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Urban Infrastructure in Zimbabwe: Departures, Divergences and Convergences (The Urban Book Series)
by Innocent Chirisa Abraham R. MatamandaThe book provides insights into urban infrastructure debates and discourses in Zimbabwe. Through an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approach, the book explores the theoretical, conceptual and lived experiences in urban infrastructure. The book focuses on case studies relating to urban transport, public housing, water and sanitation and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) among other substantive issues relating to urban infrastructure and services.
Urban Infrastructure Research
by Alok TiwariThis bookreviews contemporary research on urban infrastructure in 76 Ethiopian cities. It examines urban infrastructure issues in these cities and covers a wide rangeof topics from sustainability and smart cities to research methods employed byurban infrastructure investigators with regard to Ethiopian cities. Research onurban infrastructure legitimacies and modalities has established its valueworldwide in recent years, though it is still fairly young in the Ethiopiancontext. The first chapter outlines ongoing issues of debate concerning urbaninfrastructures, including but not limited to discourses on sustainability, smartcities, innovative financing methods, and potential partnerships. Urbaninfrastructure issues in Ethiopian cities are examined in the second chapter, whilethe third chapter presents a review of the most relevant literature forresearchers. Findings show that the citations in the research reports aremainly from the materials available over the internet, including WHO,UN-Habitat and unpublished local materials. The fourth chapter identifiespatterns in the findings and recommendations of the research reports discussed. The results reveal that there is a wider gap between supply and demand withregard to urban infrastructure in Ethiopian cities, a situation that is furtheraggravated because of the growing urban population and already existingbacklogs. The fifth chapter reviews the essential methods employed by urbaninfrastructure investigators in Ethiopian cities. In this regard, the cross-sectionalstudy method with the use of survey method has been broadly adopted amonginvestigators. Lastly, the book presents a summary and recommendations. It was observed that theurban infrastructure boom in Ethiopia is primarily concentrated in the keycities, and the current pattern of urban infrastructure provision does notincorporate the notion of sustainability. Hence, the book calls for setting theagenda of future research on urban infrastructure and services in Ethiopiancities together with the universities, private sector and government, who shouldideally collaborate to produce the knowledge needed to improve quality of life,welfare, productivity, and economic growth.
Urban Infrastructuring: Reconfigurations, Transformations and Sustainability in the Global South (Sustainable Development Goals Series)
by Deljana Iossifova Alexandros Gasparatos Stylianos Zavos Yahya Gamal Yin LongThis book is about urban infrastructuring as the processes linking infrastructural configurations and their components with other social, ecological, political, or otherwise defined systems as part of urbanisation and globalisation in the Global South. It suggests that infrastructuring is essential to urbanisation and that it is entangled with socio-spatio-ecological transformations that often have negative outcomes over time. Furthermore, it argues that infrastructuring requires an ethical positioning in research and practice in order to enhance infrastructural sustainability in the face of intersecting environmental, social and economic crises. “Urban Infrastructuring” is developed in three parts. First, it identifies infrastructural entanglements across various urban and urbanising settings in the Global South. Second, it highlights some of the damaging processes and outcomes of urban infrastructuring and argues that the absence, presence and transformation of infrastructure in the Global South (re-)produces socioecological injustice in the short- and long term. Third, the book argues for a shift of infrastructuring agendas towards more just and sustainable interventions. It suggests that an ethico-politics of care should be embedded in systems approaches to infrastructuring in both research and practice. The edited volume contains contributions from authors with backgrounds in a variety of academic disciplines from the natural and social sciences, engineering and the humanities. It provides valuable insights for anyone concerned with the study, design, planning, implementation and maintenance of urban infrastructures to enhance human well-being and sustainability. It will be of interest to researchers and urban decision-makers alike.
