Planning, History and Environment Series
About the Book Series
This series offers a unique window on the creation of the modern environment. Designed for an international readership, the emphasis is on:
- urban and regional planning
- recent as well as longer-term history
- what the past can tell us about the present
- local as well as global and comparative topics
Within this framework the books address three themes:
- regional, continental and comparative studies
- planning histories of key cities
- changing planning ideologies and policies
Arab Modernism(s): Cities, History, and Culture
1st Edition
By Yasser Elsheshtawy
January 30, 2026
Arab Modernism(s) is an exploration of how the Arab world encountered modernism – sometimes inadvertently, sometimes deliberately – and how those encounters continue to shape the built environment of its cities today. Adhering to his late father’s belief that ‘cities are nothing without people’, ...
The Evolution of Urban Heritage Conservation and the Role of Raymond Lemaire
1st Edition
By Claudine Houbart
December 26, 2025
The 1960s and 1970s saw a marked change in the approach to built heritage conservation. From a focus on the preservation of individual buildings, attention turned to the conservation, regeneration, and reuse of entire historic districts. A key player in this process was the Belgian art and ...
Lebanon’s Urban Development and Planning
1st Edition
Edited
By Christine Mady
December 15, 2025
After four hundred years of Ottoman rule followed by a little over two decades as part of the French Mandate, Lebanon finally gained independence in 1943. In her translation and editing of the four books by Mohammad Fawaz, Director of Lebanon’s Directorate General of Urbanism from 1974 to 1993, ...
Peripheral Centralities: The Lost and Past Urbanity of the Suburbs
1st Edition
Edited
By Nicholas A. Phelps, Roger Keil, Paul Maginn
April 01, 2025
The term ‘peripheral centralities’ may seem something of an oxymoron and yet the spatial peripheries of cities have often been more central to urban development processes than is appreciated. To better understand the nature of peripheral centrality, Peripheral Centralities: The Lost and Past ...
Supergrid and Superblock: Lessons in Urban Structure from China and Japan
1st Edition
By Xiaofei Chen
May 27, 2024
In this superbly illustrated book Xiaofei Chen presents the first analysis in English of a ubiquitous East Asian urban phenomenon: the supergrid and superblock urban structure. The book opens with an introductory essay by Barrie Shelton in which he sets the scene for what is to follow, emphasizing ...
Olympic Cities: City Agendas, Planning, and the World’s Games, 1896 – 2032
4th Edition
Edited
By John Gold, Margaret M Gold
April 09, 2024
The first edition of Olympic Cities, published in 2007, provided a pioneering overview of the changing relationship between cities and the modern Olympic Games. This substantially revised and much enlarged fourth edition builds on the success of its predecessors. The first of its three parts ...
Building Colonial Hong Kong: Speculative Development and Segregation in the City
1st Edition
By Cecilia L. Chu
January 29, 2024
In the 1880s, Hong Kong was a booming colonial entrepôt, with many European, especially British, residents living in palatial mansions in the Mid-Levels and at the Peak. But it was also a ruthless migrant city where Chinese workers shared bedspaces in the crowded tenements of Taipingshan. Despite ...
Riyadh: Transforming a Desert City
1st Edition
By Yasser Elsheshtawy
May 31, 2023
Riyadh has set its sights on becoming a world city befitting the twenty-first century. To that end it has embarked on a massive construction drive evidenced in the proliferation of proposals for high-end districts, giga-developments and elaborate infrastructures. An urban vision seemingly dedicated...
Being Urban: Community, Conflict and Belonging in the Middle East
1st Edition
Edited
By Simon Goldhill
January 09, 2023
In Being Urban, Simon Goldhill and his team of outstanding urbanists explore the meaning of the urban condition, with particular reference to the Middle East. As Goldhill explains in his introduction, ‘What is a good city?’, five questions motivate the book: How can a city be systematically planned...
The Settlement Patterns of Britain: Past, Present and the Future Foretold in Eight Essays
1st Edition
By Nick Green
June 09, 2022
In writing The Settlement Patterns of Britain Nick Green was inspired by the short story genre. His book is a collection of eight non-fiction short stories or essays, where the characters are the places, some of which appear more than once, usually as bit-part players, occasionally as the main ...
Festival Cities: Culture, Planning and Urban Life
1st Edition
By John R. Gold, Margaret M. Gold
December 04, 2020
Festivals have always been part of city life, but their relationship with their host cities has continually changed. With the rise of industrialization, they were largely considered peripheral to the course of urban affairs. Now they have become central to new ways of thinking about the challenges ...
Planning Metropolitan Australia
1st Edition
Edited
By Stephen Hamnett, Robert Freestone
March 23, 2020
Australia has long been a highly (sub)urbanized nation, but the major distinctive feature of its contemporary settlement pattern is that the great majority of Australians live in a small number of large metropolitan areas focused on the state capital cities. The development and application of ...