Beschreibung
Despite the wide variety of publications about urban development there has long been a lack of a full and coherent presentation of the way town planning has developed in our time. The present pub-lication closes this gap in urban-development literature. It starts at the point at which the upheaval of the French Revolution and industrialization set the course for today?s urban constellations. The survey follows the narrative approach taken by Anglo-Saxon historians, and the individual sections deal with the main urban-devel-opment themes that shifted into the foreground in the 19th centu-ry: municipal revolution and urban regulations; industrial revolution and urban growth, above all in relation to the special part played by Great Britain; the continuation of the classical urban-design ideal in France, England and Germany; the social-utopian estate and urban-development models devised by Robert Owen and Charles Fourier in the early days of industrialization; the great city redevel-opments (Paris, Lyon etc.), urban beautification (the Ringstraße in Vienna) and urban expansion (London?s suburban growth, the Berlin general building plan of 1862 and tenement building); paterna- listic workers? housing programmes in England, France and Germany; attempts at aesthetic renewal by Camillo Sitte, Raymond Unwin and the »City-Beautiful Movement« in the USA in the late19th century; attempts at reform through the garden-city idea and subsequent movement. The treatment of these themes illustrates the extent to which contemporary urban situations are determined by 19th century ideas and enterprises. Thus the book provides all readers interested in urban development with an extensive set of facts and strategies. It has turned out as a compendium that aims to present and cast light on the essential features of the city as a Gesamtkunstwerk and to identify important criteria for future urban-development decisions.
Autorenportrait
Walter Kieß studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart and graduated as a government architect. He worked as a planner for several years and gained his doctorate as an academic assistant at the Institute of Architectural History at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart. He was Professor of Architectural History, Urban-Development History and Preservation of Historic Monuments at the Hochschule für Technik Stuttgart from 1963 to 1993. Today the author works as an expert on monument preservation and historical themes in urban development.
