Author Description

"This book crtitically examines the reciprocal relationship between creativity and the built environment and features leading voices from across the world in a debate on originating, learning, modifying and plagiarizing creativities within the built environment. The Companion includes contributions from architecture, design, planning, construction, real estate, economics, urban studies, geography, sociology and public policies. Contributors review the current field and proposes new conceptual frameworks, research methodologies, and directions for research, policy, and practice. Chapters are organised into five sections each drawing on cross-disciplinary insights and debates: Section 1 connects creativity, productivity and economic growth and examines how our built environment stimulates or intimidates human imaginations. Section 2 addresses how hard environments are fabricated with social, cultural and institutional meanings, and how these evolve in different times and settings. Section 3 discusses activities that directly and indirectly shape the material development of a built environment, its environmental sustainability, space utility and place identity. Section 4 illustrates how technologies and innovations are used in building and strengthening an intelligent, real-time, responsive urban agenda. Section 5 examines governance opportunities and challenges at the interface between creativity and built environment. An important resource for scholars and students in the fields of urban planning and development, urban studies, environmental sustainability, human geography, sociology and public policy"--