In recent years, the conservation of neighborhoods in American cities has risen to a high priority on the national agenda. The policy of demolishing whole neighborhoods in the inner city, whether to replace them with luxury apartments or massive public housing projects, has been largely abandoned, and the return of the middle class, seeking housing bargains in the neighborhoods they fled years ago, has hastened the process. Europe has much to teach the United States about urban conservation: it was a pressing public concern there when in this country conservation was mainly a matter of protecting wildlife and wilderness areas. The twenty-two essays in this volume—while discussing the conservation experiences of major European cities that are of considerable interest in their own right—present a preview of some of the struggles and solutions that are emerging on this side of the Atlantic as the conservation movement grows and extends into more and more urban districts. "Urban pioneering" and "gentrification" are becoming increasingly common in this country as the middle class seeks—in the face of energy shortages and slower growth, especially in housing—to reclaim the core cities that so many had once abandoned for suburbia. The first part of the book is concerned with the conflicts and struggles that have occurred over urban redevelopment in such cities as Venice, Brussels and Bath. The essays in the second part of the book describe a number of conservation efforts and strategies in cities such as Bologna, Stockholm and London which have attempted integration of social and physical conservation. The emphasis throughout is on conservation in specific neighborhoods—some historic districts, others humble working-class residential areas, a few both at once—rather than on conservation at the metropolitan scale. The separate essays range over such diverse topics as the impact of large-scale development projects on the existing city, the conservation of city centers and historic neighborhoods, the protection of monuments, the eviction of low-income migrants, examples of gentrification, amenity and conservation legislation, participatory action groups, social conservation strategies, and the education of children in urban conservation. The editor, in his extensive introduction, brings all these themes together setting them in the postwar history of European planning, and discussing issues such as the effects of tourism on old cities, the current crisis for modern architecture and planning, conflicting views and styles of conservation, the processes of pioneering and gentrification, and the relevance of this experience to the United States. The illustrated case studies center on the cities of London, Bolton, Bath, Elsinore, Stockholm, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Brussels, Grenoble, Bologna, Rome, Venice, Split, Athens, and Istanbul.

Explores the distinction of West European urban experience. It also provides an examination of the similarities and differences between urban experiences of West European countries. Divided into three sections, the first part studies the philosophies, histories and procedures that make the West European city system rich in internal variety. The second part deals with various aspects of the city's developmental policies and the final section consolidates the previous policies by examining the city plan as a whole.

Originally published in 1991, this book focusses on the philosophies, histories and processes which have made the West European city system rich in internal variety yet distinct from that of the rest of western industrialised urban society. It synthesizes international experiences in particular aspects of urban policy making, with reference to Germany, France and Benelux. The book covers urban planning in its broadest sense – from economic, socio-spacial, recreational, housing and transport perspectives.

A collection of studies on the ecologies of European cities, including Paris, Zurich, and Amsterdam among others. Discussion includes the natural and historical development of each city, local flora, the environmental impact of city growth, and environmental planning, design, and management.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

“From such well-known and long-vexed sites as the Athenian Acropolis to more contemporary locales like the Space Age Modernist capital city of Brasília, the conflicting and not always neatly resolvable forces that bear upon preservation are addressed as clearly and thoughtfully as the general reader could hope for.”—New York Review of Books “...an astonishing feat of research, compilation and synthesis.”—Context The book delivers the first major survey concerning the conservation of cultural heritage in both Europe and the Americas. Architectural Conservation in Europe and the Americas serves as a convenient resource for professionals, students, and anyone interested in the field. Following the acclaimed Time Honored, this book presents contemporary practice on a country-by-country and region-by-region basis, facilitating comparative analysis of similarities and differences. The book stresses solutions in architectural heritage protection and the contexts in which they were developed.