The book ‘Reconnecting Cities, People, and Nature’ by Victor Muñoz Sanz and Robert Jan van der Veen is an insightful reflection on urban design for practitioners and academics. It brings scale, experience and approaches together to form a radically inclusive way to create change in urban planning.
The composition of articles, influences and exercises in this book bring the reader to challenge how they currently consider, design and view urban landscapes. Just as the authors set out to achieve, they are successful in bringing nature into the core of the principles, and challenge urban design to go further. Across 20 exercises the book explores different scales and assumptions of how design could connect the person with the city and the landscape. It pushes the conversation process to become more dynamic and encompasses a wider range of scenarios.
With space at a premium, the way in which communities, housing and ecosystems are created becomes a higher priority. The section on ‘Urban Design for Social and Ecological Interplay’ takes us back to the beginning of urban design, the ‘two hour environment’ as people lived self-sufficiently in balance with nature in settlements through to today’s climate change mitigation and adaptation required redesigns. It prompts the reader to critically rethink landscape intermingling in productive ways to support urban environments and the future of the related economies. The section then guides the reader through different design approaches to integrated whole ecosystem systems, including examples from modern biomaterial construction reflective of Iron age building design. The book provides the opportunity to rethink how nature can be treated as an equal in the city, with the integration of nature going beyond planting and green spaces, and as an essential part of the future survival of urban environments.
Contemporary urban designers and practitioners face new challenges in transforming pre-existing and often limited space. Throughout, the book brings inspiration to how cities can be transformed from the inside out. The final section demonstrates how urban spaces could function as interconnected ecosystems that are both unique and unifying. Whilst some of the ideas may challenge designer’s norms, the mixture of illustrations, theory and varied exercises provides a foundation for reconsidering climate, social cohesion and sustainability within our cities.
Book details
Reconnecting Cities, People, and Nature: Exercises in Urban Design by Victor Muñoz Sanz / Robbert Jan van der Veen. Find out more.
Victor Muñoz Sanz joins the December AIPH Green City Briefing. Register for free to hear from the author.
