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The Endless City
Ricky Burdett, Deyan Sudjic
 The late twentieth century was the age of economic globalization. The first part of the twenty-first century will be the age of the city, the urban age. For the first time in the history of humanity, more than half of the earth's population is living in urban areas. Questions regarding the shape, size, density and distribution of the city have become increasingly complex and politicized, and the impact of the built environment on social inclusion and quality of life are at the forefront of discussions about urban planning. These are the issues that have led to the creation of The Urban Age Project, a network of organizations, individuals and research projects that focus on sustainable development in the world's cities. The project gathered a group of internationally renowned professionals for six conferences held in six international cities - New York, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg and Berlin - to discuss the future of the contemporary urban environment. The conferences offered a platform from which to discuss how architects, urbanists and politicians should plan infrastructure and development without constraining growth and promote a better social and economic life.
This book is the result of the discussions and extensive research produced for these conferences. The research is clearly presented alongside informative texts written by some of the greatest professionals in the field of architecture, urbanism, economics and politics, including Richard Sennett, Saskia Sassens, Rem Koolhaas, Deyan Sudjic and Ricky Burdett, and is richly illustrated with photographs, maps, diagrams and statistics. The book is produced in close collaboration with the London School of Economics to ensure that all the information presented is accurate and reliable, and the accessible design ensures that this book will become the essential reference tool for everyone involved in urban planning and development.
Hardcover / 512 pages / text English / February 2008
At NAi Boekverkopers/Booksellers for € 55.00
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New Public Spaces
Sarah Gaventa
 Today, architecture is not always only about buildings but also about the spaces between them. This is the first book to showcase the best and most diverse examples of public space from all over the world. Architectural authority, Sarah Gaventa, considers new public spaces all over the world within themed chapters. Each chapter is finished with either an essay by, or interview with, a high-profile contributor. After each chapter introduction follow case studies of permanent, temporary, large-scale, and tiny interventions (a small percentage will be unbuilt). Each case study is illustrated extensively with a ground plan to provide a thorough understanding of the site. This book proves that public space no longer refers to just public squares and parks, it now includes: dead space around housing estates, roundabouts, car parks, and reclaimed dockyards and waterfronts. It is an important part of contemporary architecture and a competitive area as cities try to out-do each other to attract investment and tourists.
Hardcover / 208 pages / text English / 2006
At NAi Boekverkopers/Booksellers for € 51.75
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Talking Cities. The Micropolitics of Urban Space - Die Mikropolitik des urbanen Raums
Francesca Ferguson, urban drift
 Featuring innovative international design, architecture and spatial interventions in a trans-disciplinary exhibition and event platform and as a magazine. TALKING CITIES stretches the boundaries of architecture and urban design and shifts our perceptions of contemporary city spaces. It is a dense collage of statements and designs that exemplify the dialogue on reconfiguring and reactivating the marginal, residual and public spaces of our cities. TALKING CITIES investigates the fragmented conditions that make up our present day urban realities.
Paperback / 196 pages / text English, German / 2006
At NAi Boekverkopers/Booksellers for € 15.00
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Principles of Urban Structure
Nikos Salingaros
 This book explains how cities actually work. It will serve as a guide and inspiration for planners to re-humanize our cities using the latest technologies and recent understanding from science and mathematics.
The dogma of mainstream urbanism cannot cope with the changes in technology, culture and science of the last decades. The heritage we are left with is an overly asphalted and sterile concrete environment. Therefore this book addresses the needs of professional urbanists, students and teachers, who wish to understand how and why cities are successful or not, depending on their form, components, and substructure. Most of the needs are related to the urgent search for new instruments of urban planning and design, to which this book contributes conceptually by showing how to connect the fractal city on multiple levels.
There is an increasing awareness that a city needs to be understood as a complex interacting system. Different types of urban systems overlap to build up urban complexity in a living city. This raises the need for using concepts such as coherence, emergence, information, self-organization and adaptivity. This book relates these concepts to the city, shows how to operationalize them, and hopefully marks the beginnings of an urban science.
Paperback / 252 pages / text English / 2005
At NAi Boekverkopers/Booksellers for € 39.00
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