How do we transform cities? 'Designing Urban Transformation,' new from Routledge, offers a way forward.
How do we transform cities? By radically changing the way we think about them. Designing Urban Transformation, a new book from Routledge/Taylor & Francis, argues that more than technology, green design, public-private partnerships, and other approaches currently in vogue, what matters ultimately is how we think about cities. The most powerful weapon we have for transforming our cities is our brain: how we analyze problems, how we think of creative solutions, how we imagine radical improvements.
Written by Professor Aseem Inam, Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Practice at Parsons The New School for Design, this book is the result of over 20 years of practice, research, teaching and reflection.
The book begins by critiquing how we currently design and build cities, even those approaches that claim to be innovative such as the sustainable city or the smart city. While such approaches are indeed promising, a fundamental flaw is that they are innovative within a given box of parameters and constraints. Rather than advocating simply thinking outside the box, this book makes the case that as urban practitioners we need to redesign the box itself—i.e. the box of crucial decisions and parameters.
Drawing inspiration from the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, the book proposes three conceptual shifts for transformative urban practice: beyond material objects: city as flux; beyond intentions: consequences of design; and beyond practice: urbanism as creative political act. Pragmatism encourages us to consider how we can make deeper and more systemic changes, and how urbanism itself can be a design strategy for such transformations.
At the same time, Inam draws from his intimate knowledge of urban practice to analyze examples of transformative urbanism in Barcelona, Belo Horizonte, Boston, Cairo, Karachi, Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Paris to illuminate how these conceptual shifts operate in vastly different contexts. These projects include a stunning inner-city park that is helping transform a low-income neighborhood and a government office building that has become an ecological urban center, along with several other examples. Designing Urban Transformation is a rare integration of powerful theory and innovative practice.
About the Author:
Aseem Inam is an award-winning architect, urban designer, and city planner who has worked in Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Haiti, India, Mexico and the United States. He is currently Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Practice at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City, and Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.
For additional information on Designing Urban Transformation, please visit us online at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415837705/?utm_source=cision&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=SBU3_KDK_2PR_7PR_3PLA_00000_9780415837705-PR-CISION. To request a review copy or an interview with the author, please contact: Chris Hardin, Senior Marketing Manager.
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