Urban Innovation and Upgrading in China Shanty Towns
by Pengfei Ni Banji Oyeyinka Fei ChenBy using field survey and World Bank investment project evaluation method, this book investigates the experience of slum rebuilding in Liaoning province, China. It figures out that the experience of Liaoning province is relatively successful and can be of great significance for developing countries and regions. The issue of slums is a huge challenge in the process of global urbanization. The population living in slums is 0. 8 billion worldwide and the number is still growing. International organizations (e. g. , the World Bank) and relevant countries have been working on the rebuilding of slums but only a few succeeded. In recent years, since some scholars believe that government should play dominant role in slums rebuilding, Liaoning province has developed a systematical model in slums rebuilding from 2005. This model emphasizes the guidance of government, market functions and society involvement. With the application of the new model, Liaoning province has improved 2. 11 million people's living conditions from 2005 to 2010. By introducing the conditions, history, rebuilding process and rebuilding methods of Liaoning slums, this book provides new information and data for slum rebuilding decision makers and researchers.
Urban Innovation Networks
by Alexander GutzmerThis book offers fresh insights into how companies can engage with, and make use of, the modern metropolis. Based on actor-network theory and the resource-based view of the firm, it demonstrates how the contemporary city can be seen - and used - as a resource for corporate innovation. The main argument is that companies have to build what the author calls "urban innovation networks. " After a theory-based outline of such networks, the author demonstrates the extent to which different institutional players - companies such as Audi, Ikea and Siemens, but also arts institutions like the Haus der Kunst in Munich - are already working to create them. The book combines management thinking with urban theory and the sociology of networks to create a unique blend of different views of capitalism and space, offering a new perspective on both the modern metropolis and globally operating companies active within our distinctly urban culture.
Urban Interstices: The Aesthetics And The Politics Of The In-between
by Andrea Mubi BrighentiBringing together a team of international scholars with an interest in urban transformations, spatial justice and territoriality, this volume questions how the interstice is related to the emerging processes of partitioning, enclave-making and zoning, showing how in-between spaces are intimately related to larger flows, networks, territories and boundaries. Illustrated with a range of case studies from places such as the US, Quebec, the UK, Italy, Gaza, Iraq, India, and South-east Asia, the volume analyses the place and function of interstitial locales in both a ’disciplined’ urban space and a disordered space conceptualized through the notions of ’excess’, ’danger’ and ’threat’. Warning not to romanticize the interstice, the book invites us to study it as not simply a place but also a set of phenomena, events and social interactions. How are interstices perceived and represented? What is the politics of visibility that is applied to them? How to capture their peculiar rhythms, speeds and affects? On the one hand, interstices open up venues for informality, improvisation, challenge, and bricolage, playful as well as angry statements on the neoliberal city and enhanced urban inequalities. On the other hand, they also represent a crucial site of governance (even governance by withdrawal) and urban management, where an array of techniques ranging from military urbanism to new forms of value extraction are experimented. At the point of convergence of all these tensions, interstices appear as veritable sites of transformation, where social forces clash and mesh prefiguring our urban future. The book interrogates these territories, proposing new ways to explore the dynamics, events and visibilities that define them.
Urban Issues: Selections from CQ Researcher
by Cq ResearcherWhat are the driving forces behind Smart Cities? What are the ramifications of increasing the minimum wage? What are the causes of aging infrastructure and how should they be addressed? These are just some of the provocative questions that are considered in the new edition of Urban Issues. For current coverage of urban politics, readers will appreciate the balanced and unbiased reporting of CQ Researcher. Urban Issues provides a window into how policy is created and implemented in America’s cities and is sure to spark classroom discussions. Each chapter examines the key players, stakes, background, and lessons for the future, while covering the range of facts, analyses, and opinions surrounding each issue.
Urban Issues: Selections from CQ Researcher
by Cq ResearcherWhat are the driving forces behind Smart Cities? What are the ramifications of increasing the minimum wage? What are the causes of aging infrastructure and how should they be addressed? These are just some of the provocative questions that are considered in the new edition of Urban Issues. For current coverage of urban politics, readers will appreciate the balanced and unbiased reporting of CQ Researcher. Urban Issues provides a window into how policy is created and implemented in America’s cities and is sure to spark classroom discussions. Each chapter examines the key players, stakes, background, and lessons for the future, while covering the range of facts, analyses, and opinions surrounding each issue.
