Towards a new kind of city, from Éditions Alternatives
Actuarchi's review:
What will the city of tomorrow look like? As French eco-districts spring up across the country, Vidal Benchimol and Stéphanie Lemoine survey the various urban experiments under way around us, before turning to four major issues facing the city: transport, energy, social mix and culture. While the energy performance of new neighbourhoods is on everybody's lips, the authors point out that living together and culture get far less attention. They spare the reader the barrage of figures that might have drowned them, which makes the book accessible to a readership with no specialist knowledge of urban issues. It draws on case studies that regularly turn up in other books on sustainable development. Taken together, the chapters offer a good grounding for local councillors reflecting on the future of their towns and cities.
Recommended for:
I would recommend it first and foremost to local elected officials, to public and private clients (maîtrises d'ouvrage) and to the other public bodies involved in shaping the city. Second, I would recommend it to students of urban planning or architecture, and to the general public with an interest in urban futures.
Not recommended for:
I would not recommend it to urban planners or architects: because it sets out to cover every urban issue, it does not go into enough depth to satisfy a professional.
Publisher's description:
There is no end to the vilification of the contemporary city. Pollution, urban sprawl, wasted resources, the fraying of social ties, the primacy of networks (of transport, but also of communication) over places, spatial segregation, gentrification, museumification, climate change… the list of ills said to afflict the European metropolis is enough to make one's head spin.
Yet even as sustainable development, living together and the right to mobility come to be seen as so many chores, another city is being invented: denser and more concerned with protecting the environment, supportive and convivial yet attentive to safety, offering varied and efficient means of transport while limiting the nuisances that come with mobility (noise, pollution and so on).
How is this new urban space being built in Europe? What are its models and guiding principles? How are the various players in urban planning preparing for its arrival? In what way does the city taking shape today reflect the changes at work in our societies? What type of housing, and more generally what innovations, does it call for?
The book begins by tracing the outlines of urban space in the twenty-first century, taking stock of trends and surveying practices (good and bad), before suggesting avenues for everyone who, in one way or another, helps to make the sustainable city.
Contents:
- Chapter 1: From the functional city to the sustainable city
- Chapter 2: The city of short distances
- Chapter 3: The energy question
- Chapter 4: The city together
- Chapter 5: Culture at work for the city
Details:
- Authors: Vidal Benchimol and Stéphanie Lemoine
- Publisher: Alternatives
- ISBN: 978-2862277905
- Format: 188 x 140 x 14 mm
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