Cities affect every person's life, yet across the traditional divides of class, age, gender and political affiliation, armies of people are united in their dislike of the transformations that cities have undergone in recent times. The physical form of the urban environment is not a designer add-on to 'real' social issues; it is a central aspect of the social world. Yet in many people's experience, the cumulative impacts of recent urban development have created widely un-loved urban places. To work towards better-loved urban environments, we need to understand how current problems have arisen and identify practical action to address them. Urban Transformations examines the crucial issues relating to how cities are formed, how people use these urban environments and how cities can be transformed into better places. Exploring the links between the concrete physicality of the built environment and the complex social, economic, political and cultural processes through which the physical urban form is produced and consumed, Ian Bentley proposes a framework of ideas to provoke and develop current debate and new forms of practice.
The book focuses on four key questions, examining the most helpful conceptual framework for thinking about the processes of urban transformation; how this framework can help us to understand how these processes generate, through speculative markets, the forms and patterns of land use which typify recent urban places; the common ground for change that can be identified as the practical basis for widespread action towards better-loved and more sustainable urban places; and how the necessary changes can actually be made to happen in cities world-wide. Ian Bentley concludes by identifying the most promising types of urban forms and working practices, through which users and professionals might work together to develop better-loved urban places in the future.