The City Shaped

The book is about the universal phenomenon of citymaking seen in a historical perspective - how and why cities took the shape they did. It focuses on a number of themes - organic patterns, the grid, the city as a diagram, the grand manner, and the skyline - and moves through time and place to interpret the hidden order inscribed in urban patterns.

Examination of the universal phenomenon of the city from a historical perspective, considering how and why cities took the shape they did.

Moving from the historical and cultural overviews of the city, Kostof descends into the streets, sidewalks, squares, markets, and waterfronts and presents a detailed urban anatomy. The book is organized thematically around the structural phenomena of cities, the city edge, the street, public space, the marketplace, and the realities of cultural and economic segregation.

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

An illuminating and evocatively illustrated tour of forty of the greatest cities that shaped the ancient world and its civilizations, from China and Mesoamerica to Europe and Ethiopia Today we take living in cities, with all their attractions and annoyances, for granted. But when did humans first come together to live in large groups, creating an urban landscape? What were these places like to inhabit? More than simply a history of ancient cities, this volume also reveals the art and architecture created by our ancestors, and provides a fascinating exploration of the origins of urbanism, politics, culture, and human interaction. Arranged geographically into five sections, Cities That Shaped the Ancient World takes a global view, beginning in the Near East with the earliest cities such as Ur and Babylon, Troy and Jerusalem. In Africa, the great cities of Ancient Egypt arose, such as Thebes and Amarna. Glorious European metropolises, including Athens and Rome, ringed the Mediterranean, but also stretched to Trier on the turbulent frontier of the Roman Empire. Asia had bustling commercial centers such as Mohenjodaro and Xianyang, while in the Americas the Mesoamerican and Peruvian cultures stamped their presence on the landscape, creating massive structures and extensive urban settlements in the deep jungles and high mountain ranges, including Caral and Teotihuacan. A team of expert historians and archaeologists with firsthand knowledge and deep appreciation of each site gives voices to these silent ruins, bringing them to life as the bustling state-of-the-art metropolises they once were.

This collection of twenty-one essays, written by colleagues and former students of the architectural historian Spiro Kostof (1936-1991), presents case studies on Kostof's model of urban forms and fabrics. The essays are remarkably diverse: the range includes pre-Columbian Inca settlements, fourteenth-century Cairo, nineteenth-century New Orleans, and twentieth-century Tokyo. Focusing on individual streets around the world and from different historical periods, the collection is an inviting overview of the street as an urban institution. The theme of the volume is that the street presents itself as the basic structuring device of a city's form and also as the locus of its civilization. Each essay is a detailed investigation of a single urban street with unique historical conditions. The authors' shared concern regarding anthropological, political, and technical aspects of street making coalesce into a critical discourse on urban space. A fitting tribute to Spiro Kostof, this collection will be greatly admired by scholars and general readers alike.

"William H. Whyte's curiosity compelled him to question the status quo--whether helping to make Fortune Magazine essential reading for business leaders, warning of "groupthink" in his bestseller The Organization Man, or standing up for Jane Jacobs as she advocated for the vitality of city life and public space. This compelling biography sheds light on Whyte's bold way of thinking, ripe for rediscovery at a time when we are reshaping our communities into places of opportunity and empowerment for all citizens" -- Backcover.