Designing The Compassionate City

Introduction -- Human needs -- Embedding and receiving the messages in the urban environment -- What makes a place nurturing or neglectful? -- Living in the compassionate city -- Play quarters, london -- Benches collective, various locations in the Netherlands and overseas -- Tower hamlets cemetery park, london -- De ceuvel, Amsterdam -- Woonerven, Netherlands and overseas -- Christie Walk, Adelaide -- The secular pilgrimage and South Melbourne Commons, Melbourne -- Stewartstown Road Centre, Belfast -- UN habitat placemaking projects in West Bank villages, palestine -- The obstacles and pitfalls to creating places where people thrive -- Designing the compassionate city -- Applying compassionate city principles -- Conclusions

Designing the Compassionate City outlines an approach to urban design that is centred on an explicit recognition of the inherent dignity of all people. It suggests that whether we thrive or decline—as individuals or as a community—is dependent on our ability to fulfil the full spectrum of our needs. This book considers how our surroundings help or hinder us from meeting these needs by influencing both what we can do and what we want to do; either inspiring us to lead healthy, fulfilled lives or consigning us to diminished lives tainted by ill health and unfulfilled potential. Designing the Compassionate City looks at how those who participate in designing towns and cities can collaborate with those who live in them to create places that help people to accumulate the life lessons, experiences and achievements, as well as forge the connections to meet their needs, to thrive and to fulfil their potential. The book explores a number of inspiring case studies that have sought to meet this challenge and examines what has worked and what hasn’t. From this, some conclusions are drawn about how we can all participate in creating places that leave a lasting legacy of empowerment and commitment to nurturing one another. It is essential reading for students and practitioners designing happier, healthier places.

In this important contribution to urban studies, Juliet Davis makes the case for a more ethical and humane approach to city development and management. With a range of illustrative case studies, the book challenges the conventional and neoliberal thinking of urban planners and academics, and explores new ways to correct problems of inequality and exclusion. It shows how a philosophy of caring can improve both city environments and communities. This is an original and powerful theory of urban care that can promote the wellbeing of our cities’ many inhabitants.

The positive effects of urban green spaces are well-known, ranging from the promotion of health, support of biodiversity to climate regulation. However, the practical implementation of urban landscapes is less discussed. How can we make these spaces functional, economically feasible and inclusive, especially as cities become more diverse? The publication explores strategies to reconcile the various demands, such as food production, resilience and nature conservation. Indeed, urban landscapes have to be restorative, ecological and aesthetically pleasing at the same time. This is a particular challenge in high-density cities like Singapore, Seoul or New York where space is a scarce commodity. The continuing growth of the worldwide urban population imbues the topic with a special urgency.

How do we prepare for and manage the challenges and the transformations that are increasingly confronting cities? Solutions are necessary for the impacts expected from the global population movement toward urban centres; the evolution of technologies and its influence on the economy; the evolving socio-cultural fabric of our cities and what it means for citizen engagement and happiness; and for the increasing need to protect and better manage the environment. The series of essays presented here will help governments, organizations, and concerned citizens think differently about ways we can improve the places we call home. It will stimulate local stakeholders to move away from silo-thinking and work collaboratively toward innovative solutions to make cities more liveable and sustainable. The volume brings together international experts on development, innovation, education, health, digitalization, and planning to provide stimulating new ideas and successful examples of tools and systems being used worldwide to improve the future of cities.

Once it was difficult to see end of life care beyond conventional medical intervention, but hospice and palliative care introduced a more holistic approach, providing quality of life for the dying and their families. This ground-breaking work takes end-of-life care beyond these palliative boundaries, describing a public health vision that involves whole communities adopting a compassionate approach to dying, death and loss. Written by a leading academic in the field of death and bereavement, this text outlines the historical, political and conceptual basis of compassionate cities, providing a community development model for end-of-life care. Moving away from infection control and health promotion Allan Kellehear invites us to think of a third wave movement of public health, joining empathy, equality and action together as practical policies. Presenting a radical new perspective to death, ageing and public health, Compassionate Cities is essential reading for academics and professionals alike.

The Future of the City Centre: Global Perspectives debates future directions. It looks beyond the post-industrial, post-commercial, and post-retail city centres to examine differing visions of the future form and function of the urban core. This theme and the related sub-topics will assist the development of future city models and help to contextualise urban change. The in-depth research covers not only urban form and the re-use of the built heritage but also the provision for cultural events and different forms of entertainment that will offer vitality, together with visitors and responsible tourism. City authorities are starting to realise that structural changes are happening in city centres, as their influence is declining, and therefore new forms of governance will be needed. The book is based on an international research network hosting four symposia over 24 months. They took place in four cities in four different continents to encompass a world view of developed and developing countries. This book offers theoretical and practical perspectives from leading thinkers, academics, and practitioners, drawing on thematic issues explored across four international cities: Newcastle, UK; Newcastle, Australia; Pretoria-Tshwane, South Africa; and João Pessoa, Brazil. It draws on a wider set of global examples to reveal the shared issues and pressures being brought to bear on city centres and the diversity of responses being undertaken to ensure their long-term future. The book includes illustrations from cities around the world, and it is directed at academics, students, and professionals in architecture, planning, urban design, the built environment, geography, economics, sociology, and cultural studies.

Public Places Urban Spaces provides a comprehensive overview of the principles, theory and practices of urban design for those new to the subject and for those requiring a clear and systematic guide. In this new edition the book has been extensively revised and restructured. Carmona advances the idea of urban design as a continuous process of shaping places, fashioned in turn by shifting global, local and power contexts. At the heart of the book are eight key dimensions of urban design theory and practice—temporal, perceptual, morphological, visual, social, functional—and two new process dimensions—design governance and place production. This extensively updated and revised third edition is more international in its scope and coverage, incorporating new thinking on technological impact, climate change adaptation, strategies for urban decline, cultural and social diversity, place value, healthy cities and more, all illustrated with nearly 1,000 carefully chosen images. Public Places Urban Spaces is a classic urban design text, and everyone in the field should own a copy.