Both epic and intimate, this is the story of the fight to save the world’s architectural and cultural heritage as it is embodied in the extraordinary buildings and urban spaces of the great cities of Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Never before have the complexities and dramas of urban preservation been as keenly documented as inPreserving the World’s Great Cities. In researching this important work, Anthony Tung traveled throughout the world to visit remarkable buildings and districts in China, Italy, Greece, the U.S., Japan, and elsewhere. Everywhere he found both the devastating legacy of war, economics, and indifference and the accomplishments of people who have worked and sometimes risked their lives to preserve and renew the most meaningful urban expressions of the human spirit. From Singapore’s blind rush to become the most modern city of the East to Warsaw’s poignant and heroic effort to resurrect itself from the Nazis’ systematic campaign of physical and cultural obliteration, from New York and Rome to Kyoto and Cairo, we see the city as an expression of the best and worst within us. This is essential reading for fans of Jane Jacobs and Witold Rybczynski and everyone who is concerned about urban preservation.

David Miller presents a compelling case that significant progress can be made at the local level by duplicating the actions of nine leading cities around the world.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize In twenty-first-century America, some cities are flourishing and others are struggling, but they all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. Cities have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good. It wasn’t always this way. For almost three decades after World War II, even as national policies promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents into the suburbs. In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal. He worked to revive a declining New Haven, became the architect of the “New Boston” of the 1960s, and, later, led New York State’s Urban Development Corporation, which built entire new towns, including Roosevelt Island in New York City. Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy: Neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes and progressive goals. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness, opening up possibilities for our own time.

For both the preservation professional and urban planner, this book shows how preservation is a key to the creation of livable cities. The author Eric Allison, the founder and coordinated of the graduate historic preservation program at Pratt Institute in New York City, offers tools and case studies that preservationists and planners can learn from in implementing preservation projects or plans in cities large and small. This book is a must read for anyone working in or interested in these fields and the creation and maintenance of livable cities.

At its most basic, historic preservation is about keeping old places alive, in active use, and relevant to the needs of communities today. As cities across America experience a remarkable renaissance, and more and more young, diverse families choose to live, work, and play in historic neighborhoods, the promise and potential of using our older and historic buildings to revitalize our cities is stronger than ever. This urban resurgence is a national phenomenon, boosting cities from Cleveland to Buffalo and Portland to Pittsburgh. Experts offer a range of theories on what is driving the return to the city—from the impact of the recent housing crisis to a desire to be socially engaged, live near work, and reduce automobile use. But there’s also more to it. Time and again, when asked why they moved to the city, people talk about the desire to live somewhere distinctive, to be some place rather than no place. Often these distinguishing urban landmarks are exciting neighborhoods—Miami boasts its Art Deco district, New Orleans the French Quarter. Sometimes, as in the case of Baltimore’s historic rowhouses, the most distinguishing feature is the urban fabric itself. While many aspects of this urban resurgence are a cause for celebration, the changes have also brought to the forefront issues of access, affordable housing, inequality, sustainability, and how we should commemorate difficult history. This book speaks directly to all of these issues. In The Past and Future City, Stephanie Meeks, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, describes in detail, and with unique empirical research, the many ways that saving and restoring historic fabric can help a city create thriving neighborhoods, good jobs, and a vibrant economy. She explains the critical importance of preservation for all our communities, the ways the historic preservation field has evolved to embrace the challenges of the twenty-first century, and the innovative work being done in the preservation space now. This book is for anyone who cares about cities, places, and saving America’s diverse stories, in a way that will bring us together and help us better understand our past, present, and future.

One of Planetizen's Top Planning Books for 2017 - San Francisco Chronicle's 2016 Holiday Books Gift Guide Pick What makes a great city? City planner and architect Alexander Garvin set out to answer this question by observing cities, largely in North America and Europe, with special attention to Paris, London, New York, and Vienna. For Garvin, greatness is about what people who shape cities can do to make a city great. A great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Most importantly, it is about the interplay between people and public realm, and how they have interacted throughout history to create great cities. What Makes a Great City will help readers understand that any city can be changed for the better and inspire entrepreneurs, public officials, and city residents to do it themselves.

The year 2007 marked a defining moment in human history--for the first time, more people were living in cities than in rural areas and, as a result, the demands and expectations placed on cities are unprecedented. This thought-provoking book by cities specialist John Lorinc considers the enormous implications of the mass migration away from rural regions, and it predicts that solutions will emerge from neighborhoods and dynamic networks linking communities to governments and the broader urban world.

World's Greatest Cities is an illuminating visual guide to 30 incredible cities around the globe—with annotated 3-D reconstructions and cutaway models that allow you to journey right to the soul of each of them. For thousands of years, cities built by humans have reflected their beliefs, their power, their needs, and their desires. Palaces and prisons, churches and mosques, skyscrapers and suspension bridges are the tracks that history, sometimes glorious, often violent, imprints on these cities. But these cities are also the men and women who inhabit them and who stamp a unique character onto each of them. The spirit of each city is also etched in the daily coming and going of the streets, the hustle and bustle of the markets, and in the unhurried discussions of the cafés. Explore the cities of the world today that leave a lasting impression on those who visit them. These cities offer rich architectural heritage and spectacular natural environments. But above all, they have a vitality that makes them unique. They are cities that know how to grow, transform, and reinvent themselves without losing their essence. Feel the heartbeat of the most vibrant and exciting cities around the globe. Skyscrapers, alongside ancient marvels, are beautifully illustrated and perfectly complement the engaging text that describes the creation and history of these celebrated destinations. Cities dissected are Paris, San Francisco, New York; City, Toronto, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro , London, Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Prague, Athens, Moscow, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Dubai, Sydney, Auckland, Cairo, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and all of their landmark sites.

A week before the outbreak of the First World War, an acute financial crisis surged over London: the Stock Exchange closed; money markets worldwide were paralysed. Drawing on diaries, letters, memoirs, press reports, and official archives, this book tells the extraordinary, and largely unknown, story of the first true global financial crisis.

Cities are frequently viewed as passive participants to state and national efforts to solve the toughest urban problems. But the evidence suggests otherwise. Cities are actively devising innovative policy solutions and they have the potential to do even more. In this volume, the authors examine current threats to communities across the U.S. and the globe. They draw on first-hand experience with, and accounts of, the crises already precipitated by climate change, population shifts, and economic inequality. This volume is distinguished, however, by its central objective of traveling beyond a description of problems and a discussion of their serious implications. Each of the thirteen chapters frame specific recommendations and guidance on the range of core capacities and interventions that 21st Century cities would be prudent to consider in mapping their immediate and future responses to these critical problems. How Cities Will Save the World brings together authors with frontline experience in the fields of city redevelopment, urban infrastructure, healthcare, planning, immigration, historic preservation, and local government administration. They not only offer their ground level view of threats caused by climate change, population shifts, and economic inequality, but they provide solution-driven narratives identifying promising innovations to help cities tackle this century’s greatest adversities.