Democratic Architecture offers viable & affordable solutions to our country's ongoing housing problems. The book deals with tough urban problems and raises questions not just about housing policy, but about larger political and ethical issues as well. It provides a critique of the various approaches to post-war housing and then puts forth a number of innovative solutions to the problem. Many of the proposals are practical designs for low- and lower-middle-income housing, with an emphasis on increasing opportunities for home ownership. They include a variety of detached homes, multiunit buildings, and some alternative types of housing for people whose lifestyles diverge from the mainstream. With more than 200 black & white and color illustrations, Democratic Architecture is a book that clearly lays out solutions to housing crises that we see occurring all too often in the United States and all over the world.

The welfare state faces various challenges in Scandinavia and many European countries today, including a poor work environment in the public sector, a growing democracy deficit, and demographic obstacles. In this new book, Victor A. Pestoff argues that the state cannot resolve these challenges alone or together with the market, rather it requires the active participation of citizens and the third sector in order to overcome them and become more sustainable and flexible in the future. This book addresses the need for a more democratic architecture for the European welfare state, opening new perspectives for developing alternative channels for direct citizen participation at the sub-municipal level of governance. Pestoff finds that neither democratic theory nor welfare state theory devotes adequate attention to the contemporary role of the third sector as a service provider or to greater direct citizen participation in the provision of welfare services. He shifts the focus of analysis from the input to the output side of the political system and explores new ways to promote a greater role for the third sector and more citizen participation in the provision of universal, tax financed welfare services. Part 1 discusses social economy actors in Sweden and Scandinavia, both from a historical and future perspective. Part 2 explores major issues for the third sector and welfare state, including the allocation of an organization’s surplus or profit, work environment and service quality in public services and the third sector, consumer perspectives on the social economy, democratizing medical and health care in Japan, and co-production of childcare services in eight European countries. Part 3 revisits the third sector and state in democratic theory and welfare theory, as well as recognizing major hurdles to the third sector and democratization of the welfare state. Part 4 concludes by summarizing the politics of participation in the welfare state.

This book addresses the need for a more democratic architecture for the European welfare state by promoting citizen participation, the third sector and co-production of welfare services.

Centered on his intriguing synthesis of the American republic's architectural and democratic traditions, Allan Greenberg's essay moves across geography and through history as the renowned architect and scholar makes the case that America's architectural tradition and political ideals are deeply connected.At the core of the American democratic architectural tradition is the modest, single-family house, which gave rise to the statehouse, the courthouse, the firehouse, the schoolhouse, the jailhouse, and the President's house (as it was known before it became the White House).Generously illustrated and skillfully written, Architecture of Democracy traces a common line from the earliest colonial settlements to the Western frontier of the nineteenth century and today's ultramodern city centers. The volume will imbue in its readers a newfound appreciation for the democratic ideals that American architecture strives to express and uphold.

A compelling reassessment of Thomas Jefferson's architecture that scrutinizes the complex, and sometimes contradictory, meanings of his iconic work Renowned as a politician and statesman, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was also one of the premier architects of the early United States. Adept at reworking Renaissance--particularly Palladian--and Enlightenment ideals to the needs of the new republic, Jefferson completed visionary building projects such as his two homes, Monticello and Poplar Forest; the Capitol building in Richmond; and the University of Virginia campus. Featuring a wealth of archival images, including models, paintings, drawings, and prints, this volume presents compelling essays that engage broad themes of history, ethics, philosophy, classicism, neoclassicism, and social sciences while investigating various aspects of Jefferson's works, design principles, and complex character. In addition to a thorough introduction to Jefferson's career as an architect, the book provides insight into his sources of inspiration and a nuanced take on the contradictions between his ideas about liberty and his embrace of slavery, most poignantly reflected in his plan for the academical village at the University of Virginia, which was carefully designed to keep enslaved workers both invisible and accessible. Thomas Jefferson, Architect offers fresh perspectives on Jefferson's architectural legacy, which has shaped the political and social landscape of the nation and influenced countless American architects since his time.

The Democratic Courthouse examines how changing understandings of the relationship between government and the governed came to be reflected in the buildings designed to house the modern legal system from the 1970s to the present day in England and Wales. The book explores the extent to which egalitarian ideals and the pursuit of new social and economic rights altered existing hierarchies and expectations about how people should interact with each other in the courthouse. Drawing on extensive public archives and private archives kept by the Ministry of Justice, but also using case studies from other jurisdictions, the book details how civil servants, judges, lawyers, architects, engineers and security experts have talked about courthouses and the people that populate them. In doing so, it uncovers a changing history of ideas about how the competing goals of transparency, majesty, participation, security, fairness and authority have been achieved, and the extent to which aspirations towards equality and participation have been realised in physical form. As this book demonstrates, the power of architecture to frame attitudes and expectations of the justice system is much more than an aesthetic or theoretical nicety. Legal subjects live in a world in which the configuration of space, the cues provided about behaviour by the built form and the way in which justice is symbolised play a crucial, but largely unacknowledged, role in creating meaning and constituting legal identities and rights to participate in the civic sphere. Key to understanding the modern-day courthouse, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in all fields of law, architecture, sociology, political science, psychology and criminology.

In July 2010, Facebook had over 500 million subscribers worldwide and the rapid rise of the site prompted Time magazine to name Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg its person of the year for 2010. This novel book advances our understanding of how democratic citizens are transformed by the "Facebook revolution". Despite increasing interest in politics and popular media, there has been little academic work on the impact of Facebook on politics in general, and on democratic processes in particular. The work that does exist has been limited to Facebook's impact on politics as a mobilization tool used by social movement activists. In this book, José Marichal argues that understanding Facebook's impact on political processes requires an understanding of how Facebook's architecture of disclosure shapes the construction of individuals' political identities by drawing users further into their pre-selected social networks. Drawing on a number of disciplines and an ethnographic analysis of 250 Facebook political groups, Marichal explores how Facebook's emphasis on social connection impacts key dimensions of political participation: e.g., mobilization, deliberation, and attitude formation.

What meanings do buildings and places convey to the people who use and visit them? Too often, design competitions and signature architecture result in costly eyesores that do not work. How can sponsors and clients get more meaningful results? In answer to these questions, Dr Nasar, supported by riveting studies of competitions and Peter Eisenman's competition-winning design for the Wexner Center at the Ohio State University, suggests the use of pre-jury evaluation (PJE). He shows the potential value of this approach as well as visual quality programming for many kinds of environmental design for which the client wants to convey certain desirable meanings. The studies, from those specific to the Wexner Center to those covering the scope of history, point to an alternative method for shaping the visual form of buildings, places and cities.

The Unitarian religious tradition was a product of the same eighteenth-century democratic ideals that fueled the American Revolution and informed the founding of the United States. Its liberal humanistic principles influenced institutions such as Harvard University and philosophical movements like Transcendentalism. Yet, its role in the history of American architecture is little known and studied. In American Unitarian Churches, Ann Marie Borys argues that the progressive values and identity of the Unitarian religion are intimately intertwined with ideals of American democracy and visibly expressed in the architecture of its churches. Over time, church architecture has continued to evolve in response to developments within the faith, and many contemporary projects are built to serve religious, practical, and civic functions simultaneously. Focusing primarily on churches of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple and Louis Kahn's First Unitarian Church, Borys explores building histories, biographies of leaders, and broader sociohistorical contexts. As this essential study makes clear, to examine Unitarianism through its churches is to see American architecture anew, and to find an authentic architectural expression of American democratic identity.