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PRESS RELEASE

THE NATURE OF URBAN DESIGN A New York Perspective on Resilience Now Available in Paperback

By Alexandros Washburn

Washington, DC (October 8, 2015) — As the storm surge of Hurricane Sandy overwhelmed his neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York City’s chief urban designer Alexandros Washburn took refuge on the upper floors of his home. For years he had played an integral role in creating the city that has become a model of vibrant urban design, and now he watched as flooding wreaked havoc. When the water receded, he saw devastation—but also dedication. The disaster revealed that what makes New York great is not only its physical setting, but also its citizens’ will to rebuild their communities better than before.

In his book, The Nature of Urban Design: A New York Perspective on Resilience, newly available in paperback (Publication Date: October 8, 2015), Washburn explores how citizens change cities to meet the challenges of our times, like improving resilience in the face of climate change. The book is an examination of civic virtue and the will to leave our cities better than we found them. Washburn believes that urban design is the natural expression of these virtues and the most powerful tool to transform cities worldwide.

Demonstrating the power of urban design—which he argues must consider politics and finance, not just design—Washburn shares inspiring stories and details from his own work, including the Harlem Children’s Zone, where a city and community came together to build a school and transform a neighborhood, and the High Line, where two individuals from the community fought to reuse existing infrastructure and create a now famous linear park. He also draws on examples of civic projects from around the world, including Singapore, Seoul, and São Paulo, to illustrate the universality of urban design. The result is a roadmap for the urban design process that can transform cities while breaking down barriers between those who change cities and those who are changed by them.

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The Nature of Urban Design shows in glorious detail through words and full-color images the power of urban design to make cities more resilient, livable, and equitable. In the book, Washburn writes, “Everything in a city is designed, and everyone in a city has a stake in the result.” Nowhere is that more true than in New York. Its lessons offer inspiration for other cities. Our cities are ours—we just need to claim them.

Alexandros Washburn is industry professor and founding director of the Center for Coastal Resilience and Urban Xcellence (CRUX) at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He was formerly the chief urban designer of the New York City Department of City Planning under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former public works advisor and chief architect for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

The Nature of Urban Design: A New York Perspective on Resilience

By Alexandros Washburn Island Press Paperback 264 pages | Price: $30.00 ISBN: 978-1-61091-699-8 https://www.islandpress.org/book/the-nature-of-urban-design Founded in 1984, Island Press works to stimulate, shape, and communicate the information that is essential for solving environmental problems. Today, with more than 800 titles in print and some 40 new releases each year, it is the nation’s leading publisher of books on environmental issues. But Island Press does more than publish books. It advances environmental science by nurturing the exchange of ideas across disciplines and sectors, and by helping to create a multidisciplinary literature on environmental problems and solutions. The knowledge created is spread far beyond the range of a limited marketplace through sophisticated communications initiatives that reach journalists, academics, policymakers, practitioners and the general public. Through these efforts, Island Press is driving change by moving ideas from the printed page to public discourse and practice.

Island Press’s emphasis is, and will continue to be, on transforming objective information into understanding and action. For more information and further updates be sure to visit www.islandpress.org. ###

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Jaime Jennings, 202-232-7933 x44 jjennings@islandpress.org Katharine Sucher, 202-232-7933 x43 ksucher@islandpress.org www.islandpress.org

SIX KEYS TO TRANFORMING CITIES

BY ALEXANDROS WASHBURN 1. The city is ours. If you are perfectly happy with the status quo of your neighborhood, don’t bother with this book. This book is only for those of us who want to learn how to change our cities; in other words, to become urban designers.

2. Feet first. I believe in the primacy of the pedestrian point of view. I believe that values that respect the environment, the economy, and the community are best championed by a point of view that is sustainable, humanist, and experiential: the point of view of a citizen walking down the street.

3. Politics, finance, design. Nothing gets done in a city without an alignment of politics, finance, and design. It's not an exercise in Euclidian geometry; rather, it's like stuffing three cats into a bag. You can be the greatest designer in the world, but if you can't work under political pressure and financial demands, you are not an urban designer.

4. Cities are both the problem and the solution. Urban design is a way to meet the challenges facing cities every day while simultaneously improving the quality of civic life. Cities are great, cities are growing, but cities are vulnerable.

5. Eyes—and pencils—on the street. The best way to use this book is to learn to read something else—the city around you. Walk it. Observe it. Measure it. Draw the life in it.

6. Design for three bosses. For cities to succeed in the 21st century, they must build with the quantity of Robert Moses, the quality of Jane Jacobs, and the nature of Frederick Law Olmsted.

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PRAISE

THE NATURE OF URBAN DESIGN A New York Perspective on Resilience

by Alexandros Washburn "[A] cri de coeur for action by cities" —The New York Times Book Review "Mr. Washburn takes lay people on an illustrated and highly accessible tour of urban planning, from the High Line to the subway system, which, he explains, emits little more in greenhouse gases than the city's streetlights."

—The New York Times "It's perfect reading for a rainy, rainy day."

—Grist "Washburn's attitude and incisive analysis give this book a rare combination of realism and hope."

—Planning "[W]ith his first book, Washburn has accomplished, if not quite the impossible, then certainly the daunting: he's written a concise and accessible treatise on urban planning, blissfully free of jargon and clear enough to be understood by both professional and citizen-designers."

—Metropolis "Entertaining and attractively designed...a fantastic introduction to the discipline of urban design for non-designers. ...Washburn's approach to resiliency is both idealistic and practical."

—ASLA's The Dirt blog "Simply put, The Nature of Urban Design reads like an engaging story, through the eyes of a wellinformed urban planner, who wants nothing more than to see good done in the world."

—Spacing

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