Remaking Cities An Introduction to Urban Metrofitting

Unprecedented challenges await the future of the world's cities. Accelerating population pressure, climate change, food insecurity, poverty and geopolitical instability – in the face of such problems our current attempts at producing a sustainable agenda for the world's cities appear fragmented and inadequate. Fresh thinking is needed.

In Remaking Cities, renowned design theorist Tony Fry brings a conceptual design perspective to the challenge of urban sustainability and resilience. In a typically far-sighted and provocative work, Fry presents ideas and actions for 'metrofitting' – a new kind of practice in architecture and urban design. Metrofitting expands the technological concept of retrofit up to the city scale, placing social, cultural, political and ethical concerns at its heart. Metrofitting is not about visionary technology, it is about transforming existing cities by combining available resources with human creativity, prompted by new thinking about new and old urban problems. It requires overcoming outmoded Eurocentric assumptions of what constitutes a city, rethinking their forms and structures, and understanding their metabolic processes and social and economic functions. This book provides conceptually strong practical approaches that will ultimately change the whole way we view cities and the way the urban future is designed.

Illustrated with international case studies of metrofitting in action, Remaking Cities will provoke and stimulate debate among architects, urban designers, and anyone concerned with the urban environment and social and cultural change.

Preface
Introduction: What is a City Now?

PART ONE: Contexts of Change: The Limits of How We See Cities Today
1. The Fate of Cities Now
2. Understanding the City as a Designing Event
3. What Designs a City – the Designing Process
4. The City, Humanity & Time
5. Urban Imperatives in the Face of Change
6. New Imaginaries & the City
7. Other Worlds are Coming
8. Post-Sustainability

PART 2: Contexts of Action
9. Metrofitting Unpacked
10. Metrofitting, Thinking Otherwise and a New Foundation of Change
11. Unlearning & Learning
12. Metrofitting & the De-signing of Design
13. Metrofitting & Urban Design Fictions
14. Space, Time, Dwelling & Movement
15. Mettrofitting as Re-building & Being

Part 3. Metrofitting Case Studies
16.1 The City of Cincinnati
16.2 The City of Cairo

Notes
Selected Reading
Index

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