Urban Issues in Rapidly Growing Cities: Planning for Development in Addis Ababa (Routledge Contemporary Africa)
by Mintesnot G. WoldeamanuelThis book critically assesses the complex urban issues, planning challenges and development opportunities of rapidly growing cities, using Addis Ababa as a case study. Just like other developing cities, Addis Ababa is undergoing numerous natural and policy-driven changes. This book analyses the effect of these changes on urban management to allow better understanding of the conceptual frameworks that define the everyday functions of rapidly growing cities. It demonstrates that rapid urban growth has simultaneously created opportunities for economic development in the developing world as well as social, environmental and cultural challenges causing a mismatch between demand and the supply of services. The author argues that, by combining indigenous knowledge and practices and contemporary planning principles, developing countries can overcome challenges concerning environmental and public health, transport congestion, rising rents and house prices and lack of open space. Foregrounding the experience of everyday citizens of the city, this book aids our understanding of the nature of rapidly growing cities and outlines what needs to be done so that the city meets the needs of the people. A unique contribution to the literature on cities of the developing world, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Urban Studies, Planning, Development Studies and African Studies.
Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City
by Ben WilsonIn this exhilarating look at cities, past and future, Ben Wilson proposes that, in our world of rising seas and threatening weather, the natural world may prove the city's savior.Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. In Urban Jungle Ben Wilson—the author of Metropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that the Wall Street Journal called &“a towering achievement&”—looks to the fraught relationship between nature and the city for clues to how the planet can survive in an age of climate crisis.Whether it was the market farmers of Paris, Germans in medieval forest cities, or the Aztecs in the floating city of Tenochtitlan, pre-modern humans had an essential bond with nature. But when the day came that water was piped in and food flown from distant fields, that relationship was lost. Today, urban areas are the fastest-growing habitat on Earth and in Urban Jungle Ben Wilson finds that we are at last acknowledging that human engineering is not enough to protect us from extremes of weather. He takes us to places where efforts to rewild the city are under way: to Los Angeles, where the city&’s concrete river will run blue again, to New York City, where a bleak landfill will be a vast grassland preserve. The pinnacle of this strategy will be Amsterdam: a city that is its own ecosystem, that makes no waste and produces its own energy. In many cities, Wilson finds, nature is already thriving. Koalas are settling in Brisbane, wild boar may raid your picnic in Berlin. Green canopies, wildflowers, wildlife: the things that will help cities survive, he notes, also make people happy.Urban Jungle offers the pleasures of history—how backyard gardens spread exotic species all over the world, how war produces biodiversity—alongside a fantastic vision of the lush green cities of our future. Climate change, Ben Wilson believes, is only the latest chapter in the dramatic human story of nature and the city.
Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America (Routledge Research in Architecture)
by Pablo Meninato Gregory MarinicUrban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America examines intervention initiatives in informal settlements in Latin American cities as social, spatial, architectural, and cultural processes. From the mid-20th century to the present, Latin America and other regions in the Global South have experienced a remarkable demographic trend, with millions of people moving from rural areas to cities in search of work, healthcare, and education. Without other options, these migrants have created self-built settlements mostly located on the periphery of large metropolitan areas. While the initial reaction of governments was to eliminate these communities, since the 1990s, several Latin American cities began to advance new urban intervention approaches for improving quality of life. This book examines informal settlement interventions in five Latin American cities: Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Tijuana. It explores the Favela-Bairro Program in Rio de Janeiro during the 1990s which sought to improve living conditions and infrastructure in favelas. It investigates projects propelled by Social Urbanism in Medellín at the beginning of the 2000s, aimed at revitalizing marginalized areas by creating a public transportation network, constructing civic buildings, and creating public spaces. Furthermore, the book examines the long-term initiatives led by SEHAB in São Paulo, which simultaneously addresses favela upgrading works, water pollution remediation strategies, and environmental stewardship. It discusses current intervention initiatives being developed in informal settlements in Buenos Aires and Tijuana, exploring the urban design strategies that address complex challenges faced by these communities. Taken together, the Latin American architects, planners, landscape architects, researchers, and stakeholders involved in these projects confirm that urbanism, architecture, and landscape design can produce positive urban and social transformations for the most underprivileged.This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and professionals in planning, urbanism, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, urban geography, public policy, as well as other spatial design disciplines.
Urban Landscapes: International Perspectives (Institute Of British Geographers Special Publication)
by P. J. Larkham J. W. R. WhitehandTaking a multidisciplinary approach this addresses the academic and practical issues concerning the present and future of the built environment, arguing for its enlightened management in the future of our present-day environment.
