Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities

Explores how street standards and layouts affect a neighborhood's character and livability; shows how street design standards in Britain and the US have changed over the past two centuries; describes various street design approaches, such as the early picturesque suburbs, checkerboard grids, branching cul-de-sacs, and shared streets; and describes strategies and design guidelines for reducing sprawl and re-establishing a sense of community space. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Engineering & Transportation

Ben-Joseph, Eran

Southworth, Michael

Engineering

McGraw=Hill

There are an estimated 600,000,000 passenger cars in the world, and that number is increasing every day. So too is Earth's supply of parking spaces. In some cities, parking lots cover more than one-third of the metropolitan footprint. It's official: we have paved paradise and put up a parking lot. In ReThinking a Lot, Eran Ben-Joseph shares a different vision for parking's future. Parking lots, he writes, are ripe for transformation. After all, their design and function has not been rethought since the 1950s. With this book, Ben-Joseph pushes the parking lot into the twenty-first century. 
Ben-Joseph shows that parking lots can be aesthetically pleasing, environmentally and architecturally responsible, and used for something other than car storage. He introduces us to some of the many alternative and nonparking purposes that parking lots have served -- from RV campgrounds to stages for "Shakespeare in the Parking Lot." He shows us parking lots that are lushly planted with trees and flowers and beautifully integrated with the rest of the built environment. With purposeful design, Ben-Joseph argues, parking lots could be significant public places, contributing as much to their communities as great boulevards, parks, or plazas. For all the acreage they cover, parking lots have received scant attention. It's time to change that; it's time to rethink the lot.

Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking

Arts & Photography

Architecture

Mit Pr

Standards and codes dictate virtually all aspects of urban development. The same standards for subdividing land, grading, laying streets and utilities, and configuring rights-of-way and street widths to accommodate cars (rather than pedestrians) have been adopted in many areas of the world regardless of variations in local environments. In The Code of the City, Eran Ben-Joseph examines the relationship between standards and place making. He traces the evolution of codes and standards and analyzes their impact on the modern city and its suburbs, arguing that it is time for development regulations to reflect site-specific and localized physical design.Standards and codes were meant to bring order and safety to the city building process. But now, Ben-Joseph argues, these accumulated rules and their widespread application illustrate a disconnect between the original rationale for their existence and their actual effect on the natural and human environment. To discover how this separation of codes from local conditions came about, he looks at the origins of urban standards and their use, from early civilization through the rapid urbanization of the nineteenth century. He provides examples that demonstrate how standards have shaped residential developments and reshaped the natural landscape. And he considers alternatives for the future -- innovation and de facto deregulation by private developers, new design technologies, and place-based regulations reflecting local conditions. Standards, writes Ben-Joseph, will continue to shape the built environment, but they must be flexible enough to allow for innovation and contribute to the development of sustainable and desirable communities.

The Code of the City: Standards And the Hidden Language of Place Making (Urban And Industrial Environments)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Standards and codes dictate virtually all aspects of urban development. The same standards for subdividing land, grading, laying streets and utilities, and configuring rights-of-way and street widths to accommodate cars (rather than pedestrians) have been adopted in many areas of the world regardless of variations in local environments. In The Code of the City,Eran Ben-Joseph examines the relationship between standards and place making. He traces the evolution of codes and standards and analyzes their impact on the modern city and its suburbs, arguing that it is time for development regulations to reflect site-specific and localized physical design.
Standards and codes were meant to bring order and safety to the city building process. But now, Ben-Joseph argues, these accumulated rules and their widespread application illustrate a disconnect between the original rationale for their existence and their actual effect on the natural and human environment. To discover how this separation of codes from local conditions came about, he looks at the origins of urban standards and their use, from early civilization through the rapid urbanization of the nineteenth century. He provides examples that demonstrate how standards have shaped residential developments and reshaped the natural landscape. And he considers alternatives for the future―innovation and de facto deregulation by private developers, new design technologies, and place-based regulations reflecting local conditions. Standards, writes Ben-Joseph, will continue to shape the built environment, but they must be flexible enough to allow for innovation and contribute to the development of sustainable and desirable communities.

The Code of the City: Standards and the Hidden Language of Place Making (Urban and Industrial Environments)

MIT Press]

Parking lots as landscapes ripe for transformation: new uses for urban spaces traditionally considered banal and devoid of culture.
There are an estimated 600,000,000 passenger cars in the world, and that number is increasing every day. So too is Earth's supply of parking spaces. In some cities, parking lots cover more than one-third of the metropolitan footprint. It's official: we have paved paradise and put up a parking lot. In ReThinking a Lot, Eran Ben-Joseph shares a different vision for parking's future. Parking lots, he writes, are ripe for transformation. After all, their design and function has not been rethought since the 1950s. With this book, Ben-Joseph pushes the parking lot into the twenty-first century.
Ben-Joseph shows that parking lots can be aesthetically pleasing, environmentally and architecturally responsible, and used for something other than car storage. He introduces us to some of the many alternative and nonparking purposes that parking lots have served―from RV campgrounds to stages for “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.” He shows us parking lots that are lushly planted with trees and flowers and beautifully integrated with the rest of the built environment. With purposeful design, Ben-Joseph argues, parking lots could be significant public places, contributing as much to their communities as great boulevards, parks, or plazas. For all the acreage they cover, parking lots have received scant attention. It's time to change that; it's time to rethink the lot.

