Urban Planning and the Pursuit of Happiness

topics

Publishers

Architecture

ISBN: 9783868590203
English/German edition
Jovis Verlag
Softcover, 224 pages
16,5 x 24 cm
colour/black & white
August 2009
€26,41 (excl. VAT)

Urban Planning and the Pursuit of Happiness

Conceptions, Perceptions, Appropriations

Arnold Bartetzky, Marc Schalenberg Ed(s)

Urban planning is not just about the shaping of floor spaces or building complexes. It also implies promises for a better life. The technological, artistic, political and social visions of planners and their patrons are related, explicitly or other, to the universal idea of a pursuit of happiness. This does not mean they always match the needs of the people concerned; the inhabitants’ actual usages and appropriations of urban spaces may even undermine their original conceptions. Both “pursuits”–by those in charge and by the users of urban planning projects–are tackled in this volume, which assembles a dozen case studies from various European countries from the Enlightenment to late Modernism.