Urban Legend - Sir Dove-Myer Robinson: Sir Dove-myer Robinson
by John EdgarEvery Aucklander of a certain age knows that we should have listened to Mayor Robbie back in the 1970s' - Labour Party MP Phil Twyford. But who was he? And why is he still relevant today? From a working class Jewish boy in Sheffield to long serving Mayor of Auckland (1959-1980), Sir Dove-Myer Robinson's life followed an unusual path. A slight, bespectacled man whose tiny stature was offset by a booming voice and massive ego, he was a natural political campaigner. Associated with a host of local and national causes, he became Auckland's most recognisable spokesperson. He joined political causes and challenged convention. He fought for our current waste water treatment process, against French nuclear testing, and an integrated Auckland transport system and city. Though his political career was outstanding and memorable, his personal life was a hot bed of gossip. Four wives, one 20 years his junior, and a very public divorce during one of his terms meant he was never far from the headlines. In this book we look at both his personal life and his outstanding political career, which affected not only the future of Auckland, but the future of New Zealand.
The Urban Library: Creative City Branding in Spaces for All
by Julia NevárezThis book examines the role, history and function of public libraries in contemporary societies as motors that drive development. It analyses through case studies, how contemporary libraries have been redesigned to offer a new kind of public space while also reshaping neglected areas in cities. Broadly understood the book seeks to comprehend contemporary library design, urban development and the revitalization of specific urban areas.Important and world famous architects – star-architects – have designed signature architecture in the contemporary libraries selected for this volume. The examples to be showcased in the book include the main Seattle Public Library, Salt Lake City Public Library, New York Public Library, Spain Library Medellin, Colombia, Halifax Central Library Nova Scotia, Canada and Library of Alexandria in Egypt to offer examples of what constitute the approach to libraries and urban development in many cities around the world nowadays. Data in the form of interviews to library directors, librarians and users, tours of libraries, visual documentation and archival research have been collected for most public libraries included as case studies for the book.The impulse to archive has been framed and understood in the literature as a modern desire to control fleeting reality. Libraries as such respond to this desire by collecting, storing and circulating resources (books and other kinds of media). But more recently there has been an emphasis on the public character of library spaces in which people gather not only to obtain information and read by themselves but also to experience the very urban quality of proximity to others in more informal and less structured environments as public space. Community events characterize the programming of all the libraries included in the book. The design of these new libraries fit into urban development initiatives where libraries – like other iconic cultural spaces of cities – become central components to market cities for the consumption of culture. Libraries become sites to be visited and explored by tourists while providing services for residents. They are also machines to accelerate urban development especially in areas previously neglected by development.
Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia
by Catherine Alexander Victor Buchli Caroline HumphreyCapturing a unique historical moment, this book examines the changes in urban life since the collapse of the Soviet Union from an ethnographic perspective, thus addressing significant gaps in the literature on cities, Central Asia and post-socialism. It encompasses Tashkent, Almaty, Astana and Ulan-Ude: four cities with quite different responses to the fall of the Soviet Union. Each chapter takes a theme of central significance across this huge geographical terrain, addresses it through one city and contextualizes it by reference to the other sites in this volume. The structure of the book moves from nostalgia and memories of the Soviet past to examine how current changes are being experienced and imagined through the shifting materialities, temporalities and political economies of urban life. Privatization is giving rise to new social geographies, while ethnic and religious sensibilities are creating emergent networks of sacred sites. But, however much ideologies are changing, cities also provide a constant lived mnemonic of lost configurations of ideology and practice, acting as signposts to bankrupted futures. Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia provides a detailed account of the changing nature of urban life in post-Soviet Asia, clearly elucidating the centrality of these urban transformations to citizens’ understandings of their own socio-economic condition.
Urban Lighting for People: Evidence-Based Lighting Design for the Built Environment
by Navaz DavoudianLighting has the power to illuminate and enhance our experience within the built environment. The light that enables people to travel around their neighbourhood or their city; the light which they see themselves and their neighbourhood under. Research into the effects of urban lighting on behaviour, environmental psychology and social interaction is developing at a rapid rate. Yet, despite the affect it has on our daily lives, the practical application of this research is a relatively untapped resource. This book explores the needs and experiences of people at night and how these can be addressed by public lighting. It will give readers the confidence to develop more sophisticated lighting plans and add value to their projects. Case studies provide in-depth analysis of real-life projects and will help the reader to understand lighting designers’ own experiences, including post-installation observations. Written in an accessible style by an array of experts, this is an essential book for practitioners, academics and students alike, that will enable you to put the research in to practice and develop better lighting for better places.
