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Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form

Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form

Hardcover

General ArchitectureGeneral SociologyUnited States Politics

ISBN10: 0520209303
ISBN13: 9780520209305
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: Oct 19 1998
Pages: 382
Weight: 2.89
Height: 1.30 Width: 7.39 Depth: 10.32
Language: English
The corporate downtown, with its multitude of social dilemmas and contradictions, is the focus of this well-illustrated volume. How are downtown projects conceived, scripted, produced, packaged, and used, and how has all this changed during the twentieth century? The authors of Urban Design Downtown offer a critical appraisal of the emerging appearance of downtown urban form. They explore both the poetics of design and the politics and economics of development decisions.

Following a historical review of the various phases of downtown transformation, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Tridib Banerjee turn to contemporary American downtowns. They examine the phenomenon of public-space privatization, arguing that corporate open spaces are the consumer-oriented result of policies that have promoted downtown renovation and restructuring but at the same time have neglected the cities' existing poverty-stricken cores.

The book's case studies of individual West Coast downtown projects capture the essence of late twentieth-century urbanism. This analysis of downtown urban America, which offers extensive insight into the design and development process, will interest architects, city planners, developers, and urban designers everywhere.

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General Architecture