Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form: Ideas, Discourse, Praxis and Worldwide Transfer

by Paul Jenkins, Harry Smith

Overview

The global application of Enlightenment-derived concepts to create social order through urban form suggests that we believe we know how to create a (future) ordered environment. But these notions of order and disorder need interrogation, especially as the world rapidly urbanises.

Not only have such approaches failed to produce more social order, but it has become clear that the imposition of these ideas in cities of the South cuts across alternative systems of social and cultural order and creates new disorder. Thus, if we are serious about forms of urban order, then it is time to rethink what we mean by order in the fi rst place. As this provocative and timely book shows, what we think of as urban order is partial and restricted, and what we perceive as disorder usually masks underlying orders of social nature.

The book is intended for architects, urban designers, planners and urban scholars, as well as urban policymakers, managers and residents, to consider a different approach to emerging urban space and form, starting from an understanding of the cultural imaginaries and social constructs that underpin the production of most urban fabric and engaging with these concepts and organisational forms to improve urban life for the majority.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415586924
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/20/2023
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Paul Jenkins is Emeritus Professor of Architecture Research at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has also been a visiting professor in São Paulo, Brazil, and Maputo, Mozambique. For five decades he has engaged with a wide range of aspects of the built environment: architecture, construction, housing, planning, urban design and wider social studies. Much of his work has focused on sub-Saharan Africa, where he has been based for more than half of his working life, and he focuses on social engagement and cultural change in the ‘urban’, including the role of different forms of knowledge. He has published extensively, including three prior books with Routledge. Now retired, he lives primarily in Maputo, Mozambique.

Harry Smith is Professor of Global Urbanism at The Urban Institute, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland. He has over 30 years of experience working with urban design and development issues, having worked as an architect and planner in the Global North and then having become an academic engaged in urban research in Europe, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Much of his research has focused on issues in so-called ‘informal’ settlements – ranging from housing, through access to land, to community-based disaster risk management – and has often taken an action-research approach linked to achieving changes in policy and practice. He has published previously with Routledge on planning and housing in the rapidly urbanising world, waterfront regeneration, and place-keeping.

Table of Contents

1. The beginnings of ordering urban space and form in the modern era 2. Aspiring to polite society: the transfer of Enlightenment urban design to Rio de Janeiro 3. Garden city planning is translated into São Paulo 4. The Functional city and Brasília 5. Functionalism translated into Brazil and then re-exported: Curitiba 6. Parallel innovations in urban space and form: Alphaville in Brazil and New Urbanism in the United States 7. Innovations in engaging with urban disorder in Brazil: slum upgrading 8. A change of focus from physical to social urban order in Brazil: the right to the city and participatory planning 9. New forms of urbanism re-exported: gated communities, waterfronts and consumerism-oriented order in Angola 10. Understanding order and disorder in urban space and form: discourse and praxis

Editorial Reviews

Nabeel Hamdi, Emeritus Professor of Housing and Urban Development, Oxford Brookes University

Drawing on extensive research and rich case studies from around the world, the authors skilfully analyse the relationship between social and spatial orders, reveal the inadequacy of importing models of modernity and urbanity from the Global North, and explore the innovations in urbanism that are emerging in the South. This is a welcome and timely addition to the literature.

Ali Madanipour, Professor of Urban Design, Newcastle University

Alex Abiko, Professor in Housing and Urban Management, University of Sao Paulo

Forbes Davidson, Principal at Forbes Davidson Planning, Associate at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 

Richard Martin, Development Practitioner and Author, Urban development and governance, Greece 

Camillo Boano, Professor of Urban Design and Critical Theory, Development Planning Unit, UCL and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Polytechnic of Turin

'Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form tackles the challenges posed by competing visions of urban development, focusing on how the global north’s positivist ideal impacted the global south’s unique context. The book sheds light on how European ideas of urban order have shaped Brazilian cities, imposing a predetermined path. It offers a fresh framework to examine the distinctly urban forms of the global south, liberating them from Western ideals. This timely work critically assesses prevailing assumptions, urging a reassessment of informal urbanism, urban practice, and design approaches. Jenkins and Smith present a significant contribution that invites readers to rethink urban development paradigms and embrace the complexities of the global south.'

Jota Samper, Assistant Professor in the Program in Environmental Design and Co-Director of the Community Engagement, Design and Research Center (CEDaR), University of Colorado Boulder, United States of America

 

Kim Dovey, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Director of the Informal Urbanism Research Hub, Melbourne School of Design, Australia 

Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form, is a unique book which encapsulates an analysis of planning history, from its early enlightenment origins in Europe to its translation and development to the present day. Jenkins and Smith, the authors have extensive research and planning experience in the Global South and have also explored the theories of Lefebvre related to the ‘right to the city’ and notions of engagement and praxis. 

Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form gives a succinct history of planning experience from the pre- enlightenment to the current day. With the use of case study cities in Europe; Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Lisbon and in the Global South; Brazil, Mozambique, and South Africa it provides a new view on planning and the issues and challenges viewed from a North-South, and also a South-South perspective. Its use of case studies, especially from the ‘Lusophone’ Southern metropoles, distinguishes it from other texts, as there are few books which have covered these cities in this analytical manner or importantly made the comparisons which engage with similarities and differences in each case.

Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form to academics and scholars of planning in the Global South, and it will have pride of place on my African cities research bookshelf.'

Ola Uduku, Head of School, Roscoe Chair of Architecture Architecture, The University of Liverpool, UK

 

'This is an accessible, historically, and theoretically grounded study of urban space and form from the Enlightenment to the present time.  Focusing on select case studies from Brazil, Jenkins and Smith make the case for collaborative reimagining of cities worldwide through the lenses of the inhabitants who lay out their neighbourhoods and build their own houses, presumed to be disorderly, rather than the "order" of normative processes of regulated modern and contemporary practices.' 

Nnamdi Elleh, Head of School School of Architecture and Planning. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

From the Publisher