Urban design : the architecture of towns and cities

Heritage of urban design
The roots of our modern concepts
Making a visual survey
Some basic principles and techniques
examples and scope
urban esthetics
Designing the parts of the city
Residential areas
Circulation
Regulation and control
Governmental programs
A comprehensive role for urban design
Bibliography
Index
Index of illustrations

This book is addressed to all the design professions and to all students of cities. It is a challenge and a guide to those who would save the city and the metropolis from itself during the fateful decades of explosive urbanization which lie just ahead. Recogniz- ing that all of man's works, including the cities man builds, must respect nature or suffer the consequences, the first chapter of this book skillfully evokes the often prodigious achievements of the city builders of the past. On this solid foundation the chapters which follow develop with clear logic and convincing visual lan- guage an outline of basic principles and techniques of urban design.
In the building of the cities of America there has been a long and sad record of failure to understand, respect, and respond to nature, with consequent destruction of essential qualities in the landscape of cities. This volume calls on those who aspire to be the true designers of tomorrow's environment to combine deep appreciation of nature in all its aspects, a sophisticated use of today's complex and fast-expanding computerized technology, and a creative design talent rooted in the history of cities and of design. This study, to a responsive mind and eye, offers a deep and abiding emotional involvement in the ever-varied, frequently rich, and evocatively beautiful physical results of man's interaction with nature in the building of cities.