"Since the Industrial Revolution, cities and industry have grown together; towns and metropolitan regions have evolved around factories and expanding industries. New Industrial Urbanism explores the evolving and future relationships between cities and places of production, focusing on the spatial implications and physical design of integrating contemporary manufacturing into the city. The book examines recent developments that have led to dramatic shifts in the manufacturing sector -- from large-scale mass production methods to small-scale distributed systems; from polluting and consumptive production methods to a cleaner and more sustainable process; from broad demand for unskilled labor to a growing need for a more educated and specialized workforce - to show how cities see new investment and increased employment opportunities. Looking ahead to the quest to make cities more competitive and resilient, New Industrial Urbanism provides lessons from cases around the world and suggests adopting New Industrial Urbanism as an action framework that reconnects what has been separated: people, places, and production. Moving the conversation beyond the reflexively-negative characterizations of industry, more than two centuries after the start of the Industrial Revolution, this book calls to re-consider the ways in which industry creates places, sustains jobs, and supports environmental sustainability in our cities"--

New Industrial Urbanism: Designing Places for Production

Hatuka, Tali

Routledge

ReNew Town puts forth an innovative vision of performative design and planning for low-carbon sustainable development, and illustrates practicable strategies for balancing environmental systems with urban infrastructure and new housing prototypes. To date, much of the discourse on the design of sustainable communities and ‘eco-cities’ has been premised on using previously undeveloped land. In contrast, this book and the project it showcases focus on the retrofitting and adaptation of an existing environment – a more common problem, given the extent of the world’s already-built infrastructure. Employing a ‘research through design’ model of inquiry, the book focuses on large-scale housing developments – especially those built around the world between the 1960s and the early 1980s – with the aim of understanding how best to reinvent them. At the center of the book is Tama New Town, a planned community outside Tokyo that faces a range of challenges, such as an aging population, the deterioration of homes and buildings, and economic stagnation. The book begins by outlining a series of principles that structure the ecological and energy goals for the community. It then develops prototypical solutions for designing, building and retrofitting neighborhoods. The intent is that these prototypes could be applied to similar urban conditions around the world. ReNew Town is the product of a collaborative design research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) School of Architecture and Planning, and Japan’s Sekisui House LTD.

ReNew Town: Adaptive Urbanism and the Low Carbon Community

Scott,Andrew

ReNew Town puts forth an innovative vision of performative design and planning for low-carbon sustainable development, and illustrates practicable strategies for balancing environmental systems with urban infrastructure and new housing prototypes.  To date, much of the discourse on the design of sustainable communities and ‘eco-cities’ has been premised on using previously undeveloped land. In contrast, this book and the project it showcases focus on the retrofitting and adaptation of an existing environment – a more common problem, given the extent of the world’s already-built infrastructure.  Employing a ‘research through design’ model of inquiry, the book focuses on large-scale housing developments – especially those built around the world between the 1960s and the early 1980s – with the aim of understanding how best to reinvent them. At the center of the book is Tama New Town, a planned community outside Tokyo that faces a range of challenges, such as an aging population, the deterioration of homes and buildings, and economic stagnation.  The book begins by outlining a series of principles that structure the ecological and energy goals for the community. It then develops prototypical solutions for designing, building and retrofitting neighborhoods. The intent is that these prototypes could be applied to similar urban conditions around the world.  ReNew Town is the product of a collaborative design research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) School of Architecture and Planning, and Japan’s Sekisui House LTD.

The topic of streets and street design is of compelling interest today as public officials, developers, and community activists seek to reshape urban patterns to achieve more sustainable forms of growth and development. Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities traces ideas about street design and layout back to the early industrial era in London suburbs and then on through their institutionalization in housing and transportation planning in the United States. It critiques the situation we are in and suggests some ways out that are less rigidly controlled, more flexible, and responsive to local conditions.
Originally published in 1997, this edition includes a new introduction that addresses topics of current interest including revised standards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers; changes in city plans and development standards following New Urbanist, Smart Growth, and sustainability principles; traffic calming; and ecologically oriented street design.

Business & Money

Economics

Island Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ben-Joseph, Eran. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ben-Joseph, Eran

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ben-Joseph, Eran. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities

Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking

The Code of the City: Standards And the Hidden Language of Place Making (Urban And Industrial Environments)

The Code of the City: Standards and the Hidden Language of Place Making (Urban and Industrial Environments)

Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking

New Industrial Urbanism: Designing Places for Production

New Industrial Urbanism: Designing Places for Production

ReNew Town: Adaptive Urbanism and the Low Carbon Community

ReNew Town: Adaptive Urbanism and the Low Carbon Community

Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities