Available:*
Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 32070000000515 | HT166 G444 2010 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
Searching... | 30000010340172 | HT166 G444 2010 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
On Order
Summary
Summary
For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use--or could use--the spaces where they live and work. In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people.
Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl emphasizes four human issues that he sees as essential to successful city planning. He explains how to develop cities that are Lively, Safe, Sustainable, and Healthy. Focusing on these issues leads Gehl to think of even the largest city on a very small scale. For Gehl, the urban landscape must be considered through the five human senses and experienced at the speed of walking rather than at the speed of riding in a car or bus or train. This small-scale view, he argues, is too frequently neglected in contemporary projects.
In a final chapter, Gehl makes a plea for city planning on a human scale in the fast- growing cities of developing countries. A "Toolbox," presenting key principles, overviews of methods, and keyword lists, concludes the book.
The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl's work around the globe.
Author Notes
Jan Gehl is a founding partner of Gehl Architects--Urban Quality Consultants. He is the author of Life Between Buildings and Public Spaces, Public Life . He has received numerous awards for his work and is widely credited with creating and renewing urban spaces in cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Melbourne, New York City, London, and many others.
Reviews 2
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this fascinating look inside the key architectural factors that determine a city's livability, award-winning Danish architect and author Gehl (Public Spaces, Public Life) examines the factors he deems essential to a successful city. Not surprisingly, places designed without good room for safe walking and biking lead to a sedentary life "behind steering wheel and computer screen." A "lively" city, on the other hand, "counters the trend for people to withdraw into gated communities. serving a democratic function where people encounter social diversity." It's in examining architecture's psychological effects that Gehl truly shines; public spaces without comfortable seating and properly-scaled "talkscapes" evoking Italian piazzas enact a high human toll and greatly impact how the city functions at eye-level. Soaring, dehumanizing architecture has a diminishing effect on the individual, creating a shocking "high-rise" in crime rates. Even those without a professional interest in architecture will be fascinated by the assertions, like "slow traffic means lively cities," that Gehl makes. Coming to the conclusion that "a good city is like a good party: guests stay because they are enjoying themselves," Gehl keeps his latest effort engaging from start to finish. Illus. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Choice Review
Gehl's reputation as a distinguished city planner rests on both his design practice (he has improved urban conditions in cities from Copenhagen to Adelaide) and his writing (most notably Life between Buildings: Using Public Space, CH, Dec'87; first published in Danish in 1971). This most recent publication, replete with color photographs contrasting cheerful cafe-filled street scenes with empty projects, summarizes his important lifelong work on the incremental means by which cities can be made more sympathetic to their human users. With attention to pedestrians' sightlines and to their paths, Gehl identifies those features of the urban landscape that contribute to its habitability. The book is a compendium of observations that are useful, if not particularly novel. Two features of the volume are disappointing. It blames bad cities on the modern masters' interest in buildings and not people, an old trope that is both untrue and boring. More problematically, the cities discussed are almost exclusively wealthy, first world ones. Only 14 pages of the book gesture toward the greatest of the contemporary urban problems--atrocities of the mega-slums (see Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, CH, Feb'07, 44-3572). Summing Up; Recommended. General readers. A. J. Wharton Duke University
