Bücher von Robert Freestone

Cities, Citizens and Environmental Reform tells a story of community involvement in the development of Australian town planning from the early 20th century - from the first wave of enthusiasm for modern town planning ideals before the Great War onto the more challenging social and political environment for the original town planning associations in the post-Second World War era.Meticulously researched and peppered with archival illustrations, the book reveals common threads and local differences in community planning movements across the nation and contributes to our understanding of modern urban planning in Australia.

This text explores how architectural and urban design values have been co-opted by global cities to enhance their economic competitiveness by creating a superior built environment that is not just aesthetically memorable but more productive and sustainable. It focuses on the experience of central Sydney through its policy commitment to ¿design excellence¿ and more particularly to mandatory competitive design processes for major private development. Framed within broader contexts that link it to comparable urban policy and design issues in the Asia-Pacific region and globally, it provides a scholarly but accessible volume that provides a balanced and critical overview of a policy that has changed the design culture, development expectations, public realm and skyline of central Sydney, raising issues surrounding the uneven distribution of benefits and costs, professional practice, representative democracy, and implications of globalization.