Cross-Cultural Urban Design

Unprecedented in its scope, Cross-cultural Urban Design: Global or local practice? explores how urban design has responded to recent trends towards global standardization. Following analysis of practice in many places, at many scales and amongst many disciplines in the local domain, the book looks at how urban design and planning should be repositioned for the future. Cross-cultural Urban Design introduces and discusses the issues that now confront the planning and design of cities and settlements and create the context for cross-cultural urban design practice everywhere, including: population movement international communication urbanization and suburbanization tourism commercialization environmental degradation sustainability and flows of capital. It maps out how urban practitioners, researchers and educators are currently responding to these issues in their work, presenting and discussing cases and theories of urbanism from across the globe. Contributions are framed in three sections. Re-conceptualizing the city presents ways to read the contemporary city and re-think work within it. Experiments in practice presents and discusses cases where practitioners have confronted new conditions, as experiments observed and interrogated. Finally, Learning cross-cultural urban design presents and discusses the learning process as a field of research and its contribution to practice. The concluding chapter offers new theoretical frameworks for understanding current practice and ways of developing the capacity to deal with urban environments globally. A unique collection which will be of use to all those engaged in contemporary urban design research and practice, Cross-cultural Urban Design presents a new way of thinking about urban design within the complex context of the contemporary world and posits a way forward - as cross-cultural practice that supports and develops local sustainability.Bull, Catherin is the author of 'Cross-Cultural Urban Design', published 2008 under ISBN 9780415432795 and ISBN 0415432790.