Product Description

This book explains how cities actually work. It will serve as a guide and inspiration for planners to re-humanize our cities using the latest technologies and recent understanding from science and mathematics. The dogma of mainstream urbanism cannot cope with the changes in technology, culture and science of the last decades. The heritage we are left with is an overly asphalted and sterile concrete environment. Therefore this book addresses the needs of professional urbanists, sutdents and teachers, who wish to understand how and why cities are successful or not, depending on their form, components, and substructure. Most of the needs are related to the urgent search for new instruments of urban planning and design, to which this book contributes conceptually by showing how to connect the fractal city on multiple levels. There is an increasing awareness that a city needs to be understood as a complex interacting system. Different types of urban systems ov! erlap to build up urban complexity in a living city. This raises the need for using concepts such as coherence, emergence, information, self-organization and adaptivity. This book relates these concepts to the city, shows how to operationalize them, and hopefully marks the beginnings of an urban science.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #748436 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 252 pages

About the Author
Nikos A. Salingaros is professor of mathematics at the University of Texas in San Antonio, and is associated with the faculties of Architecture at Delft University of Technology and at the University of Rome III. In addition, he is a consultant for various American New Urbanist projects and for government planners in other countries. Dr. Salingaros is dedicated to teaching and training a new generation of architects and urbanists, bridging the gap between academics and practitioners. His articles on architecture and urbanism have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, and many other languages.

Customer Reviews

A new beginning to understanding urban form
Nikos Salingaros is moving the field of urbanism to a new and more complete understanding of the urban landscape. The articles in this book present clear ideas of complex issues in a manner that is accessible to anyone that has ever read anything on urban theory. The concepts can and should be employed by anyone concerned with the planning, design, and management of an urban landscape. Highly recommended to students, professors, and practitioners in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and planning.

Important work.
The most relevant and significant ideas pertaining to planning and design today. Salingaros discusses concepts that are necessarily fundamental to a successful and responsible structure of the urban form. His work establishes guidelines that are progressive but highly rational and that I wish my own formal planning and design education focused more on rather than on principles that now seem out of date. Principles of Urban Structure sets the frame of mind from which any student or professional should approach their work.

This information is needed
I first read Nikos Salingaros many years ago via his web site and was very moved by his work. In this book he presents valuable and important information to help us create better urban spaces and buildings. The key here is that the information is practical and useable. This is in contrast with most architectural theory work, which are more about the intellectual journey of the authors than architecture as medium to serve people. Salingaros presents design principles and ideas grounded in actual needs of human beings rather than ego based artistic pretensions.