'This is a textbook about cities or, more precisely, about the physical form of cities. It provides an overview of the main elements of urban form—streets, street blocks, plots and buildings—structuring our cities and the fundamental agents and processes of transformation shaping these elements. It applies this analytical framework to describe the evolution of cities over history as well as to explain the functioning of contemporary cities. After the initial focus on the 'object' (cities), the book introduces how different schools of thought have been dealing with this object since the...

This book advances the reflexion into how temporary urbanism is shaping cities across the world. Temporary urbanism has become a core concept in urban development, and its application is increasingly crossing the borders of both the North and the Global South. There is a need to reflect upon the diverse ways of understanding and implementing the temporary in the production of space internationally and discuss what this means, for both research and practice. 

Divided into two sections, the book compiles and reflects upon the various attempts to reframe and...

This book adds to the research of urban informality in the Global South with a specific focus on South Africa and Zimbabwe. It addresses the agency and the potential transformative capacity of the phenomenon of urban informality in connection with Southern African cities and towns. It adopts a political economy approach to analyse the evolution of informality in cities and its implications for urban planning. It brings to bear how the South African and Zimbabwean historical and/or ideological and contemporary political and economic trajectories have impacted on the ever changing nature of...

This book is about the relation between scientific research and professional practice on the built environment. The physical form of cities is structured in different elements of urban form. Each of these elements, and the way they are combined into distinct patterns, is shaped by various agents and processes of change. Planning, urban design and architecture are practice-oriented activities that have a significant impact on these elements. Yet, this ‘action’ on the physical form if cities tends to be separated from scientific ‘knowledge’ on this complex object. In fact, none of...

This book investigates the production of public space in contemporary urban contexts as conditioned by the suffusion of urban life with digital technologies. A “social production of technology” approach is taken to frame the digitally-mediated city as a communal social and cultural project. Acknowledging the multivalent and shifting nature of public space and the heterogeneity of the urban actors who form it, the “agency” of these different actors in appropriating digital technologies takes center stage. The dynamics of negotiations between regimes of control and impulses towards...

This book offers a resourceful collection of essays examining recent efforts to respond to the challenges of planning, management and conserving landscapes in contemporary Iran, the home of Persian gardens. Drawing on selected recent studies, the chapters discuss the following topics: 

• The sphere of knowledge and theoretical bases, including a survey of recent and ongoing research;
• Persian gardens remaining from the 6th century BC to the 19th century AD, which have influenced garden design in a vast geographic domain extending from India to...

This book is an earnest effort in understanding the slums and their needs by taking a case study of Kalaburagi, India. This study aims to contribute sustainable methodologies to advance the living conditions of slum dwellers and for better execution of slum policies. The core objectives are: 1) mapping the existing slums of Kalaburagi (formerly Gulbarga) city using slum ontology from very high-resolution data and validating the slum map through ground survey and using reliable data; 2) developing a model to understand the factors which are responsible for the present growth as well as to...

The study is aimed at reconstructing the historical process at the base of any significant theatre architecture. The modern space for the show is no longer intended as a direct derivation from classical types, but as a product of the transformation of the urban fabric in our cities.

The research was conducted at the academies, state and municipal historical archives of numerous towns, in particular Rome, Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, Venice, London and Prague. All images are original. The work also includes the list of about 700 major Italian historical theatres.