Urbanism in the making : A handbook of survival

Sammanfattning: Urbanization is increasing uncontrollably with accelerating speed and the problems this is causing can be seen at the symptoms they produce. Gentrification, sprawl, slums, ecological disasters, psychological effects on people are some of many problems having to do with cities. Majority of the problems appeared after industrialization and most have not been dealt with and many more are emerging. As this situation continues, urbanism is gaining a lot of attention from theorists, scholars, and people around the world, as the field that studies the phenomenon of urbanization and the urban environment. However, urbanism, as a concept, is not clearly determined and as developed as the pace in which urbanization grows and the theories seem to lack awareness of the size of the issue. Urbanism remains passive to the contemporary problems that are appearing, because by the time a theory is providing strategies to solve existing problems, new ones are emerging. Adding to this, what urbanism is and how it is implemented are still vague questions with even more vague answers. Through my research, I did not find a clear, and acceptable by all, definition of urbanism and that shows the complexity of the subject. This is an issue that has contributed, together with the magnificent speed that cities have grown with, to the borders between urban and rural disappearing. The result is a situation that cannot be described yet, but must become a source of research within urbanism, in the upcoming decades. This research first tackles the questions of what urban and urbanism is, to later proceed to what urbanism is concerned with. The goal is to orient oneself to the making of urbanism. A detailed cataloging of all the theories that have emerged through the years in a historical and thematic context shows what the trend has been through the decades and which problems urbanism as a broad term has decided to work with. The hope is that there will appear a pattern that can teach all new urbanists about the history of the profession and the mistakes that have been made, so that in the future the discourse about urbanism can be made on more solid grounds and on pragmatic problem solution rather than futuristic hopes and assumptions. This research will reach contemporary years so that it can be understood where the field is headed to. Successively, it is an insight into where cities might be headed, if solution finding tackles problems that appeared in the past, up to contemporary ones and the possible ones that might appear in the future. Urbanism is a field of research and is in constant movement and in evolution. Therefore, this research is aware that by the time of its publication it will already be outdated. Nevertheless, the goal for this research is to provide a stepping stone to further research within the field.