Architecture magazine, Jan. 2004
a how-to...Almost every essay..by a different expert, which affords a diversity of experience and voice...an invaluable reference.

Review
Excerpts from review by Bay Brown.

It is a how-to, with diagrams on street and courtyard siting, but it is also a history of urban-design theory, including seminal texts ranging from passages of Camillo Sitte's 1889 book The Art of Building Cities to Kevin Lynch's 1960 essay "The City Image and Its Elements."

Chapters are dedicated to sustainable design, universal design, transit-centered urban villages, wayfinding, and "traffic calming." Almost every essay is written by a different expert, which affords a diversity of experience and voice, and the tome liberally uses photographs, drawings, diagrams, and charts with informative statistics and demographics. It may offer more than you want to know, but after a selective read, it should be parked on your shelf as an invaluable reference.

New Urban News, March, 2004
best single volume...ability to explain...entire spectrum of urban design through...words of...most prominent analysts and practitioners.

Book Description

* The foremost professional reference on the physical design of cities and urban places
* International coverage including recent European and Asian sustainability initiatives
* Covers essential topics such as preservation, renewal, patterns of settlement and more
* Outstanding contributors include Alan Plattus, Dean of the College of Architecture, Yale University

Book Info
The foremost professional reference on the physical design of cities and urban places. Provides international coverage including recent European and Asian sustainability initiatives. Covers essential topics such as preservation, renewal, patterns of settlement and more.

From the Back Cover
MAGNIFICENTLY ILLUSTRATED AND INTERNATIONAL IN SCOPE, HERE IS THE DEFINITIVE REFERENCE ON URBAN DESIGN

This important addition to the McGraw-Hill Time Saver Standards series is an entirely new, comprehensive, meticulously researched compendium of every aspect of the physical design of cities and other urban places including communities and civic and public places.

Featuring articles by authoritative urban design scholars and practitioners, Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design provides a visual and detailed archival record of:

* Context of global cities
* Classic texts of urban design
* Urban design history and design theory
* Preservation, renewal, and extension of existing cities
* Methods of urban design from regional to pedestrian scale
* Sustainable communities
* Details and case studies of urban design practice

Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design covers the full-spectrum of allied disciplines such as transportation planning, bioregionalism, storm water management, parking, universal design, urban acoustics, and graphics. It provides a single-source for the key reference articles on urban design and physical planning of cities, including social, environmental and economic data.

This inaugural volume on the topic of urban design in the Time-Saver Standard series is written for easy reference by urban planners and designers, architects, landscape professionals, environmental engineers, civil and transportation engineers, as well as municipal government and planning officials. This “soon to be a classic” provides a one-volume reference that is indispensable for urban design policy and practice. It is equally valuable for the urban studies educators and students of architecture, urban design and planning.

About the Author
DONALD WATSON, FAIA, is Professor and Dean Emeritus of the School of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York and honored as ASCA Distinguished Professor, 2002. His books include Climatic Building Design, co-authored with Kenneth Labs, (McGraw-Hill 1983, revised 1993), recipient of the Best Book in Architecture and Planning Award from the American Publishers Association. He is editor-in-chief of Time-Saver Standards for Architectural Design Data (7th edition, 1997) and Time-Saver Standards for Building Materials and Systems (2000).

ALAN PLATTUS is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Yale University School of Architecture. He founded and directs the Yale Urban Design Workshop, a community design center that has worked with cities, towns and neighborhoods throughout the region. He also directs the Yale China Studio, working with universities in China on urban design issues in rapidly developing cities. He has published widely on the history and theory of architecture and urbanism, and edited the new edition of Hegemann and Peets classic text, The American Vitruvius.

ROBERT G. SHIBLEY, AIA, AICP, is a professor of architecture and planning at the School of Architecture and Planning, University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He is the Director of the Urban Design Project, a center for the study and practice of urban design. He also is the co-author of seven books including Urban Excellence with Philip Langdon and Polly Welsh (1990), Placemaking: The Art and Practice of Building Communities with Lynda Schneekloth (1995), and Commitment to Place: Urban Excellence and Community (2000).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

* The foremost professional reference on the physical design of cities and urban places
* International coverage including recent European and Asian sustainability initiatives
* Covers essential topics such as preservation,renewal,patterns of settlement and more
* Outstanding contributors include Alan Plattus,Dean of the College of Architecture,Yale University MAGNIFICENTLY ILLUSTRATED AND INTERNATIONAL IN SCOPE,HERE IS THE DEFINITIVE REFERENCE ON URBAN DESIGN

This important addition to the McGraw-Hill Time Saver Standards series is an entirely new,comprehensive,meticulously researched compendium of every aspect of the physical design of cities and other urban places including communities and civic and public places.

