City building
Subtitle: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's critical planning principles for the twenty-first century
By: John Kriken with Phil Enquist and Richard Rapaport.
Contributors: Enquist, Phil; Rapaport, Richard.
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 259
ISBN-13: 9781568988818
Subjects: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; City planning -- Philosophy -- History -- 21st century
Other titles: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's critical planning principles for the twenty-first century
Description: "Cities are often viewed as the least-healthy environments for humans because they are centers of pollution, overcrowdedness, and waste. But the opposite can be true. A well-planned city can be a model of sustainable living. Good city building counters the sprawl of suburbia with concentrated land use, replaces globalized design with regionally appropriate building types, and allows for livable, desirable neighborhoods. John Lund Kriken and Philip Enquist, both longtime partners in the preeminent and award-winning planning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill(SOM) have collaborated with writer Richard Rapaport to create City Building. This proactive, green-focused, user-friendly guide to city building is organized into three parts: Part one examines the past and defines the current practice of city building, addressing its shortcomings and proposing a comprehensive framework for rethinking the approach to cities in the future. Part two translates this framework into nine best-practice principles that are common to successful, livable, urban environments: sustainability, accessibility, diversity, open space, compatibility, incentives, adaptability, density, and identity. These principles are illustrated in a global portfolio of city building projects, designed by SOM, that show how best practices have been applied successfully. Part three makes the case that, far from being the problem, cities, properly organized, can be a mechanism for sensible, sustainable uses of increasingly scarce resources. The book concludes with a call for a national planning process and a comprehensive framework for settlement." --Cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.