Routledge New Urbanism: Life, Work, and Space in the New Downtown (Design and the Built Environment)

Product Description The advent of the 21st century marks the unfolding of a new urbanism, of a new urban fabric in the making. Bringing together a range of leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this edited collection examines innovative urban redevelopment projects around Europe and North America which are at the forefront of this new urbanism and which are here termed 'New Downtowns'. It introduces this term and concept and addresses major questions such as: What does a sustained urbanity for the 21st century look like? Which strategies do politicians and planners deploy to create new synergies between planning for the public good and private interest? Can market forces be co-opted for collective interests? Does the imagination of a European city continue to inspire new urbanism within and beyond Europe? And can a future urbanity for the 21st century be planned at all? In particular, it focuses on Hamburg's HafenCity", which, at around 155 hectares, is one of the most prominent city centre development projects in Europe and will increase the size of Hamburg's city centre by 40 percent. The project HafenCity serves as a starting point for a conceptually wide ranging debate on the character, shape, function and meaning of New Downtowns. Review Book prize: Shortlisted for the Urban Design Group 2013 book of the year prize. 'New Urbanism is an interesting, thought-provoking book which poses serious questions about the type of urban form or urbanity taking place in 21st century cities.' Urban Design About the Author Ilse Helbrecht is Professor for Human Geography at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany and Peter Dirksmeier is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany