So you’re interested in what you can read to become a better designer, architect, urban planner, urbanist, or neighbour living and working in a super-divers city? Here are a few recommendations from our Designing Cities For All (DCFA) team, and we will add new recommendations periodically. For all you city designers that want to empower yourself (and others), let these reads guide your practice of transforming cities for the better.

‘Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet’ is a book on how architecture and urbanism can help to care for and repair a broken planet. Today, architecture and urbanism are capital-centric, speculation-driven, and investment-dominated. Many cannot afford housing. Austerity measures have taken a disastrous toll on public infrastructures. The climate crisis has rendered the planet vulnerable, even uninhabitable. This book offers an alternative vision in architecture and urbanism that focuses on caring for a broken planet. It includes essays by numerous authors, architects, and urban planners with different inputs on how to make the planet livable again. Additionally, illustrated case studies from all around the world from China to Nairobi document ideas and practices from an extraordinarily diverse group of contributors.

In her book Juliet Davis makes the case for a more ethical and humane approach to city development and management by presenting innovative solutions to address inequality and exclusion through design. She focuses on the concept of care as a more human based and ethical approach in designing and planning cities. The book suggests that by including care, our city environments and communities can be improved dramatically. By including various illustrative case studies, the book questions the current conventional and neoliberal thinking of urban planners to understand and how we can promote the well-being of not only our cities but also its inhabitants. ‘The Caring City: Ethics of Urban Design’ will be published in March. So, stay tuned and check-out the latest news on Bristol University Press website.

 

*) Both books can be ordered at Athenaeum Bookstore by emailing [email protected]. With code DCFA2122 you get a 10% discount on non-Dutch publications. Please mention the code when ordering your books.