The Art of City Making

Front Cover
Routledge, May 16, 2012 - Architecture - 248 pages
City-making is an art, not a formula. The skills required to re-enchant the city are far wider than the conventional ones like architecture, engineering and land-use planning. There is no simplistic, ten-point plan, but strong principles can help send good city-making on its way. The vision for 21st century cities must be to be the most imaginative cities for the world rather than in the world. This one change of word - from 'in' to 'for' - gives city-making an ethical foundation and value base. It helps cities become places of solidarity where the relations between the individual, the group, outsiders to the city and the planet are in better alignment. Following the widespread success of The Creative City, this new book, aided by international case studies, explains how to reassess urban potential so that cities can strengthen their identity and adapt to the changing global terms of trade and mass migration. It explores the deeper fault-lines, paradoxes and strategic dilemmas that make creating the 'good city' so difficult.
 

Contents

Overture
1
The Sensory Landscape of Cities
39
Unhinged and Unbalanced
77
Repertoires and Resistance
143
The Complicated and the Complex
189
The City as a Living Work of Art
267
Creative Cities for the World
335
Endpiece
425
Notes
429
Bibliography
443
Index
451
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Charles Landry is founding director of COMEDIA, a cultural planning consultancy. Author of the highly influential The Creative City (Earthscan, 2000), he is an international authority on city futures and the use of culture in city revitalization.

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