Lance Brown’s Urban Design Book Revised, Re-Released

Spitzer School professor and co-author see design as tool to manage demographic, economic and climatic changes

Wiley has released the second edition of “Urban Design for an Urban Century,” co-authored by Lance Jay Brown, ACSA Distinguished Professor Of Architecture in City College’s Spitzer School of Architecture. The book, co-written with David Dixon FAIA, offers a comprehensive introduction to urban design and an analysis of the forces that shaped it from the dawn of city building to today. It also examines contemporary theory, core principles and strategies for moving forward.

The second edition was fully revised, with a focus on unlocking urban design’s potential as a tool for managing dramatic demographic, economic, and climatic changes in order to shape a generation of more livable, equitable and resilient cities and suburbs. Topics it explores include:
 

• How social, economic and environmental forces have influenced urban design from the earliest urban settlements through the changes associated with the rise and decline of industrialization.
• The emergence of new forces such as knowledge-based economies, increased income inequality, and climate change that are shaping an era of recentralization, urban revival and growing social inequity.
• New developments in decision-making and implementation that stem from a decline in public resources and increasing reliance on public/private partnerships.

In addition, case studies from urban centers as diverse as Singapore, Caracas and Chicago examine these and similarly complex issues. The cases illuminate the unprecedented opportunities and challenges facing U.S. cities and suburbs in an era of unprecedented urban revival.

Professor Brown and Mr. Dixon will sign copies of the book 6 – 8 p.m. Thursday, June 12, at the opening of the new “Open to the Public: Civic Space Now” exhibition at the AIA New York Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, New York.

About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. More than 16,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in: the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture; the School of Education; the Grove School of Engineering; the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, and the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. U.S. News, Princeton Review and Forbes all rank City College among the best colleges and universities in the United States.

About the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture
The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York is the only public school of architecture in New York City. It offers programs in Architecture, Urban Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design, and has a student population of approximately 350. Its emphasis on the urban situation as a generator of ideas about the appropriateness of programs and forms in the city landscape is one of the school’s most original aspects. Architecture studios currently pursue programs that are civic, institutional, residential, and commercial allowing the student an in-depth experience of these project types as they are projected into the urban landscape of New York City.