domain extending from India to Spain;Management and conservation of cultural landscapes, historic urban landscapes (HUL), road landscapes, and natural landscapes in the face of changes in climatic conditions and livelihood practices affecting their delicate dynamic balance and functions essential to their distinctive character; andHistoric Territorial Landscapes (HTL) formed and evolved along the Silk and Spice Roads as compositions of tangible and intangible elements resulting from movement, exchanges and dialogue in space and over time.The book is a useful resource for a range of academics and professionals, such as landscape architects and managers, landscape historians and conservationists, and urban planners and managers.

This book provides readers with a wide overview of place-based planning and design experiments addressing such powerful transformations in the African built environment. This continent is currently undergoing fast paced urban, institutional and environmental changes, which have stimulated an increasing interest for alternative architectural solutions, urban designs and comprehensive planning experiments.The international and balanced array of the collected contributions explore emerging research concepts for understanding urban and peri-urban processes in Africa, discuss bottom-up planning and design practices, and present inspirational and innovative co-design methods and participatory tools for steering such change through public spaces, sustainable services and infrastructures.The book is intended for students, researchers, decision-makers and practitioners engaged in planning and design for the built environment in Africa and the Global South at large.

This book's point of departure rests on the premises that dimensions of the mainstream inclusive city discourse fail to capture in detail vulnerable clusters of society (being women, children, and the aging), the minority clusters (i.e., the blind, the disabled), and migrants. In addition, it fails to recognize the increase of spatial inequality driven by racial and class differences-a factor that has seen an increase in community violence and protests. The focus on spatial inequality has, for a long time, blind-folded urban authorities to ignore exclusion arising out of the same environments created with a notion of creating inclusivity. Hence this book "e;collapses spatial walls"e; as it seeks to uncover the true perspectives of inclusivity in cities beyond spatial dimensions but within social realms. The depth of this book's enquiry rests on its critical investigation of Southern African cities' through historical epochs of apartheid and colonialism in the region.