Classics

This is a book of quite exceptional importance for those who wish to deepen their understanding of the purposes of community planning and architecture.

Francis Tibbalds was an architect and town planner with over thirty years' experience in both the private and public sectors until his death in January 1992. He was founding Chairman of the Urban Design Group (1979) and President of the Royal Town Planning Institute (1988).

His philosophical approach to the problems facing our towns and cities shows clearly how the individual components that make up the built environment matter less than places as a whole. This informative book suggests the way forward for professionals, decision-makers and all those who care about the future of our urban environment, revealing to the reader a wealth of thriving examples of successful town planning.

This electronic version of some parts of the 2000 edition was created by RUDI in January 2001.

A classic example of design guidance prepared for the Urban Design Unit of The Scottish Development Dept. in 1978. Also Introduction by Professor John Punter. Published on RUDI on February 7, 1999.

This article has become one of the classic references in the literature of the built environment and associated fields. Alexander argues that the hallmark of designed cities (Mesa City, Brasilia) is that their builders invariably gravitate to tree-structures, where all sub-units of a similar type roll-up into a single super-unit, creating an artificial and ultimately damaging simplification. He contrasts this with the structure of organic cites (London, NYC), which are organized as semi-lattices, where overlap and shared function is the order of the day.

Whenever we have a tree structure, it means that within this structure no piece of any unit is ever connected to other units, except through the medium of that unit as a whole.