1st Edition

Adaptations of the Metropolitan Landscape in Delta Regions

By Peter C Bosselmann Copyright 2018
    222 Pages
    by Routledge

    222 Pages
    by Routledge

    Adaptations of the Metropolitan Landscape in Delta Regions is about environmental quality and the long term livability of urban areas. In decades to come, climate change will affect cities everywhere, but nowhere have the effects of climate change already been felt as strongly as in low-lying coastal cities, cities located in large river deltas and near tidal estuaries. This book reflects on the contribution that spatial planning and urban design can make to a complex discussion about how city form and landscapes will need to adapt within metropolitan areas. The book’s focus is on the urban form of three delta regions: the Pearl River Delta in Southern China; the Rhine, Maas, and Scheldt Delta in the Netherlands; and the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. The three regions differ greatly, but despite their different political systems, history, culture and locations in three different climate zones, all three regions will be forced to respond to similar issues that will trigger transformations and adaptations to their urban form.

    Richly illustrated in color with detailed diagrams, models, photographs and sketches, the book is written for students, scholars and practitioners of environmental planning, and designers who need to respond to the future form of cities in light of climate change. For the professions shaping the physical world of cities and regions, the challenge is not only one of designing physical geometries but of social consequences.

    Introduction Part I: The San Francisco Estuary and Inland Delta Chapter One: Water, Land and Places, the origins of urban form in the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter Two: The Bay Area’s Metropolitan Landscape, a Dispersed Metropolis Chapter Three: Causes and Consequences of Climate Change for the San Francisco Bay Area Part II: The Pearl River Delta Chapter One: The Pearl River Delta as a Cultural Landscape, New Life for a Traditional Water Village Chapter Two: Whampoa Harbor Chapter Three: Jiangmen, a Historic City Remembers its Center and the Urban Expansion on Pazhou Island in Guangzhou Part III: The Dutch Delta Chapter One: The Making of the Dutch Delta Chapter Two: An Archipelago of Cities Chapter Three: Contemporary Examples and Strategies for the Future Conclusion

     

    Biography

    Peter C. Bosselmann is a Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, where he taught at the College of Environmental Design. He held professorships in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and City Planning that spanned four decades. He is a founding member and long-time Co-Chair of the Master of Urban Design Program, and the former Chair of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. Adaptations of Metropolitan Landscapes in Delta Regions is the third book in a trilogy on urban design research that he began in 1998 with Representations of Places followed in 2008 by Urban Transformations: Understanding City Design and Form.

    'In Adaptations Bosselmann uses a case study structure to investigate the urban history, present-day development patterns, and design recommendations for the San Francisco Bay Area; the Pearl River Delta in southern China; and the Rhine, Maas, and Scheldt Delta in the Netherlands. This work is especially important to discourses of tradition in the built environment, because it takes a wide historical view of each region, investigating the entire record of human intervention in these landscapes throughout history. Designed as mechanisms of trade, economy and transportation, control of these regions has long reflected vectors of power and domination. And Bosselmann’s exploration of these forces offers valuable information to
    policymakers, engineers, scientists, planners, architects, and landscape architects who will play important roles in rethinking them and visualizing them as part of future resilient built environments.' - Lyndsey Deaton, Clemson University, from 'Traditional Dwelling and Settlements Review 34.2