Like any city, Asmara, a young city even by the standards of young African capitals, is a stage set where the drama of history has unfolded in the most intense and eloquent manner. The territory of Asmara stands at the edge of a space of almost mythical civilisations, ancient religions and proud empires. It is also a natural acropolis in the vastness of Africa, an astoundingly high crest that looks down from above on the coast of the “Eritrean” sea, coming to a halt where the Afar Rift expands and, year after year, rips into the heart of Africa where lions and gnus still roam free. However, in its body, and thus in its history, Asmara is also a fragment of Europe, imported atop the undulating highlands of Hamasien by the presumption of the most fragile and thus most presumptuous of colonial nations: Italy. Less than 130 years later history appears to have intentionally concentrated a host of events, projects, interests, delusions, conflicts and hopes in Asmara that, within the vaster expanses of historical time could have filled dozens of centuries. These metamorphoses were similar to immense waves lapping at a resistant soil, introducing and withdrawing diverse foreign armies, peoples, languages and cultures; and adversities. The results of so much labour have forged the identity of Eritrea, jealously defended for decades, and jealously guarded to this day. Looking carefully in libraries, among printed works dedicated to particular aspects of this identity – numerous and some very important – it is impossible to find a history of Eritrea that is scientifically complete and up to date. This is a serious shortcoming. Yet everything has remained impressed upon the land and, even more eloquently, on the city, on the face and limbs of Asmara. Hence the reconstruction, like that made by the author of this book, of the difficult process of planning the city signifies not only restoring, similar to an animation, the history of the complex growth of an urban organism. Lucio Valerio Barbera UNESCO Chairholder in “Sustainable Urban Qaality and Urban Culture, notably in Africa”, Sapienza Università di Roma At the end of the Thirties, from Naples to Massawa (the ‘Port of Empire’, since 1890 an important commer-cial base and natural access point for anyone wishing to reach Asmara and the Eritrean uplands), the voyage took five days; from the port one could reach the capital of the Colony by train, on an intrepid mountain rail-way, or by a motor road, Road n° 1 from Dogali – Asmara was only 120 km away. If one wanted to make the journey by air, it took three and a half days, thanks to the ‘Empire Line’, which involved taking a seaplane from the Carlo Del Prete base in Ostia to Benghazi in Libya, and then a plane to the Umberto Maddalena Airport in Asmara, with stops at Cairo, Wadi Haifa, Khartoum and Càssala, on the Sudanese border. And right next door to the Airport stood the Teleferica Massawa-Asmara, an extraordinary cableway for transporting goods up on to the plateau, at a height difference of 2,326 metres; the cableway had been built in two years, between 1935 and 1937, and at a length of 75 km, was the longest industrial cableway system in the world. It could move in one day the equivalent of thirty train loads, but it was at its full operational capacity for only a few years: in 1941 it was damaged in the war with the British, and ten years later, when Eritrea became a British Protectorate, it was unexpectedly decided to dismantle it. capital of the new country. These events act as a backdrop and form a solid framework for Tecle Misghina’s research – which is not only meticulous but emotionally involved – of which this book is a well-documented summary. Her research is important in that it reconfigures and puts in order various documents, both known and unpublished, in order to build up a chronology and an armoury of references that are indispensable for anyone wishing to carry out further studies on the Eritrean capital. For a project developed within a Doctoral programme, this is, in my opinion, the most important outcome of her research. Piero Ostilio Rossi, Director of the Department of Architecture and Design, Sapienza Università di Roma

The ancient city of Asmara is the capital of Eritrea and its largest settlement. Its beautiful architecture was rediscovered by outsiders in the early 1990s. In this book, the authors offer an original analysis of the colonial city, providing a history not only of the physical and visible urban reality, but also of a second, invisible city as it exists in the imagination. The colonial city becomes a fantastical set of cities where each one reflects the others as if in a kaleidoscope. This book breaks new ground and moves us a little further along in the attempt to decipher Asmara in terms of contemporary theory. The book brings together scholars from a multiplicity of disciplines who have shown the ways in which colonial and postcolonial criticism has served as a platform for new, diversified readings of Asmara. The book examines the current realities of Asmara in order to address the continuing effects of the legacy of colonialism upon the city dwellers.

Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, has one of the most extensive surviving ensembles of modernist architecture in the world. To this day, the influence of the former colonial power of Italy from the early 20th century remains visible. Many of the buildings, erected in the futuristic, expressionist, cubist or rationalistic style have been preserved and dominate the cityscape of Asmara. UNESCO is considering to make the city a World Heritage Site in recognition of its outstanding modernist architecture. The impressive photographs by Stefan Boness convey the unique atmosphere of Asmara as a living museum of modernity. New, changed and revised edition of Asmara - The Frozen City (2006)

This thirteenth volume of the International Yearbook of Futurism Studies explores some of the many facets of Neo-Futurism from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day. It looks both at the revival and the continuation of Futurist aesthetics, whether in explicit or palimpsest form, in a variety of media: literature, visual art, design, music, architecture, theatre and photography. The essays delve into the broad spectrum of artistic research and offer a good dozen case studies that document, with a transnational and interdisciplinary orientation, the manifold forms of Neo-Futurism in various parts of the world. They investigate how historical Futurism's intellectual and artistic perspective was appropriated and developed further in a more or less conscious, faithful and original way, all the while confronting its progenitor's cultural, social and political misconceptions. Interdisciplinary contributions to neo-futurism as a global phenomenon

From a rare map of yellow fever in eighteenth-century New York, to Charles Booth’s famous maps of poverty in nineteenth-century London, an Italian racial zoning map of early twentieth-century Asmara, to a map of wealth disparities in the banlieues of twenty-first-century Paris, Mapping Society traces the evolution of social cartography over the past two centuries. In this richly illustrated book, Laura Vaughan examines maps of ethnic or religious difference, poverty, and health inequalities, demonstrating how they not only serve as historical records of social enquiry, but also constitute inscriptions of social patterns that have been etched deeply on the surface of cities. The book covers themes such as the use of visual rhetoric to change public opinion, the evolution of sociology as an academic practice, changing attitudes to physical disorder, and the complexity of segregation as an urban phenomenon. While the focus is on historical maps, the narrative carries the discussion of the spatial dimensions of social cartography forward to the present day, showing how disciplines such as public health, crime science, and urban planning, chart spatial data in their current practice. Containing examples of space syntax analysis alongside full colour maps and photographs, this volume will appeal to all those interested in the long-term forces that shape how people live in cities.

Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are unequally confronted with social, economic and environmental challenges, particularly those related with population growth, urban sprawl, and informality. This complex and uneven African urban condition requires an open discussion of past and current urban planning practices and future reforms. Urban Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa gives a broad perspective of the history of urban planning in Sub-Saharan Africa and a critical view of issues, problems, challenges and opportunities confronting urban policy makers. The book examines the rich variety of planning cultures in Africa, offers a unique view on the introduction and development of urban planning in Sub-Saharan Africa, and makes a significant contribution against the tendency to over-generalize Africa’s urban problems and Africa’s urban planning practices. Urban Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa is written for postgraduate students and advanced undergraduates, researchers, planners and other policy makers in the multidisciplinary field of Urban Planning, in particular for those working in Spatial Planning, Architecture, Geography, and History.

11 Post- tradition in Japanese culture -- Heritage -- 12 Industrial architecture -- 13 Landscape architecture -- 14 Middle- class housing -- Memory -- 15 Cultural institutions -- 16 Architectural photography -- Conservation -- 17 Laws and regulations -- 18 Technology -- Economy -- 19 Economic analysis -- Index of places -- Index of names

The Scientific Society Ludovico Quaroni was founded in Rome in 2010 as a tribute to Ludovico Quaroni, the Italian Master of Urban Architecture. Its purpose is “the study of the contemporary and historical city and architecture; the study of the design and theoretical works of the leading architects and scholars of architecture, the city and the territory”. To achieve these goals, the Scientific Society Ludovico Quaroni has founded the present electronic review, “L’architettura delle città – The Journal of the Scientific Society Ludovico Quaroni”. The title is a reminder of Ludovico Quaroni’s earliest book entitled L’architettura delle città (Ed. Sansaini, Rome 1939).

Urbanisation in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, poses challenges to urban living conditions. Despite large scale housing programmes from the side of the government, construction and settling processes have largely remained incremental. Nadine Appelhans focuses on the relation between statutory planning and practices of everyday urbanisation. The findings from Bahir Dar suggest that some mundane regimes of building the city are patronised, while others are considered undesired by policy makers. Based on this insight, the author argues that urban development in Bahir Dar needs to be locally grounded, differentiated and inclusive to avoid further tendencies of segregation.

Asmara, the capital of the small East African country of Eritrea, bordering the Red Sea, is one of the most important and exciting architectural 'discoveries' of recent years. Built almost entirely in the 1930s by the Italians, who transformed it into a hotbed of radical architectural innovation, Asmara has one of the highest concentrations of Modernist architecture anywhere in the world. This superb building-by-building survey, illustrated with previously unpublished archival material and specially commissioned photography, chronicles the colonial past and remarkable survival of a city that has evocatively been described as "the Miami of Africa."