ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is tentatively structured according to the interdependency of the urban context, processes of planning and urban change and the urban design product. It also focuses on the new urban context and the prerequisites it bring about for contemporary and future urban planning and design. The book focuses primarily on various processes of planning and urban change. Hans Westlund discusses the role of social capital in spatially concentrated growth processes of the knowledge economy in megacities. In this book Douglas Kelbaugh performs a critical comparison of Landscape Urbanism and New Urbanism, and argues that there is not enough urbanism in Landscape Urbanism, and not enough ecology in New Urbanism. The resulting Emergent Urbanism affects people's urban experience, either stimulating or limiting how people live their everyday lives.
