Taking on the key issues in urban design, Shaping the City examines the critical ideas that have driven these themes and debates through a study of particular cities at important periods in their development. As well as retaining crucial discussions about cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Brasilia at particular moments in their history that exemplified the problems and themes at hand like the mega-city, the post-colonial city and New Urbanism, in this new edition the editors have introduced new case studies critical to any study of contemporary urbanism – China, Dubai, Tijuana and the wider issues of informal cities in the Global South.

The book serves as both a textbook for classes in urban design, planning and theory and is also attractive to the increasing interest in urbanism by scholars in other fields. Shaping the City provides an essential overview of the range and variety of urbanisms and urban issues that are critical to an understanding of contemporary urbanism.

Rodolphe El-Khoury is an urban designer and historian. He is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Architecture and Urban Design at The University of Toronto. El-Khoury is also a partner in Khoury Levit Fong, an award winning practice that has gained international recognition for innovative design. Edward Robbins, trained as an anthropologist, is Professor of Urbanism in the Institute of Urbanism, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design who has written and taught extensively about the relation of design to social theory and practice. Presently he is engaged in working on the challenges posed by cities in the south, especially the issue of poverty.