Urban Design Thinking: A Conceptual Toolkit equips designers and urbanists with thirty theoretical frameworks — from assemblage thinking to urban morphology — that make abstract ideas immediately applicable to the critique and transformation of real cities.
About This Book
Theory and practice rarely speak the same language in urban design, and Kim Dovey's book exists precisely to close that gap. Structured as thirty short, self-contained chapters, it builds a conceptual toolkit drawn from contemporary urbanism, architecture, and spatial analysis. Assemblage thinking serves as the critical backbone, threading together explorations of typology, place identity, informal settlements, urban design codes, transit, and creative clusters. Each chapter opens a distinct analytical window onto how cities function and how design practice reshapes them. The result is a book equally useful as a course text and as a desk reference for practitioners working through complex urban briefs.
Key Features
- 290 pages of theory-to-practice urban design analysis across thirty focused chapters
- Author: Kim Dovey
- Published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts, ISBN 9781350175457
What You'll Discover
- How assemblage thinking operates as a unifying critical framework for reading urban form and transformation
- The relationship between urban morphology, typology, and place identity in shaping how cities are experienced
- Theoretical approaches to contested issues including informal settlements, globalisation, and transit-oriented design
- How urban design codes and creative clusters can be analysed through spatial theory rather than treated as purely regulatory or economic phenomena
About the Author
Kim Dovey is the author of Urban Design Thinking, engaging deeply with questions of urban theory, spatial analysis, and the politics of place. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 290
- Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781350175457
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Urban designers, architects, and planning academics seeking a theoretically grounded framework for design critique, as well as postgraduate students navigating the intersection of spatial theory and city-making practice.