Since cities emerged ten thousand years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear—cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their very essence. In this book, a renowned architect and urban planner who studies the intersection of cities and technology argues that we are in such a moment. The authors explain some of the forces behind urban change and offer new visions of the many possibilities for tomorrow’s city. Pervasive digital systems that layer our cities are transforming urban life. The authors provide a front-row seat to this change. Their work at the MIT Senseable City Laboratory allows experimentation and implementation of a variety of urban initiatives and concepts, from assistive condition-monitoring bicycles to trash with embedded tracking sensors, from mobility to energy, from participation to production. They call for a new approach to envisioning cities: futurecraft, a symbiotic development of urban ideas by designers and the public. With such participation, we can collectively imagine, examine, choose, and shape the most desirable future of our cities.

"Tucker Foyle has been far away from Columbia, the utopia conceived and nano-engineered by his father, for over a decade. Upon his return, the prodigal son finds his idyllic childhood home a crime-ridden shell of its former self, overrun by robot hustlers, hookers and hoodlums. Now Tucker must piece together what went wrong, with Columbia, with his dysfunctional family and with his life, as he struggles to turn things around--without winding up dead in the process."--Cover.

In this 1929 classic, the great architect Le Corbusier turned from the design of houses to the planning of cities, surveying urban problems and venturing bold new solutions. The book shocked and thrilled a world already deep in the throes of the modern age. Today it is revered as a work that, quite literally, helped to shape our world. Le Corbusier articulates concepts and ideas he would put to work in his city planning schemes for Algiers, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Geneva, Stockholm, and Antwerp, as well as schemes for a variety of structures from a museum in Tokyo to the United Nations buildings. The influence it exerted on a new generation of architects is now legendary. The City of To-morrow and Its Planning characterizes European cities as a chaos of poor design, inadequate housing, and inefficient transportation that grew out of the unplanned jumble of medieval cities. Developing his thesis that a great modern city can only function on a basis of strict order, Le Corbusier presents two imposing schemes for urban reconstruction — the "Voisin" scheme for the center of Paris, and his more developed plans for the "City of Three Million Inhabitants," which envisioned, among other things, 60-story skyscrapers, set well apart, to house commercial activities, and residential housing grouped in great blocks of "villas." For those who live in cities as well as anyone interested in their planning, here is a probing survey of the problems of modern urban life and a master architect's stimulating vision of how they might be solved, enlivened by the innovative spirit and passionate creativity that distinguished all of Le Corbusier's work.

Peter Hall’s seminal Cities of Tomorrow remains an unrivalled account of the history of planning in theory and practice, as well as of the social and economic problems and opportunities that gave rise to it. Now comprehensively revised, the fourth edition offers a perceptive, critical, and global history of urban planning and design throughout the twentieth-century and beyond. A revised and updated edition of this classic text from one of the most notable figures in the field of urban planning and design Offers an incisive, insightful, and unrivalled critical history of planning in theory and practice, as well as of the underlying socio-economic challenges and opportunities Comprehensively revised to take account of abundant new research published over the last decade Reviews the development of the modern planning movement over the entire span of the twentieth-century and beyond Draws on global examples throughout, and weaves the author’s own fascinating experiences into the text to illustrate this authoritative story of urban growth

Most African cities are human settlements that lack the systems needed for effective land use planning. In fact, the disorganization that prevails has become so complex that the concept of urbanism itself has been called into question. This book highlights the need to restore urban planning in African cities through sustainable development and interculturality. Furthermore, it addresses the balance of power between urban planning and sustainable development and explores the historical and postcolonial aspects of urban planning in African cities. A case study focusing on the development of sustainable cities and neighborhoods in the M'Zab Valley is also included, as well as topics such as urban greening, climatic threats and the problem of state agro-industrial land transactions, which compete with sustainable urban planning. Sustainable Intercultural Urbanism at the Service of the African City of Tomorrow is a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners interested in urban issues in African cities. These cities, in particular sub Saharan cities, have long been excluded from any discourse on sustainable cities and urban planning; this book places the focus on these cities and acknowledges their varied urban realities. The intention is to spark a new debate on sustainable urban planning in African cities based on intercultural sustainable urbanism, which is key to thinking about and building ecological, intercultural, compact, intelligent and postcolonial cities.