Five Rules for Tomorrow's Cities
Design in an Age of Urban Migration, Demographic Change, and a Disappearing Middle Class
240 pages
6 x 9
20 photos, 20 illustrations
Book Description
How we design our cities over the next four decades will be critical for our planet. If we continue to spill excessive greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, we will run out of time to keep our global temperature from increasing. Since approximately 80% of greenhouse gases come from cities, it follows that in the design of cities lies the fate of the world.
As urban designers respond to the critical issue of climate change they must also address three cresting cultural waves: the worldwide rural-to-urban migration; the collapse of global fertility rates; and the disappearance of the middle class. In Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities, planning and design expert Patrick Condon explains how urban designers can assimilate these interconnected changes into their work.
Condon shows how the very things that constrain cities—climate change, migration, financial stress, population change—could actually enable the emergence of a more equitable and resource-efficient city. He provides five rules for urban designers: (1) See the City as a System; (2) Recognize Patterns in the Urban Environment; (3) Apply Lighter, Greener, Smarter Infrastructure; (4) Strengthen Social and Economic Urban Resilience; and (5) Adapt to Shifts in Jobs, Retail, and Wages.
In Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities, Condon provides grounded and financially feasible design examples for tomorrow’s sustainable cities, and the design tools needed to achieve them.
Review Quotes
"This book offers a contemporary grounding of the critical issues of our times in terms of built environment professionals and their roles in a global context....This is an excellent reading for studies in the built environment – key historical figures are referred to and recent global case studies serve to shore the relevance of their enduring legacy into focus once again."
Housing Studies
"The book’s exemplary organization, readability, and convincing message deserves more attention than most novels."
Manhattan Book Review
"Design professionals face a different and perplexing task: planning for a world with few babies, many old people, many impecunious young people, and a thin crust of the wealthy,...Condon’s refreshingly novel collection of examples for the future include Vienna, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Vancouver, and Oregon. His discussion of Vienna’s century-long policy of taxing land to build housing is worth the price of the book in itself."
Planning
"In Five Rules for Tomorrow's Cities, Condon also provides grounded and financially feasible design examples for tomorrow's sustainable cities, and the design tools needed to achieve them."
Midwest Book Review
"In this succinct text, [Condon is] providing practical solutions to difficult questions. His experience as an urban planner and, subsequently, as an academic enable him to provide thoughtful, reflective insights on how cities must internally change over time, and how these shifts will impinge on residents as inevitable adjustments become necessary...His assessment offers an optimistic outlook for those areas that proactively endeavor to alleviate expensive financial and social costs of urban living in the future... ...Recommended."
Choice
"Condon writes persuasively and in considerable detail about his very reasonable five rules."
Urban Design Group
"This new book is power packed. It’s one of the most direct, informed, and pragmatic takes on the urban design of and for this century....This book should be on the desk of anyone who cares about the planet, especially media folk, academics, design professionals such as architects, engineers, urban designers, and planners."
Journal of the American Planning Association
"This is a masterpiece of urban thought, offering both an informed analysis of the challenges facing cities and a set of admirably clear and practical proposals for overcoming them. Patrick Condon has drawn on decades of hands-on urban experience to create a handbook that should be on the desk of every municipal leader."
Doug Saunders, columnist at the Globe and Mail, author of "Arrival Cities"
"This book's 'simple design rules for complex times' offer a much needed alternative to a profession obsessed with techno-green fixes and utopian whimsy. Condon translates 'systems thinking' into a practical urban design idea, that has the ability to scale up. He shows how changes brought by immigration, aging, and lack of affordability are not just footnotes to a design ideology, but essential design determinants. This concise, hopeful guide is an inspired fusion of big-picture thinking and practical design."
Emily Talen, Professor of Urbanism, University of Chicago, author of "Neighborhood"
"Hooray for Patrick Condon! In this eminently lucid and cogent book, he charts a sensible path through the daunting challenges that are now emerging for city-makers of all kinds. His recommendations in response are intelligent and remarkably practical. While his picture of the urban future is not pollyanna, neither is it despairing. We had better get with this program; as Condon points out, the next four decades will be pivotal for cities, and for us all."
Michael Mehaffy, Senior Researcher, Ax:son Johnson Foundation, author of "Cities Alive"
Contents
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Three Waves That Are Changing Cities Forever
Chapter 2: Urban Design Responses to the Three Great Waves
Chapter 3: Rule One: See the City as a System
Chapter 4: Rule Two: Recognize Patterns in Urban Environments
Chapter 5: Rule Three: Apply Lighter, Greener, Smarter Infrastructure
Chapter 6: Rule Four: Strengthen Social Resilience through Affordable Housing Design
Chapter 7: Rule Five: Adapt to Shifts in Jobs, Retail, and Wages
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Events
Webinar: Major Trends Shaping Our Cities from 2020 to 2060
Webinar: Major Trends Shaping Our Cities from 2020 to 2060
Wednesday, 12 February 2020 - 1:00pm
Patrick Condon explores three major "waves" shaping our cities today and for the next 20-40 years in his new book Five Rules for Tomorrow's Cities: Design in an Age of Urban Migration, Demographic Change, and a Disappearing Middle Class. These three waves include rural-to-urban migration, the collapse of global fertility rates, and the disappearance of the middle class.
Patrick will share how cities in the Global North and Global South are trending in the same direction with a focus on housing, infrastructure, the role and location of work, and design solutions. He will delve into how urban practicioners can apply lighter, greener, and smarter infrastructure. Patrick tackles one central question: "how can designers of this generation first assimilate and then incorporate ongoing cultural, economic and ecological changes - interconnected changes occurring worldwide - into their city building work?"
This webinar is for anyone involved in city building work including architects, planners, developers, public officials, and urbanists thinking about how to tackle the next 20-40 years. Patrick Condon is a notable Canadian urban designer, planner, Professor at University of British Columbia (UBC), founder of the UBC urban design program, and the author of several planning books in the field of sustainability.
Webinar: Designing Cities Amid Urban Migration, Demographic Shift and a Disappearing Middle Class
Webinar: Designing Cities Amid Urban Migration, Demographic Shift and a Disappearing Middle Class
Thursday, 21 May 2020 - 1:00pm
Cities across the globe are coping with myriad challenges, from collapsing fertility, migration from rural areas and the disappearance of the middle class. Topping this is that cities account for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and need to find ways to curb them. How can urban designers assimilate these interconnected challenges into their work?
Join the Maryland Department of Planning and the Smart Growth Network at 1 p.m. Thursday, May 21 as Patrick Condon demonstrates how the very things that constrain cities—climate change, migration, financial stress, population change—could actually enable the emergence of a more equitable and resource-efficient city.
Educator Resources
Read the annotated table of contents below or download them here.
Blogs
#ForewordFriday: Urban Design for the Future
#ForewordFriday: Urban Design for the Future
Over the next few decades, cultural, economic, and ecological changes will transform cities as we know them. As Patrick Condon explains in Five Rules for Tomorrow's Cities, urban designers will need to address three cresting waves: rural-to-urban migration, collapsing birth rates, and a disappearing middle class. What will these trends mean for our cities? How can designers incorporate them into their work?
In his new book, Condon shows how these challenges could actually enable the emergence of a more equitable and sustainable city—through good urban design. He provides a set of principles that can guide designers to make a better city possible.
The excerpt below offers an in-depth discussion of the three trends. Read Chapter 1: The Three Waves That Are Changing Cities Forever.
Erica Sánchez Vázquez
Erica is the Digital Content Manager at Island Press.