Urban Lighting, Light Pollution and Society
by Josiane Meier Ute Hasenöhrl Katharina Krause Merle PottharstAfter decades "in the shadows", urban lighting is re-emerging as a matter of public debate. Long-standing truths are increasingly questioned as a confluence of developments affects lighting itself and the way it is viewed. Light has become an integral element of place-making and energy-saving initiatives alike. Rapidly evolving lighting technologies are opening up new possibilities, but also posing new challenges to planners, and awareness is growing that artificial illumination is not purely benign but can actually constitute a form of pollution. As a result, public policy frameworks, incentives and initiatives are undergoing a phase of innovation and change that will affect how cities are lit for years to come. The first comprehensive compilation of current scientific discussions on urban lighting and light pollution from a social science and humanities perspective, Urban Lighting, Light Pollution and Society contributes to an evolving international debate on an increasingly controversial topic. The contributions draw a rich panorama of the manifold discourses connected with artificial illumination in the past and present – from early attempts to promote new lighting technologies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to current debates on restricting its excessive usage in public space and the protection of darkness. By bringing together a cross-section of current findings and debates on urban lighting and light pollution from a wide variety of disciplines, it reflects that artificial lighting is multifaceted in its qualities, utilisation and interpretation. Including case studies from the United States, Europe, and the UK, Urban Lighting, Light Pollution and Society is one of the first to take a serious assessment of light, pollution, and places and is a valuable resource for planners, policy makers and students in related subjects.
Urban Livelihoods: A People-centred Approach to Reducing Poverty
by Tony Lloyd-Jones Carole RakodiOne of the most promising approaches to poverty reduction in developing countries is to encourage sustainable livelihoods for the poor. This takes account of their opportunities and assets and the sources of their vulnerability. Based on recent and extensive research, this volume thoroughly assesses the value of the livelihoods approach to urban poverty. The book reviews the situation and strategies of the urban poor and identifies the policies and practical programmes that work best. Lasting improvements depend not just on economic development, but on political commitment and structures that are responsive to the claims and needs of different groups of poor people.
Urban Living Lab for Local Regeneration: Beyond Participation in Large-scale Social Housing Estates (The Urban Book Series)
by Nele Aernouts Francesca Cognetti Elena MaranghiThis open access book provides an integrated overview of the challenges and resources of large-scale social housing estates in Europe and outlines possible interdisciplinary approaches and tools to promote their regeneration. It especially focuses on the tool of urban living labs, as promising in promoting new and more effective local governance and in including the different actors into the planning process. The book combines theory and practice, since it is the result of action-research conducted in different social housing estates all over Europe.Building on the results of the SoHoLab project (2017–2020), the book benefits from a multidisciplinary perspective, since the researchers involved belong to the fields of anthropology, urban planning, architecture, urban sociology. The project combined theoretical reflections with the installation and/or the consolidation of Urban Living Labs, run by universities, in large social housing estates in three European cities: Brussels, Milan and Paris.
Urban Living Labs: Experimenting with City Futures
by Simon Marvin, Harriet Bulkeley, Lindsay Mai, Kes McCormick and Yuliya Voytenko PalganAll cities face a pressing challenge – how can they provide economic prosperity and social cohesion while achieving environmental sustainability? In response, new collaborations are emerging in the form of urban living labs – sites devised to design, test and learn from social and technical innovation in real time. The aim of this volume is to examine, inform and advance the governance of sustainability transitions through urban living labs. Notably, urban living labs are proliferating rapidly across the globe as a means through which public and private actors are testing innovations in buildings, transport and energy systems. Yet despite the experimentation taking place on the ground, we lack systematic learning and international comparison across urban and national contexts about their impacts and effectiveness. We have limited knowledge on how good practice can be scaled up to achieve the transformative change required. This book brings together leading international researchers within a systematic comparative framework for evaluating the design, practices and processes of urban living labs to enable the comparative analysis of their potential and limits. It provides new insights into the governance of urban sustainability and how to improve the design and implementation of urban living labs in order to realise their potential.
