Garden cities 21 : creating a livable urban environment

Summary: The ailing American city needs help. Worsening automobile traffic, urban decay, pollution, staggering debt, crime, sprawl, and the lack of a coherent city plan are just some of the problems that to many citizens now seem overwhelming. A model for a workable, livable urban metropolis is urgently needed ... and finally available. In the pages of this remarkable, beautifully illustrated book, renowned landscape architect John Ormsbee Simonds presents a positive and compelling approach to the creative evolution of the American city. Viewing it as an organic entity, he analyzes each individual component and provides a conceptual model that regroups and reconnects its scattered elements into an efficient, more self-sustaining, "garden-park" prototype. Emphasizing thriving activity centers, cohesive communities, and innovative means of interconnection within an open space framework, his model portends a vastly superior city for the 21st century. Some of the highlights of this brilliant urban guidebook include an illuminating analysis of how cities typically aggregate and the ways by which growth can be contained and disposed to form more synergistic relationships; techniques for creating a parklike environs of "greenways" and "blueways"--That allow a city to "breathe," and greatly improve the quality of life; a checklist of considerations in the planning and design of the future city dwelling, neighborhood, urban centers, and metropolitan region; effective methods for integrating mass transportation into a smoothly functioning system that bypasses pedestrian centers; a method of superimposing an idealized city diagram on the existing city base map to analyze and conceptualize a more workable future model; and a generous visual array of innovative solutions by America's top urban designers. Nearly 100 years ago, an English landscape designer and planner, Sir Ebenezer Howard, proposed a revolutionary theory of planned integration of cities with their supporting regions. His book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, was to become a city planning classic. Building and expanding on Howard's visionary ideas, Simonds shows how they can be implemented today incorporating the best thought and techniques of contemporary urbanists and their scientist advisers to create a new order of cities for the 21st century. Garden Cities 21 is a repository of practical ideas and inspired solutions, an important resource for architects, urban designers, and planners seeking to bring people, their activities, and constructions into harmony with the living landscape.