Cities in Our Future [Hardcover]

Robert Geddes (Editor), Ellen Posner (Introduction), Wally N'Dow (Foreword), Ethan Seltzer (Contributor), John Spengler (Contributor), Alan Ryan (Contributor), Jocelyn Baltzell (Contributor), Alexios Antypas (Contributor), Errol Meidinger (Contributor), Margaret Shannon (Contributor), Jonathan Barnett (Contributor), Richard Weinstein (Contributor), Marilou McPhedran (Contributor), Kenneth Greenberg (Contributor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1559634960 | ISBN-13: 978-1559634960 | Publication Date: January 1, 1997 | Edition: 1

By the year 2000, half of humanity will live in urban areas. The problems of large-scale urbanization are profound, and coping with growth in the world's cities will be the most pressing challenge of the 21st century.In June 1996, the third in a series of United Nations sponsored conferences on global concerns was held: the Conference on Human Settlements, Habitat II. In preparation for that meeting, Robert Geddes, one of the nation's most respected and influential architects and urban designers, invited leading experts to New York to consider the experience of urban areas in Canada, Mexico, and the United States in order to develop concrete proposals for improving our built environment. "Cities in Our Future" presents and examines issues set forth at that gathering.Urban and regional planners, architects, urban designers, and other experts from across North America examine the impact of a city's growth and form on the ability of its citizens to achieve and maintain social equity and environmental health. Case studies of five North American metropolitan areas -- New York, Toronto, Cascadia (Vancouver, Seattle, Portland), Mexico City, and Los Angeles -- are presented, with in-depth analyses of their physical terrain, design, planning, and development. Contributors discuss problems the cities have experienced, how those problems have been handled, and strategies for avoiding or managing similar problems in the future. They consider historical and contemporary transformations of the cities as well as issues of environment, equity, sustainable development, governance, and civic design.In addition to the case studies, "Cities in Our Future" features a foreword by Dr. Wally N'Dow, secretary-general of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements-Habitat II, that describes the global nature of urbanization problems; an insightful introduction by urban critic Ellen Posner that provides an overview of important issues facing urban areas in the twenty-first century; a broad examination of the concept of social equity by political philosopher Alan Ryan of Oxford University; and a concise description of environmental health issues by John Spengler of the Harvard School of Public Health. The distinguished contributors representing the five urban regions are Alan Artibise, Jonathan Barnett, Gardner Church, Ken Greenberg, Marilou McPhedran, Ann Vernez Moudon, Xavier Cortes Rocha, Ethan Seltzer, Richard Weinstein, and Robert Yaro.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Where thoughtful works on urban development circulate, this volume's essays and case studies from the Conference on Cities in North America (CCNA), which was conducted in preparation for Habitat II, the 1996 UN Conference on Human Settlements in Istanbul, is worth acquiring. The 1976 Habitat I conference had focused recommendations on cities in the developing world, assuming industrialized nations had enough resources and policy sophistication to control or compensate for the problems of urbanization on their own, but for CCNA and Habitat II, "urbanization, and its fallout, is the common denominator of humanity." Experts from several disciplines address the complex, often conflicting considerations of economics, ecology, and equity as they affect the shape, texture, and direction of cities and the regions that surround them; the balance of the book is composed of case studies of urban-planning successes and failures in the regions surrounding Los Angeles, Toronto, New York City, Mexico City, and the Cascadia region (Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver). Includes helpful maps and charts. Mary Carroll

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559634960
• ISBN-13: 978-1559634960
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,211,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)