Synopses & Reviews
A civic place belongs to everyone and yet to nobody in particular. In Civic Realism, Peter G. Rowe looks at the shape and appearance of civic places, and at the social, political, and cultural circumstances that bring them into existence. The book is as much about the making and reshaping of civic places as it is about urban architecture per se. According to Rowe, the best civic place-making occurs across the divide between the state and civil society. By contrast, the alternatives are not very attractive. On the one side are state-sponsored edifices and places of authoritarian nature. On the other are the exclusive enclaves of corporate-dominated urban and suburban environments.
Review
" Civic Realism is a well-timed study which will benefit everyone involved in public life planners, designers, and users." Publishers Weekly The MIT Press
Review
An acute observer of architecture, people, and place, Peter Rowe offers a thoughtful, persuasive, and historically rich analysis of civic settings from Europe to the United States. Using both famous and obscure places as the basis for his discussion, he captures the elusive features that determine how places such as Piazza del Campo in Siena, Parc Citroën in Paris, and Joseph Plecnik's market in Ljubljana transcend the limitations of the public-private dichotomy to become places of collective significance. Rowe's Civic Realism challenges the way so-called public spaces are created by governments or market interests, insisting on the importance of political and social conditions that incorporate the disenfranchised and marginalized in our development of places for civil society. The MIT Press
Review
Peter Rowe's Civic Realism successfully establishes a theoretical framework for the restricting of public spaces in large cities. The approach of Civic Realism is very useful in bridging the gap between traditional planning attitudes and more recent architectural actions. Rowe reviews the proposals of such designers as Plecnik, Wagner, Berlage, and Cadafalach in cities such as Ljubljana, Vienna, Amsterdam, and Barcelona at the beginning of this century, linking these and other projects in a very interesting discourse which reveals Rowe to be a refined observer and powerful narrator of the urban realm. Diane Ghirardo, Professor of Architectural History, University of Southern California; editor of the < i=""> Journal of Architectural Education <> ; and author of < i=""> Architecture After Modernism <>
Review
Peter Rowe's Civic Realism is a most important and timely book that proposes a critical examination of the historical relationship between civic place and urban architecture and suggests that this relationship needs to be restructured for a contemporary practice. The book's relevance is heightened by Rowe's concern for the difficult task of making these civic places, and for the necessary presence of an architecture willing to establish a dialogue with the urban realm, beyond aesthetic ideologies. Juan Busquets, Professor of Urbanism, School of Architecture, Barcelona
Review
Civic Realism is a well-timed study which will benefit everyone involved in public life planners, designers, and users. Mario Gandelsonas, Professor of Architecture, School of Architecture, Princeton University
Synopsis
A study of the shape and appearance of civic places and the social, political, and cultural circumstances that bring them into existence.
Synopsis
A civic place belongs to everyone and yet to nobody in particular. In
About the Author
Thomas E. Graedel is Clifton R. Musser Professor of Industrial Ecology, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Geology and Geophysics, and Director of the Center for Industrial Ecology at Yale University. He is the author of Streamlined Life-Cycle Assessment and lead author or coauthor of a number of other books.