Cyclical City

Five Stories of Urban Transformation

Jill Desimini

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780813946337
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

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

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Introduction: The Underlying Conditions
• 1. Stormwater: 350 Years of Hydrology in Philadelphia
• 2. Gleiswildnis: 200 Years of Ecology in Berlin
• 3. Hortas: 500 Years of Agronomy and Landscape Planning in Lisbon
• 4. Speelplaatsen: 100 Years of Play in Amsterdam
• 5. Fallow Land: 150 Years of Disinvestment in St. Louis
• Conclusion: The Common Project
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Illustration Credits
• Index