Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life by Volker M. Welter

Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life by Volker M. Welter

By Volker M. Welter

Winner within the 2003 AAUP e-book, Jacket, and magazine festival within the Scholarly Illustrated type. The Scottish urbanist and biologist Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) is likely to be top recognized for introducing the idea that of "region" to structure and making plans. on the flip of the 20th century, he used to be one of many most powerful advocates of city making plans and an lively player in debates concerning the way forward for the town. He used to be arguably the 1st planner to acknowledge the significance of ancient urban facilities, and his renewal paintings in Edinburgh's outdated city is obvious and bold to today. Geddes's recognized analytical triad—place, paintings, and people, resembling the geographical, ancient, and non secular elements of the city—provides the elemental constitution of this exam of his city idea. Volker Welter examines Geddes's principles within the gentle of nineteenth-century biology—in which Geddes acquired his educational training—showing Geddes's use of organic strategies to be way more subtle than renowned photographs of the town as an natural entity. His urbanism used to be trained through his lifelong curiosity within the conception of evolution and in ecology, state-of-the-art parts within the past due 19th century. Balancing Geddes's organic notion is his curiosity within the ancient Greek idea of polis, frequently translated as city-state yet implying a view of the town as a cultural and religious phenomenon. even if Geddes's paintings used to be far-ranging, town supplied the unifying concentration of the majority of his theoretical and functional paintings. through the ebook, Welter relates Geddes's thought of the town to modern eu debates approximately structure and urbanism.

Show description

Read or Download Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life PDF

Similar urban planning & development books

Urban Sprawl in Europe: Landscape, Land-Use Change and Policy

City sprawl is without doubt one of the most crucial varieties of land-use alterations presently affecting Europe. It more and more creates significant affects at the setting (via floor sealing, emissions by way of delivery and surroundings fragmentation); at the social constitution of a space (by segregation, way of life alterations and neglecting city centres); and at the economic system (via dispensed creation, land costs, and problems with scale).

Handbook of Research on Public Information Technology

Using details know-how within the public region has been an more and more popular overseas pattern. With this swift growth comes many matters, demanding situations, and issues when it comes to the applying of public details know-how. The instruction manual of study of Public info know-how compiles estimable study at the worldwide pattern towards the speedily expanding use of knowledge expertise within the public region, discussing such concerns as e-government and e-commerce; undertaking administration and data expertise overview; process layout and knowledge processing; protection and defense; and privateness, entry, and ethics of public details know-how.

Extra info for Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life

Example text

As the landscape changed its appearance, the life of the people changed too. The upper classes benefited from newly created wealth, which they spent sometimes on urban amenities, sometimes on their country estates. Change was more dramatic at the other end of the social hierarchy, for those working in the new factories and living in the row houses. Working-class Britons had to come to terms with unemployment, illness, and bad housing. For them, life in an industrialized society was not necessarily a better life; they were often compelled to give up a poor but somewhat secure life in the countryside for a poorer and insecure town life.

The questions Enlightenment philosophers asked about human self-knowledge and man’s position in nature, along with political upheavals like the American and French revolutions, seriously shook traditional institutions and the morals and ethical values of the older societies. Thus began a process of societal change that lasted through the whole of the nineteenth century. Classical Greece offered an alternative social model characterized by stable conditions and a coherent body of values. 1 The latter were represented by the enlightened absolutist rulers who embellished towns and country estates with classicist buildings meant both to impress and to teach their people humanist values.

Thus began a process of societal change that lasted through the whole of the nineteenth century. Classical Greece offered an alternative social model characterized by stable conditions and a coherent body of values. 1 The latter were represented by the enlightened absolutist rulers who embellished towns and country estates with classicist buildings meant both to impress and to teach their people humanist values. On the other hand the artists, architects, and writers who took the grand tour through Greece and Italy often dreamed of democracy, even if they were financed by the absolutist rulers who made use of their newfound knowledge at home.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.67 of 5 – based on 45 votes
Comments are closed.