Urban Maps: Instruments of Narrative and Interpretation in the City
by Richard Brook Nick DunnThis book concerns the city and the 'devices' that define the urban environment by their presence, representation or interpretation. The texts offer an interdisciplinary discourse and critique of the complex systems, artifacts, interventions and evidences that can inform our understanding of urban territories; on surfaces, in the margins or within voids. The diverse media of arts practices as well as commercial branding are used to explore narratives that reveal latent characteristics of urban situations that conventional architectural inquiry is unable to do. The subjects covered are presented within a wider framework of urban theory into which are embedded case study examples that outline the practices, processes and interpretations of each theme. The chapters provide a contemporary reading of urban socio-cultural conditions using 'mapping' as a lens to explore and communicate the social phenomena and lived experiences of the dynamic and temporal city. Mapping is developed as a form of critical instrumentality to expose, record and contribute to the understanding of the singular essences of space, place and networks by thematic, cognitive and experiential modes of investigation.
Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920
by Paul BoyerFor over a century, dark visions of moral collapse and social disintegration in American cities spurred an anxious middle class to search for ways to restore order. In this important book, Paul Boyer explores the links between the urban reforms of the Progressive era and the long efforts of prior generations to tame the cities. He integrates the ideologies of urban crusades with an examination of the careers and the mentalities of a group of vigorous activists, including Lyman Beecher; the pioneers of the tract societies and Sunday schools; Charles Loring Brace of the Children's Aid Society; Josephine Shaw Lowell of the Charity Organization movement; the father of American playgrounds, Joseph Lee; and the eloquent city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham. Boyer describes the early attempts of Jacksonian evangelicals to recreate in the city the social equivalent of the morally homogeneous village; he also discusses later strategies that tried to exert a moral influence on urban immigrant families by voluntarist effort, including, for instance, the Charity Organizations' "friendly visitors." By the 1890s there had developed two sharply divergent trends in thinking about urban planning and social control: the bleak assessment that led to coercive strategies and the hopeful evaluation that emphasized the importance of environmental betterment as a means of urban moral control.
The Urban Masterplanning Handbook
by Katharina Groen Eric FirleyA highly illustrated reference tool, this handbook provides comparative visual analysis of major urban extensions and masterplans around the world. It places an important new emphasis on the processes and structures that influence urban form, highlighting the significant impact that public or private landownership, management and funding might have on shaping a particular project. Each of the book's 20 subjects is rigorously analysed through original diagrams, scale drawings and descriptive texts, which are complemented by key statistics and colour photography. The case studies are presented in order of size rather than date or geographical location. This offers design professionals, developers and city planners, as well as students of architecture and urban design informed organisational and formal comparisons, leading to intriguing insights.A wide geographical range of contemporary and historic masterplans are featured. These encompass European projects from the 19th century to the present day: Belgravia in London, Sarphatipark in Amsterdam, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, La Défense Seine Arche in Paris and Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm. In North America, the postwar development of Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan is also the subject of a case study. More recent and ongoing international urban schemes are included, such as Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires, Downtown Dubai and the New Central Business District in Beijing.
Urban Microclimate: Designing the Spaces Between Buildings
by Evyatar Erell David Pearlmutter Terence WilliamsonThe quality of life of millions of people living in cities could be improved if the form of the city were to evolve in a manner appropriate to its climatic context. Climatically responsive urban design is vital to any notion of sustainability: it enables individual buildings to make use of renewable energy sources for passive heating and cooling, it enhances pedestrian comfort and activity in outdoor spaces, and it may even encourage city dwellers to moderate their dependence on private vehicles. Urban Microclimate bridges the gap between climatology research and applied urban design. It provides architects and urban design professionals with an understanding of how the structure of the built environment at all scales affects microclimatic conditions in the space between buildings, and analyzes the interaction between microclimate and each of the elements of the urban landscape. In the first two sections of the book, the extensive body of work on this subject by climatologists and geographers is presented in the language of architecture and planning professionals. The third section follows each step in the design process, and in part four a critical analysis of selected case study projects provides a demonstration of the complexity of applied urban design. Practitioners will find in this book a useful guide to consult, as they address these key environmental issues in their own work.