Cyclical City - by Jill Desimini (Hardcover)

About the Book

"As cities evolve and resources shift with time, spaces within those cities are often left fallow and abandoned. Cyclical City tells the stories behind these sites, from Philadelphia's Liberty Lands park to Lisbon's Green Plan, and it looks at the ways in which these narratives can be leveraged toward future engagement and use. Jill Desimini posits a fundamental role for spatial design practice to transform abandoned urban landscapes through time. She argues for approaches that promote the specific affordances of the land itself (hydrology, vegetation, topography, geology, infrastructural capacity, occupation potential); the importance of cyclical change; and the particularities of the cultural, political, and physical context. These themes are explored in five cities-Philadelphia, Berlin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and Saint Louis-and across centuries, from periods of great upheaval to ones of relative stability and even economic growth. Desimini considers what landscape-driven design can bring to cities losing people and economic resources, how design practice can be more inclusive in a context of market failure, and the ways in which abandoned landscapes can become our commons"--

Book Synopsis

As cities evolve and resources shift with time, spaces within those cities are often left fallow and abandoned. Cyclical City tells the stories behind these sites, from Philadelphia's Liberty Lands park to Lisbon's Green Plan, and it looks at the ways in which these narratives can be leveraged toward future engagement and use. Jill Desimini posits a fundamental role for spatial design practice to transform abandoned urban landscapes through time. She argues for approaches that promote the specific affordances of the land itself (hydrology, vegetation, topography, geology, infrastructural capacity, occupation potential); the importance of cyclical change; and the particularities of the cultural, political, and physical context. These themes are explored in five cities--Philadelphia, Berlin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and Saint Louis--and across centuries, from periods of great upheaval to ones of relative stability and even economic growth. Desimini considers what landscape-driven design can bring to cities losing people and economic resources, how design practice can be more inclusive in a context of market failure, and the ways in which abandoned landscapes can become our commons.

Preparation of this volume has been supported by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund

Review Quotes

Cyclical City is original and substantial in its approach to urban landscapes and to their capacity to address the challenges of growth, decline, vacancy, and neglect--issues that face most cities in the twenty-first century.

--Thaïsa Way, University of Washington

A visually stunning and highly original book on the ecological underpinnings of urban transformation. The reader is drawn right into Cyclical Cities from the opening pages when Desimini takes us on a walk near the Bridesburg neighborhood in Philadelphia where she encounters old headstones from a displaced cemetery that have been used to buttress a bridge adjustment. The author is adept at moving between these physical vestiges and the long-term trajectories of urban growth and decline

-- "H-Environment"

Desimini's work provides a clear view into the role of landscape in the future of regressive urbanism through the specific case studies. As cities shrink due to climate change and market forces, it will be necessary to imagine how landscape systems reauthor capitalist notions of development. Cyclical City captures Desimini's important body of research developed over the past decade and is a critical resource for designers interested in working in the complicated and often messy milieu of contemporary urbanism.

--Bradley Cantrell, University of Virginia

About the Author

Jill Desimini is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University and author of From Fallow: 100 Ideas for Abandoned Urban Landscapes.