Urban Design, Planning and Housing

Global building and construction cultures are hard-wired to constructing too much, too badly, with major social and ecological consequences. Rob Imrie calls us to build less and to build better as a pre-requisite for enhancing welfare and well-being.

Nearly a century after it was first published in 1925, Medieval Cities remains one of the most provocative works of medieval history ever written. This book argues that it was not the invasion of the Germanic tribes that destroyed the civilization of antiquity, but rather the closing of Mediterranean trade by Arab conquest in the seventh century.

RESIDENSITY: A Carbon Analysis of Residential Typologies is the culmination of a seven-year study analysing nine building typologies to understand the relationships between building densities and the amount of land and infrastructure required to support them.

The experiments in the book are a collection of design and build projects conducted from the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong over the past 10 years and represent a direct reflection of the incredible diversity of climates, locations, and conditions that underlie the ongoing Chinese urbanisation experiment.

This book is about what it means to become urban. By describing the impact of rural nomads moving and settling to the city of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, it allows us to reflect on our contemporary urban condition and the urgent challenges facing millions of people around the world as they transform from rural to urban life.

This book examines the architectural design of housing projects in Ireland from the mid-twentieth century. This period represented a high point in the construction of the Welfare State project where the idea that architecture could and should shape and define community and social life was not yet considered problematic.