The Evolution of Urban Form: Typology for Planners and Architects

by Brenda Case Scheer

Overview

Why are so many of our urban environments so resistant to change? The author tackles this question in her comprehensive guide for planners, designers, and students concerned with how cities take shape. This book provides a fundamental understanding of how physical environments are created, changed, and transformed through ordinary processes over time. Most of the built environment adheres to a few physical patterns, or types, that occur over and over. Planners and architects, consciously and unconsciously, refer to building types as they work through urban design problems and regulations. Suitable for professional planners, architects, urban designers, and students, This book includes practical examples of how typology is critical to analytical, design, and regulatory situations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351178037
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/20/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Brenda Case Scheer, AICP is the Dean and Professor of Architecture and City Metropolitan for the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Utah.

Table of Contents

1. A Crisis in the Urban Landscape  2. The Origins and Theory of Type  3. Typological Transformation  4. Typology and Urban Transformation  5. Legitimacy and Control  6. Typology and the Disordered City  7. Type in Design and Practice  8. Transformation and Imagination

Editorial Reviews

Scheer’s investigation of building types in the context of urbanism offers a rigorous introduction for students as well as a strong review for academics and practitioners. The book is especially valuable in that it avoids traditionalist nostalgia and tries to under¬stand the most “disordered” parts of our American urban fabric in a way that is honest and optimistic about possibilities for change in the contemporary metropolis.
-Marshall Brown, Illinois Institute of Technology

This book helps link academic studies of building types with contemporary practice, by providing a clear introduction to the history, theory, and present-day attitudes toward building types. The language is clear, the illustrations well-chosen, and the relationship between history and contemporary ideas is strongly made.
- Howard Davis, University of Oregon

One of the most thoughtful and penetrating critiques of form-based regulations and new urbanism. Scheer provides a fresh perspective on the relation between ideal forms and actual places. Essential reading for all thinking planners and architects. -Christopher J. Duerksen

From the Publisher