Featuring articles by authoritative urban design scholars and practitioners,Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design provides a visual and detailed archival record of:
* Context of global cities
* Classic texts of urban design
* Urban design history and design theory
* Preservation,renewal,and extension of existing cities
* Methods of urban design from regional to pedestrian scale
* Sustainable communities
* Details and case studies of urban design practice Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design covers the full-spectrum of allied disciplines such as transportation planning,bioregionalism,storm water management,parking,universal design,urban acoustics,and graphics. It provides a single-source for the key reference articles on urban design and physical planning of cities,including social,environmental and economic data.

This inaugural volume on the topic of urban design in the Time-Saver Standard series is written for easy referenceby urban planners and designers,architects,landscape professionals,environmental engineers,civil and transportation engineers,as well as municipal government and planning officials. This "soon to be a classic" provides a one-volume reference that is indispensable for urban design policy and practice. It is equally valuable for the urban studies educators and students of architecture,urban design and planning.

SYNOPSIS

MAGNIFICENTLY ILLUSTRATED AND INTERNATIONAL IN SCOPE, HERE IS THE DEFINITIVE REFERENCE ON URBAN DESIGN

This important addition to the McGraw-Hill Time Saver Standards series is an entirely new, comprehensive, meticulously researched compendium of every aspect of the physical design of cities and other urban places including communities and civic and public places.

Featuring articles by authoritative urban design scholars and practitioners, Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design provides a visual and detailed archival record of:

* Context of global cities
* Classic texts of urban design
* Urban design history and design theory
* Preservation, renewal, and extension of existing cities
* Methods of urban design from regional to pedestrian scale
* Sustainable communities
* Details and case studies of urban design practice

Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design covers the full-spectrum of allied disciplines such as transportation planning, bioregionalism, storm water management, parking, universal design, urban acoustics, and graphics. It provides a single-source for the key reference articles on urban design and physical planning of cities, including social, environmental and economic data.

This inaugural volume on the topic of urban design in the Time-Saver Standard series is written for easy reference by urban planners and designers, architects, landscape professionals, environmental engineers, civil and transportation engineers, as well as municipal government and planning officials. This ￯﾿ﾽsoon to be a classic￯﾿ﾽ provides a one-volume reference that is indispensable for urban design policy and practice. It is equally valuable for theurban studies educators and students of architecture, urban design and planning.

FROM THE CRITICS

Judging by its title, you might think Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design would be a source mainly for street widths, sidewalk dimensions, parking ratios, and other matters than can largely be reduced to mathematical calculations. But this six-pound tome with its 960 oversized pages has far broader ambitions. McGraw-Hill calls this volume, "the definitive reference on urban design," and the description doesn't seem to be hyperbole.

Donald Watson, former dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with help from Alan Plattus of Yale School of Architecture and Robert Shibley of SUNY-Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, has assembled a volume containing the most significant urban design writings of the past 106 years. And that's just one of the eight sections in this enormous compilation. In addition to twelve classic texts...readers will find dozens of authoritative recent writings on world urbanization, regionalism, neighborhood planning, bikeways, greenways, universal design, outdoor lighting, way finding, acoustic considerations, and seemingly every other aspect of city-shaping.

You can flip from key documents of New Urbanism, including the Charter and the Lexicon, to LeCorbusier's (wrongheaded but fascinating) vision of towers and highways, Clarence Stein's The Radburn Idea, Clare Cooper Marcus's sociological analyses of urban plazas and shared outdoor spaces, and case studies of places such as Seattle's Pike Place Market. History, theory, principles and practice, they're all here...this is the best single volume I've seen, in terms of its ability to explain the entire spectrum of urban design through the words of its most prominent analysts andpractitioners. Expand your bookshelf.

New Urban News

Judging by its title, you might think Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design would be a source mainly for street widths, sidewalk dimensions, parking ratios, and other matters than can largely be reduced to mathematical calculations. But this six-pound tome with its 960 oversized pages has far broader ambitions. McGraw-Hill calls this volume, "the definitive reference on urban design," and the description doesn't seem to be hyperbole.

Donald Watson, former dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with help from Alan Plattus of Yale School of Architecture and Robert Shibley of SUNY-Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, has assembled a volume containing the most significant urban design writings of the past 106 years. And that's just one of the eight sections in this enormous compilation. In addition to twelve classic texts...readers will find dozens of authoritative recent writings on world urbanization, regionalism, neighborhood planning, bikeways, greenways, universal design, outdoor lighting, way finding, acoustic considerations, and seemingly every other aspect of city-shaping.