Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form

Reviews / Votes

"This book is an excellent and timely resource emphasising the need for change in the teaching and practice of urban development. It offers an in-depth historical analysis of urban form, grounded in case studies, and demonstrating the limitations of 'order' when imposed top down and driven dominantly by political and economic objectives. It argues the urgent need to prioritise social issues in place making, recognising the value of informality and the important interdisciplinary nature of teaching and practice."

Nabeel Hamdi, Emeritus Professor of Housing and Urban Development, Oxford Brookes University

"Drawing on extensive research and rich case studies from around the world, the authors skilfully analyse the relationship between social and spatial orders, reveal the inadequacy of importing models of modernity and urbanity from the Global North, and explore the innovations in urbanism that are emerging in the South. This is a welcome and timely addition to the literature."

Ali Madanipour, Professor of Urban Design, Newcastle University

"This book based on the large experience of both of its authors and supported by a significant and updated literature, brings an important discussion on the ideas of order and disorder in cities showing that our urban space particularly in the Southern hemisphere in the so called Global South, is the result of the existing tension between these two concepts. Particularly in those cities they argue and we agree ..."that the key to the analysis of the ideas of urbanism is separating the concepts of the social and physical vis-a-vis deliberate ordering - and accepting that social order is always more important than any ordered physical manifestation, especially as the world becomes a predominantly urban space."

Alex Abiko, Professor in Housing and Urban Management, University of Sao Paulo

"This is an important, engrossing and challenging book that should be compulsory reading for urban planners and those who employ them, especially those advising or teaching about urban development in the global south. The long-term perspective on the thinking and values that have guided urban professionals from the Enlightenment to today is a valuable approach because it challenges the adequacy of conventional thinking to address current and future urban challenges, particularly in rapidly urbanising areas such as Africa. The focus on the movement of ideas from Europe and US to Brazil and then Africa allows the two authors to share their deep knowledge and experience of these areas. This helps the reader understand the impact of ideas, politics, finance, and personalities in practice over time. I also appreciate the challenge to educational institutions to develop people who can engage with and understand unique local situations including social processes and to be able to use this to help develop urban environments that work for everyone."

Forbes Davidson, Principal at Forbes Davidson Planning, Associate at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

"This book combines fascinating insights into the process by which cities are developed. I found three aspects of this book particularly interesting. One was the authors' insights into the process by which decisions are made about urban development and design: who took the initiative and why; how were funds raised; who benefited from the development, and so on. This lens is applied to such diverse situations as Edinburgh New Town and Angola's urbanization after the end of Portuguese rule. The second was the way that ideas spread, ranging from Howard's writing on Garden Cities to urban transport example of Curitiba. The sharing of urban design skills and solutions across continents is particularly well covered.The third is the discussion of the tension between so-called formal, top-down, design, and informal, bottom-up development. The authors outline the need for alternative ways of thinking in urban development. They propose more engagement with the process of bottom-up development and a focus on guiding rather than enforcing. This is a refreshing book, full of new insights into familiar examples, but with a lot of new material about Brazil and Angola. It is well researched and contains many useful plans and photographs."

Richard Martin, Development Practitioner and Author, Urban development and governance, Greece

"Jenkins and Smith are offering a very important longitudinal, transnational, and timely reflection on urban development. Putting in tension two of the fundamental concepts in the design vocabulary - order and disorder - they deconstruct and dismantle positivistic intention and values of urban design, the imposition of dispositions and the deductive approach, suggesting a powerful alternative: going definitively beyond euro-centric, enlightening paradigms of urban design. Grounding their reflections in the incremental, recombinant, and conflictive urban south's socio-spatial conditions, they argue for an urgent reassessment of the taken for granted tropes of informal urbanism, urban practice, and pedagogical design approaches. A book for those interested in urban planetary conditions, in the creative urban possibilities and in a new paradigm of design interventions. A book to read."

Camillo Boano, Professor of Urban Design and Critical Theory, Development Planning Unit, UCL and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Polytechnic of Turin

"Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form tackles the challenges posed by competing visions of urban development, focusing on how the global north's positivist ideal impacted the global south's unique context. The book sheds light on how European ideas of urban order have shaped Brazilian cities, imposing a predetermined path. It offers a fresh framework to examine the distinctly urban forms of the global south, liberating them from Western ideals. This timely work critically assesses prevailing assumptions, urging a reassessment of informal urbanism, urban practice, and design approaches. Jenkins and Smith present a significant contribution that invites readers to rethink urban development paradigms and embrace the complexities of the global south."

Jota Samper, Assistant Professor in the Program in Environmental Design and Co-Director of the Community Engagement, Design and Research Center (CEDaR), University of Colorado Boulder, United States of America

"This is a book about how the desire for urban order, and the fear of disorder, can paralyze urban thinking. It is also about how a better understanding of these interrelations, however we understand them - formal/informal, top-down/bottom up, global North/South, modernity/tradition - can rejuvenate cities."

Kim Dovey, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Director of the Informal Urbanism Research Hub, Melbourne School of Design, Australia

"Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form, is a unique book which encapsulates an analysis of planning history, from its early enlightenment origins in Europe to its translation and development to the present day. Jenkins and Smith, the authors have extensive research and planning experience in the Global South and have also explored the theories of Lefebvre related to the 'right to the city' and notions of engagement and praxis.

Arranged as a series of chapters, initially in chronological order, Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form gives a succinct history of planning experience from the pre- enlightenment to the current day. With the use of case study cities in Europe; Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Lisbon and in the Global South; Brazil, Mozambique, and South Africa it provides a new view on planning and the issues and challenges viewed from a North-South, and also a South-South perspective. Its use of case studies, especially from the 'Lusophone' Southern metropoles, distinguishes it from other texts, as there are few books which have covered these cities in this analytical manner or importantly made the comparisons which engage with similarities and differences in each case.

An eminently readable book, this will be an excellent text for graduate students and also academics with an interest in understanding and engaging with the present-day urbanism debates from a global and southern focused perspective. Its succinctness, and ability to present, engage with, and critique historic to current day issues and challenges in planning and praxis will gain it the wide audience it deserves, I will be recommending Order and Disorder in Urban Space and Form to academics and scholars of planning in the Global South, and it will have pride of place on my African cities research bookshelf."

Ola Uduku, Head of School, Roscoe Chair of Architecture Architecture, The University of Liverpool, UK

"This is an accessible, historically, and theoretically grounded study of urban space and form from the Enlightenment to the present time. Focusing on select case studies from Brazil, Jenkins and Smith make the case for collaborative reimagining of cities worldwide through the lenses of the inhabitants who lay out their neighbourhoods and build their own houses, presumed to be disorderly, rather than the "order" of normative processes of regulated modern and contemporary practices."

Nnamdi Elleh, Head of School School of Architecture and Planning. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

"Order and Disorder is written by two seasoned urban academics and long-standing research collaborators. Together, Paul Jenkins and Harry Smith combine decades of urban planning and design teaching, research and practice in and on a variety of cities across both the Global North and South. Drawing on this work, Jenkins and Smith ofer a critique of the persistent drive to impose Global North-derived ideas of 'order' on cities through urban planning and design, in ways that reinforce an alter ego of 'disorder.'"

Sylvia Croese, University of California Irvine and University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; review for Urban Design International