Critical Concepts in Built Environment – serie

The ‘fit for purpose’ of the built environment has been a focus of attention since classical times, both in the West and in the East. However, an explicit focus on ‘sustainable buildings’ is relatively new. The last two decades in particular have seen an explosion of published material on the design, construction and assessment of buildings purported to be ‘sustainable.’ Many governments and owners of buildings now routinely require their buildings be ‘sustainable’ and are certified to be so. In the case of sustainability certification, the recent growth in tools, techniques and assessment systems is phenomenal: even as early as 2005 there were over 600 such tools in different parts of the world! New ones sprout all the time and design guides attempt a losing battle to keep pace.This new title in Routledge’s Major Works series brings together authoritative canonical and cutting edge reference work to establish a framework for easy comprehension of the vast and continually expanding subject matter. It is a four-volume reference work and an indispensable research tool for all interested researchers, students, building owners and policy-makers to gain a thorough understanding of the field. It showcases a variety of approaches to sustainable buildings from around the world and links these to on-site construction practices and assessment. Comprehensive introductions to each volume place the collected material in its historical, intellectual, and global practice context.

This is a set that brings together scholarly work on historical, conceptual, and technical aspects of the urban landscape. The role of landscape, as recreational, public, social, ecological, infrastructural and experiential component of the urban environment has been increasingly recognized during the past decade. The traditional conception of the ‘urban’ as something that is made of streets and building facades has been replaced by a more complex notion that is inclusive of landscape as a generative and foundational component of the city itself. As cities have continued to expand into metropolitan areas, landscapes have played a key role in the organization of urban territories. This set reflects the role that landscapes have played in the ongoing evolution of cities, from industrial to service based economies. Making readily available in one place materials which are difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use, this treasure trove of information includes global scholarship, supplemented with a comprehensive introduction by the editor which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context.

Resilience is the ability of a city to bounce back from an unforeseen catastrophe. Resilient cities are able to snap back to their previous state after a disaster and even develop the capacity to withstand future shocks. Knowing what to do prior to, during and after a disaster is critical to the recovery and resilience of a city. While significant attention has been paid to disaster recovery in recent years, the prolific research that has been published on the subject has been in disparate journals and books, each appealing to the interest of a particular profession. This four volume series rectifies this problem by bringing the work of leading thinkers on the subject and the most influential research on city resilience into one document that is readily accessible to researchers. The editor provides an introduction for each of the four volumes synthesizing the articles and identifying the essential message conveyed in the volume.

This four-volume collection covers planning theory in conjunction with social, political, economic, and cultural theory. The set is organized both chronologically and thematically, beginning with the key trends in the nineteenth century but primarily concentrating on the subsequent periods, which start from the rise of systematized city planning a century ago and flourished after the mid-twentieth-century social scientific challenges to the technical preoccupations of planning. In each period, the main theoretical movements are introduced through some of the most prominent contemporary writers, reflecting the various approaches in the best scholarship.Planning Theory includes a full index and a comprehensive introduction, newly written by Ali Madanipour, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and advanced students as a vital research tool.

This collection offers a comprehensive selection of journal articles and book chapters that provide readers with an historical overview of rural planning, collating the canonical writings on the subject in one essential reference work. Each volume begins with an editorial introduction by the editor explaining the context and choice of contents, with the set organised thematically, from the concept of the rural, to the policy and governance aspects, through to the considerations of environmental change.Sections will consider the key concepts of rural development with a broad range of representative published sources included. Reflecting various approaches in the best scholarship, this will be of major assistance for students of planning and geography quickly locating the best information on the built environment in rural locations.

The world is on the move. This is a widespread understanding by many inhabitants of contemporary society across the Globe. But what does it actually mean? During over one decade the ‘mobilities turn’ within the social sciences have provided a new set of insights into the repercussions of mobilities to social networks, personal identities, and our relationship to the built environment. The omnipresence of mobilities within everyday life, high politics, technology, and tourism (to mention but a few) all point to a key insight harnessed by the ‘mobilities turn’. Namely that mobilities is much more than simple movements of people, goods, and information from A to B. This new title creates a state-of-the-art reference work for all students and scholars with an interest in the ‘mobilities turn’ and its contributions to a deeper understanding of the contemporary and mobile world. The entries chosen all are amongst the most creative and thought provoking of this diverse field. The selection covers diverse topics such as theories, concepts, methods, and approaches as well as exploring various modes of mobilities and the relationship to everyday life practices. The pieces also cover the ‘politics of mobilities’ from local urban planning schemes to geopolitical issues of refugees and environmental degradation. The spaces and territories marked by mobilities as well as the sites marked by the bypassing of such are explored. Moreover, the architectural and technological dimensions to infrastructures and sites of mobilities will be included alongside issues of power, social exclusion, consumption, surveillance and mobilities history, to mention some of the many themes covered by this reference work of the best previously published material. The focus is on the academic contributions to this understanding by primarily focusing on works and publications in the aftermath of the seminal book and landmark text ‘Sociology Beyond Societies. Mobilities for the 21th Century’ by John Urry (Routledge, 2000) which in many ways have worked as the starting point for the ‘mobilities turn’.

Community development refers to planned efforts aimed at producing assets to increase the ability and capacity of inhabitants to enhance quality of life. There are many types of assets recognized in community development, including social, physical, human, financial and environmental. Community development can be considered both as a process of developing the ability to act collectively, and an outcome: 1) taking collective action and 2) the result of that action for improvement in a community in any or all realms. A key feature within community development is the notion of social capital or social capacity, generally recognized by both researchers and practitioners as the resources embedded within relationships among people and organizations that help facilitate collaboration and cooperation. A rich history of community development shows the connection to engagement, advocacy, housing rights, anti-poverty and other socially focused concerns. The focus of planning entails the establishment of goals, policies, and procedures for a social or economic unit, such as in a city, community, region or nation. Community planning and development thus seeks to foster viable communities by promoting integrated approaches that provide decent housing, a suitable living environment, and expand economic opportunities for low and moderate income persons. This four-volume set covers the wide social, economic, political, environmental and urban contexts for community planning and development. Providing both foundation contexts as well as addressing current issues, the collection brings together the most relevant overviews and critiques of community planning and development, applicable to both developing and developed countries. The set is fully indexed, and provides a comprehensive overview newly written by the editor as well as an introduction for each volume. It provides an essential work of reference, designed to be useful to scholars, students, and researchers as a vital research resource.

This four-volume collection brings together the most important canonical and cutting-edge papers in the essential topic of planning after disasters. This is the first coherent academic reference work to date.These selections emphasize knowledge regarding reconstruction and recovery of communities, the policies designed to facilitate successful reconstruction, the processes of planning, the processes of reconstruction, and the outcomes of all of the above. They draw from publications describing reconstruction cases all over the world, for which there is a rapidly growing literature. They emphasize governance, management, and planning for reconstruction, and also include some papers that describe and evaluate reconstruction outcomes. The selections emphasize physical reconstruction, but also include key readings on the economic recovery of cities after disasters.The set is introduced in a comprehensive editorial piece by the editor which locates the articles in context and explores the issues and topics at hand.

This new four-volume collection from Routledge brings together the most important canonical and cutting-edge works in Environmental Assessment. International in scope, the materials gathered cover the background of Environmental Assessment and the different possible approaches. The collection showcases the important historical material alongside current methods and theory.

By closely examining its public spaces, we can decipher the social, cultural and political life of a city. Public space is the arena for individual and group expression; a forum for dialogue, debate, and contestation; a space for conviviality, leisure, performance, and display; a place for economic survival and refuge; a site for the exchange of information and ideas; and a setting for nature. Public space has concerned philosophers, political thinkers, social scientists, legal scholars, planners, and architects and has also intrigued writers, painters, musicians, film-makers, and other artists. In this new four-volume collection from Routledge, Vikas Mehta brings together the key literature that encompasses the social and political issues in the making and experience of public space. It addresses the complete ecology of public space and the many interrelated issues. The set journeys the vast territory of public space to compile a multidisciplinary selection of materials that offer new as well as traditionally recognized principles of understanding and the making of public space.Public Space is fully indexed and includes comprehensive introductions, newly written by the editor, which place the collected materials in their historical and intellectual context. It is an essential reference collection and is destined to be valued by scholars and students—as well as policy-makers and practitioners—as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.