Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Having perceived a widespread failure of most community-scale plans, Eduardo Lozano has created a large and humane vision for community design, geared towards urban planners and designers, as well as those concerned with the communities of the future. Lozano strives to unify theory and practice, seeing that design at community scale is a relatively new responsibility for professionals and seeing the need for an awareness of the systemic nature of urban design. He also highlights relevant lessons from historical examples in order to rediscover the community design métier forgotten after the Industrial Revolution. The author relies on interdisciplinary studies, drawing from biology, ecology, and political science, as well as from history for his fascinating study. Throughout the book there is an emphasis on the interrelationship of design and culture-society, technology, institutions, and values. There is also a stress on the need for an agenda for political and cultural change. The audience for Community Design and the Culture of Cities goes beyond designers and planners to include urban sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and political scientists.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Prologue
• Part I
• 1 Cities today
• 2 The traditions in community design, or the professional as a newcomer
• 3 Urban form as pattern, pattern as combination of typologies
• Part II
• 4 Below the urban surface, or how urban systems, organised in complex hierarchies, are the roots of urban form
• 5 Cities in evolution, or how growth and change guide urban form in time
• 6 Urban scale, or how urban form, size and function are interrelated through growth
• Part III
• 7 Land use in cities, or how segregation and homogeneity have threatened the social ecology of urban areas
• 8 Density in communities, or the most important factor in building up urbanity
• 9 Distribution in cities, or a key to reconstituting the culture of cities
• Part IV
• 10 The design roots in traditional settlements
• 11 The pluralistic form of traditional communities: combination and interface
• 12 Visual phenomena and movement through traditional settlements: orientation and variety
• Symbolism epilogue: An agenda for action

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Lozano argues here for a more sophisticated, humane, and democratic conception of community design. Lozano, a practicing urban designer and former professor at Princeton and Harvard, attributes many of the problems plaguing contemporary cities to the technocratic and elitist conception of urban design that has prevailed since the Industrial Revolution. In clear, vivid prose, he develops an alternative conception of community design (the phrase he prefers to urban design) informed by a knowledge of the history of urban forms, an appreciation of the systemic nature of urban phenomena, and a commitment to cultural diversity. The interdisciplinary nature of Lozano's approach should appeal to historians, planners, social scientists, and general readers interested in urban issues. The absence of a bibliography and the poor quality of the illustrations are disappointing aspects of an otherwise thoughtful and very readable discussion of urban design. D. P. Doordan University of Illinois at Chicago