ABSTRACT
Cities affect every person's life, yet across the traditional divides of class, age, gender and political affiliation, armies of people are united in their dislike of the transformations that cities have undergone in recent times. The physical form of the urban environment is not a designer add-on to 'real' social issues; it is a central aspect of the social world. Yet in many people's experience, the cumulative impacts of recent urban development have created widely un-loved urban places. To work towards better-loved urban environments, we need to understand how current problems have arisen and identify practical action to address them.
Urban Transformations examines the crucial issues relating to how cities are formed, how people use these urban environments and how cities can be transformed into better places. Exploring the links between the concrete physicality of the built environment and the complex social, economic, political and cultural processes through which the physical urban form is produced and consumed, Ian Bentley proposes a framework of ideas to provoke and develop current debate and new forms of practice.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |4 pages
Introduction
part I|56 pages
Problematics of production
chapter |3 pages
Introduction
chapter 1|17 pages
Untouched by human hand (well, almost)
chapter 2|15 pages
Heroes and servants, markets and battlefields
chapter 3|17 pages
Genius and tradition
chapter |2 pages
Conclusion: a framework of questions
part II|61 pages
Spatial transformations and their cultural supports
chapter |4 pages
Introduction
chapter 4|19 pages
Profit and place
chapter 5|15 pages
Propping up the system
chapter 6|18 pages
Building bastions of sense
chapter |3 pages
Conclusion: supports for the power bloc
part III|62 pages
Positive values, negative outcomes
chapter |3 pages
Introduction
chapter 7|13 pages
Concepts for prospecting common ground
chapter 8|17 pages
Beyond buzzwords
chapter 9|24 pages
Horizons of choice
chapter |3 pages
Conclusion: an agenda for positive change
part IV|66 pages
Windows of opportunity