The Horizontal Metropolis: A Radical Project argues that the spread-out, low-rise territory surrounding the world's cities deserves to be designed as a city in its own right—not written off as sprawl.
About This Book
Edited by Paola Viganò and Chiara Cavalieri, the book pairs two ideas usually held apart: the metropolis, with its density, hierarchy and vertical centre, and horizontality, where settlement, farmland and infrastructure are woven together and the line between centre and edge dissolves. Its starting point is the desakota—the Indonesian-derived term for the thickly populated, intensively farmed yet distinctly urban landscapes that stretch along roads between Asian cities.
From there the research turns to comparable territories in the United States, Italy and Switzerland, reading dispersion as a resource to be worked with. The case it builds is economic, ecological and social, and it is made with the urgency of a world in which urbanisation leaves no 'outside' and urban ecosystems are pushed to their limits.
Key Features
- Research on territories that are neither fully urban nor rural
- Case studies from Asia, the United States, Italy and Switzerland
- Contributions by Martina Barcelloni Corte, Chiara Cavalieri and Paola Viganò
- Illustrated with 213 colour and 27 black-and-white images
What You'll Discover
- Why the opposition of centre and periphery no longer describes how cities work
- How the desakota idea translates to European and North American conditions
- The economic, ecological and social arguments for designing with dispersion
- What a horizontal metropolis could mean for sustainable urban futures
About the Author
Chiara Cavalieri is an architect and professor of urbanism and territorial management at UCLouvain in Belgium, and sits on the executive committee of the Habitat Research Center at EPFL in Lausanne. Paola Viganò is a professor at EPFL and at the Università Iuav di Venezia, has taught as a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and is a founding member of the European Postgraduate Master in Urbanism.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Dimensions: 170 × 240 mm
- Pages: 232
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783038600626
- Publisher: Park Books
Perfect For: Urban designers, planners, landscape architects and students interested in territorial urbanism, peri-urban landscapes and the future shape of the city.