Shapers of Urban Form : Explorations in Morphological Agency

[Book Description]

People have designed cities long before there were urban designers. In Shapers of Urban Form, Peter Larkham and Michael Conzen have commissioned new scholarship on the forces, people, and institutions that have shaped cities from the Middle Ages to the present day. Larkham and Conzen collect new essays in "urban morphology," the people-centered predecessor to contemporary theories of top-down urban design. Shapers of Urban Form focuses on the social processes that create patterns of urban forms in four discrete periods: Pre-modern, early modern, industrial-era and postmodern development. Featuring studies of English, American, Western and Eastern European, and New Zealand urban history and urban form, this collection is invaluable to scholars of urban design and town planning, as well as urban and economic historians.

[Table of Contents]

List of Figures                            x
        List of Tables                             xiii
        List of Contributors                       xiv
Acknowledgments                                    xix
Foreword                                           xxi
          Ivor Samuels
  PART I Introduction                              1   (24)
    1 Agents, Agency, and Urban Form: "The         3   (22)
    Making of the Urban Landscape"
          Peter J. Larkham
          Michael P. Conzen
  PART II Agency in Pre-Modern Settings            25  (56)
    2 Royal Authority and Urban Formation: King    27  (19)
    Edward I and the Making of His "New Towns"
          Keith D. Lilley
    3 Ecclesiastical Authorities and the Form      46  (17)
    of Medieval Towns
          Terry R. Slater
    4 Urban Corporate Governance and the           63  (18)
    Shaping of Medieval Towns
          Anngret Simms
  PART III Agency in Early Modern Settings         81  (54)
    5 Absolute Decisions: Towns Fit for a King     83  (14)
          Katharine Arntz Thomas
    6 Haussmann: Reconsidering His Role in the     97  (17)
    Transformation of Paris
          Michael Darin
    7 Colonial Regime Change and Urban Form:       114 (21)
    How Russian Novo-Arkhangel'sk Became
    American Sitka
          Michael P. Conzen
  PART IV Agency in Industrial-Era Settings        135 (82)
    8 Squeezing Railroads into Cities: Creating    137 (15)
    Variable Solutions in Britain and the
    United States, 1820--1900
          Arthur J. Krim
    9 Shaping the Housing of Industrialists and    152 (21)
    Workers: The Textile Settlements of Ksiezy
    Mlyn (Lodz) and Zyrardow in Poland
          Marek Koter
          Mariusz Kulesza
    10 Residential Differentiation in              173 (20)
    Nineteenth-Century Glasgow: A Morphogenetic
    Study of Pollokshields Garden Suburb
          Michael Pacione
    11 The Imprint of the Owner-Builder on         193 (24)
    American Suburbs
          Richard Harris
  PART V Agency in Late Modern and Postmodern      217 (84)
  Settings
    12 Modernism against History: Understanding    219 (11)
    Building Typology and Urban Morphology
    among Italian Architects in the Twentieth
    Century
          Nicola Marzot
    13 A New Vision: The Role of Municipal         230 (21)
    Authorities and Planners in Replanning
    Britain after the Second World War
          Peter J. Larkham
    14 In search of New Syntheses: Urban Form,     251 (16)
    Late Flowering Modernism, and the Making of
    Megastructural Cumbernauld
          John R. Gold
    15 Morphological Processes, Planning, and      267 (18)
    Market Realities: Reshaping the Urban
    Waterfront in Auckland and Wellington
          Kai Gu
    16 "Birmingham Needs You. You Need             285 (16)
    Birmingham": Cities As Actors and Actors in
    Cities
          Tim Hall
          Phil Hubbard
  PART VI Envoi                                    301 (22)
    17 Agents and Agency, Learning, and            303 (20)
    Emergence in the Built Environment: A
    Theoretical Excursion
          Karl Kropf
Index                                              323