The town is an organism created and driven by people. The complexity of the problems arising from it poses a challenge to those in positions of responsibility. Oswald and Baccini seek to bring clarity to the web of urban phenomena. They present a highly original model which draws together the two separate fields of architecture and science by considering architecture and urban planning from the scientific perspective. In four main chapters, topics such as new urbanism, the net city, designing with the net-city method, sustainability, renovation, conversion, and responsibility are explored in detail. The examples presented all derive from Switzerland, but the analyses and methodology is valid for any region or country. The theory is complemented by attractive visual material. Franz Oswald is Professor of Architecture and Design, Peter Baccini is Professor of Resource and Waste Management (both at Zurich ETH).

The world's burgeoning cities are a critical fact of the 21st Century - and represent one of the greatest challenges to the future. By the year 2050 cities with populations over three million will more than double from 70 today to over 150. The authors in this book claim that contrary to conventional wisdom, that cities distort natural processes, just the opposite is true. Cities are far more than the sinks of energy, vast drains of natural resources, and obstacles to sustainable development. Properly managed, they claim, cities can be transformative arenas in which raw materials may be rationally and economically developed to support people decently, and whole regions sustainably. This volume provides new ideas for managing the mega-cities of our future. The editors' goal is to shape a new way of thinking about mega-cities - one that promotes their function in modern societies as engines of the ideas, technologies, and loci of political will needed to build a new regime of global sustainability.

Transdisciplinary Research (TR) is an emerging field in the knowledge society for relating science and policy in addressing issues such as new technologies, migration, and public health. This handbook provides a structured overview of the manifold experiences gained in these fields. In the first part, 21 projects from all over the world present their research approaches. In the second part, cross-cutting challenges of TR are discussed in reference to the same projects.

An overview of the cultural evolution of material flows and stocks with an emphasis on the design of metabolic processes in urban systems. Over the last several thousand years of human life on Earth, agricultural settlements became urban cores, and these regional settlements became tightly connected through infrastructures transporting people, materials, and information. This global network of urban systems, including ecosystems, is the anthroposphere; the physical flows and stocks of matter and energy within it form its metabolism. This book offers an overview of the metabolism of the anthroposphere, with an emphasis on the design of metabolic systems. It takes a cultural historical perspective, supported with methodology from the natural sciences and engineering. The book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the fields of regional development, environmental protection, and material management. It will also be a resource for undergraduate and graduate students in industrial ecology, environmental engineering, and resource management. The authors describe the characteristics of material stocks and flows of human settlements in space and time; introduce the method of material flow analysis (MFA) for metabolic studies; analyze regional metabolism and the material systems generated by basic activities; and offer four case studies of optimal metabolic system design: phosphorus management, urban mining, waste management, and mobility. This second edition of an extremely influential book has been substantially revised and greatly expanded. Its new emphasis on design and resource utilization reflects recent debates and scholarship on sustainable development and climate change.

Publicatie n.a.v. de conferentie gehouden op 1 april 2006 op de faculteit Bouwkunde van de TU Delft over de huidige en toekomstige veranderingen rond de digitaal ontworpen architectuur- en designpraktijk.

Self-contained case studies teach students best practices in interdisciplinary research Interdisciplinary research is a burgeoning field, largely due to its ability to tackle complex problems facing humanity that extend beyond a single disciplinary perspective and require interdisciplinary thinking and research for their resolution. Case Studies in Interdisciplinary Research successfully applies the model of the interdisciplinary research process outlined by author Allen F. Repko in Interdisciplinary Research, (SAGE ©2008) to a wide spectrum of challenging research questions. Self-contained case studies, written by leaders in interdisciplinary research, and utilizing best-practice techniques in conducting interdisciplinary research shows students how to apply the interdisciplinary research process to a variety of problems.

Considered to be sub-ordinated and sub-prime to the city, sub-urban areas receive little attention by researchers and designers. However, it ́s the rapidly growing areas outside the central cities that pose the biggest questions of the urban millennium: How can the scattered patchwork of urban areas and social spaces linked by networks of highways and public transportation function as a sustainable and livable urban environment? Answering this question requires understanding suburban spaces as heterogeneous urban areas with distinct local characteristics, qualities, and problems. Following this path, Variations of Suburbanism explores formation, characteristics, and trends of suburban areas all over the world. It provides insights on common features and differences of suburban governance, design, and infrastructure and discusses strategies to understand and design suburban areas in an increasingly sub-urbanizing world.

This book provides an overview of the Horizontal Metropolis concept, and of the theoretical, methodological and political implications for the interdisciplinary field in which it operates. The book investigates the contemporary emergence of a new type of extended urbanity across regions, territories and continents, up to the global scale. Further, it explores the diffusion of contemporary urban conditions in an interdisciplinary and original manner by analyzing essential case studies. Offering extensive content on the Horizontal Metropolis concept, the book presents a range of approaches intended to transcend various inherited spatial ontologies: urban/rural, town/country, city/non-city, and society/nature. The book is intended for all readers interested in the emergence and development of new approaches in cultural theory, urban and design education, landscape urbanism and geography.

To solve real-world issues, the model of transdisciplinary research, which uses approaches from both the hard and social sciences, has recently come to the forefront. It allows researchers to look at a problem from many angles, with the goal of making both societal and scientific advances. This primer provides scholars with a model for this type of work, while offering a description of methods for knowledge integration that can be applied to any field, making it an indispensable guide for every transdisciplinary researcher and teacher