College of Architecture News

Design Discourse: Books Available Summer/Fall 2009

New books from College of Architecture will hit the market.

Atlanta (April 21, 2009) — Several College of Architecture scholars are set to publish new works in coming months. From a comprehensive look at the construction of New York skyscrapers in the 20th century to a human approach to urban design, this preview of books is sure to have something for all place makers - academic and professional.

Urban Design and People
Michael Dobbins, Professor of Practice, City and Regional Planning and Architecture
see it on Amazon.com

Based on author Michael Dobbins’s forty years of practice and teaching in urban design and planning, this text offers an insider’s perspective on the day-to-day work of an urban designer. Readers gain a solid foundation in urban design theory, as well as commonsense design strategies and practices that work. The author’s straightforward, accessible explanations coupled with plenty of photographs and drawings make everything in the text easy to understand and easy to put into practice. Starting from the premise that urban designers must understand and work with all of the different forces involved in planning, designing, and developing urban environments, the book sets forth a comprehensive framework for urban design principles and strategies. Throughout the text, therefore, the author keeps readers focused on the importance of three key processes that are essential for effective urban design:

- Actively engaging the community in design and development decisions
- Considering the interests of all parties involved in regulating, building, and using urban spaces
- Coordinating all the disciplines responsible for designing public places, including city planning, architecture, civil engineering, and landscape architecture

With its hands-on, how-to advice, this text enables students and professionals in urban design, as well as community members, to effectively and fully participate in designing urban environments.

Foreclosed: High-Risk Lending, Deregulation, and the Undermining of America’s Mortgage Market (Cornell University Press)
Dan Immergluck, Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning
see it on Amazon.com

Over the last two years, the United States has observed, with some horror, the explosion and collapse of entire segments of the housing market, especially those driven by subprime and alternative or “exotic” home mortgage lending. The unfortunately timely Foreclosed explains the rise of high-risk lending and why these newer types of loans, and their associated regulatory infrastructure, failed in substantial ways. Dan Immergluck narrates the boom in subprime and exotic loans, recounting how financial innovations and deregulation facilitated excessive risk-taking, and how these loans have harmed different populations and communities.
Immergluck, who has been working, researching, and writing on issues tied to housing finance and neighborhood change for almost twenty years, has an intimate knowledge of the promotion of homeownership and the history of mortgages in the United States. The changes to the mortgage market over the past fifteen years, including the securitization of mortgages and the failure of regulators to maintain control over a much riskier array of mortgage products led, he finds, inexorably to the current crisis. After describing the development of generally stable and risk-limiting mortgage markets throughout much of the twentieth century, Foreclosed details how federal policymakers failed to regulate the new highrisk lending markets that arose in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The book also examines federal, state, and local efforts to deal with the mortgage and foreclosure crisis of 2007 and 2008. Immergluck draws upon his wealth of experience to provide an overarching set of principles and a detailed set of policy recommendations for “righting the ship” of U.S. housing finance in ways that will promote affordable yet sustainable homeownership as an option for a broad set of households and communities.

Books coming soon:
Megaregions: Planning for Global Competitiveness, Catherine Ross, Director of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development
see it on Amazon.com

The concept of “the city” as well as “the state” and “the nation state” is passé, agree contributors to this insightful book. The new scale for considering economic strength and growth opportunities is “the megaregion,” a network of metropolitan centers and their surrounding areas that are spatially and functionally linked through environmental, economic, and infrastructure interactions. Recently a great deal of attention has been focused on the emergence of the European Union and on European spatial planning, which has boosted the region’s competitiveness. Megaregions applies these emerging concepts in an American context. It addresses critical questions for our future: What are the spatial implications of local, regional, national, and global trends within the context of sustainability, economic competitiveness, and social equity? How can we address housing, transportation, and infrastructure needs in growing megaregions? How can we develop and implement the policy changes necessary to make viable, livable megaregions? By the year 2050, megaregions will contain two-thirds of the U.S. population. Given the projected growth of the U.S. population and the accompanying geographic changes, this forward-looking book argues that U.S. planners and policymakers must examine and implement the megaregion as a new and appropriate framework. Contributors, all of whom are leaders in their academic and professional specialties, address the most critical issues confronting the U.S. over the next fifty years. At the same time, they examine ways in which the idea of megaregions might help address our concerns about equity, the economy, and the environment. Together, these essays define the theoretical, analytical, and operational underpinnings of a new structure that could respond to the anticipated upheavals in U.S. population and living patterns.

Constructing the Modern Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press)
Benjamin S. Flowers, Assistant Professor of Architecture
see it on Amazon.com
This book is situated within the shifting architectural, political, social, and cultural significance of the skyscraper in New York during the twentieth century. This book explores the role of ideology in shaping the production and reception of architecture, and examines the way wealth and power operate to reorganize the urban landscape. It is a close examination of the creation and reception of the Empire State Building, the Seagram Building, and the World Trade Center, three seminal skyscraper projects whose histories, in spite of their fame, remain less than fully elucidated. I explore the various agendas associated with the buildings as well as contemporary reactions to them across the political spectrum in the popular and architectural press of the time. The book is based on archival research into the personal and business papers of the clients for each of these three skyscrapers and the architects who designed them. This is an interdisciplinary project that ties together complimentary strands of inquiry from architectural history, cultural studies, and American studies.

The Architecture of Francis Palmer Smith (University of Georgia Press)
Robert C. Craig, Professor of Architecture

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