The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History

Well written, consistently interesting and structured around the challenges of topography and the urban form demands invoked by market needs, political architectures and cultural expectations through history, this beautifully illustrated book delivers the promise of its title and a lot more. Because the author, Spiro Kostof, organized his book by patterns and topological relationships, the text compresses history and geographies into a comparative perspective. This presents a disadvantage to the reader if he/she is interested in only one time, one culture or even just one architectural movement. On the other hand, the comparative perspective lends authority to Kostof's overarching theoretical approach of connecting urban forms to content and how those relationships persist across the spectrum of the human experience. A must for any architect's or planner's library.

Extremely interesting and well documented book on the different methods humans have used in their quest to create the ideal city. Although not arranges chrinologically but tipologically, the book covers history's clearest examoles of the variety of urban design theory. A must for the urban / architecture proffessional and aficionado.

Great resource for understanding how cities grow in the way that they do.

I really like this book, there are a lot of made up cities and towns in some of the games that I play and I find it fasciniating how historical cities and fantasy cities are designed. The author lays out some different design styles for cities and then shows some examples of historical cities that match these styles. A good reference for anyone designing fantasy maps, or just students of architecture or history.

I love it. Outstanding! The author shows very detailed explanation of the shapes of cities and theihr relation to history. This book is a must read for Urban Studies and Architecture major.

You'll never walk city streets the same as urban landscape communicates how belief systems manifest over hundreds of years.

Book was in excellent condition - better than described

As advertised. Rapid delivery.

Cette lecture permet de tout savoir sur la genèse de la création urbaine à travers l'histoire de l'homme. Indispensable à tout curieux des mécanismes d'organisation spatiale de la ville.

Book was as expected

Bien expresado y documentado. Kostof fue un ameno, culto y brillante profesor, Este libro, junto con su "The City Assembled" completan un buen panorama histórico del repertorio de recursos y elementos de forma y proyecto urbano.

excellent

All the best