TY  - BOOK
AU  - Hommels,Anique
TI  - Unbuilding cities: obduracy in urban socio-technical change 
T2  - Inside technology
SN  - 9780262582827 (pbk.)
AV  - HT169.N4 H647 2008
PY  - 2008///, c2005
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - MIT Press
KW  - City planning
KW  - Netherlands
KW  - Urban renewal
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-273) and index; 1; Obduracy in the city : three conceptual models --; 2; Attempts to change Hoog Catharijne --; 3; Trying to reconstruct the highway that cuts through Maastricht --; 4; The spatial renewal of the Bijlmermeer --; 5; Understanding obduracy in urban socio-technical change
N2  - "City planning initiatives and redesign of urban structures often become mired in debate and delay. Despite the fact that cities are considered to be dynamic and flexible spaces - never finished but always under construction - it is very difficult to change existing urban structures; they become fixed, obdurate, securely anchored in their own histories as well as in the histories of their surroundings. In Unbuilding Cities, Anique Hommels looks at the tension between the malleability of urban space and its obduracy, focusing on sites and structures that have been subjected to "unbuilding" - redesign or reconfiguration. She brings the concepts of science and technology studies (STS) to bear on the study of cities." "Viewing the city as a large sociotechnological artifact, she demonstrates the usefulness of STS tools that were developed to analyze other technological artifacts and explores in detail the role of obduracy in sociotechnical change. Her analysis distinguishes three concepts of obduracy: interactionist, in which actors with diverging views are constrained by fixed ways of thinking and interacting; relational, in which change is difficult because of technology's embeddedness in sociotechnical networks; and enduring, in which persistent traditions influence the development of technology over time."--BOOK JACKET
ER  -