City, Urbanization, Architecture, Planning

A

• Amsterdam by Bite
  Sites you don’t want to miss when you visit Amsterdam (in English and Dutch). Editor: Albert Benschop.
• ArchiNed |
  Information about designers, institutions, education and generally those involved in the field of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture in the Netherlands. This information is supplemented with a range of activities of ArchNed, designed to encourage discussion and increase know-how within the profession. Dutch and English version.
• Architect - American Institute of Architects
• Architectenwerk
  Information for and on Dutch architects. Includes a list of all Dutch architects on the Internet.
• ArchitectureCafe 
  The gateway to the world of international architecture. Architectural information in many countries and languages languages.
• ArchiWeb |
  A Czech web on architecture.

B

• Berger, Alan S. [1978] 
  The City: Urban Communities and Their Problems
  Dubuque: Brown Company Publishers.
• Best Practices
  Many corporations around the world are working hard on finding solutions to the common social, economic and environmental problems of an urbanizing world. This site demonstrates the practical ways in which communities, governments and the private sector are working together to improve governance, eradicate poverty, provide access to shelter, land and basic services, protect the environment and support economic development. Solutions to common urban problems facing the world’s cities today.
• Blais, Pamela
  How the Information Revolution is Shaping Our Communities
  Resource guide to examine the impacts that information technology and telecommunications have on our cities, towns and land use patterns. Designed to get you thinking about the impacts that changes in telecommunications and information technology will have on our communities.
• Bond van Nederlandse Architecten (BNA)
  Association of Dutch architects.
• BouwWeb
  A Dutch site on the building and engineering industry.
• Building Online - Canada
  Provides an extensive directory listing of building industry professionals and a search engine for news stories for the building industry.

C

• Cahill, Nick
  Household and City Organization at Olynthus
  An ebook on Greek city planning and civic architecture. It considers some of the relationships between house and city, between household and community, as they were worked out in practice at Olynthus in northern Greece.
• Carfree Cities
  A design for a city providing excellent transportation without the use of automobiles. What would happen if we designed a city to work without any cars? Would anyone want to live in such a city? Does it make social, economic, and esthetic sense? Is it possible to be free of the automobile while keeping the rapid and convenient mobility it once offered?
• Cities of the Future: Dream or Nightmare?
  At the beginning of the 21st century, over half of the world's population will be living in an urban environment - and that number will continue to rise over the next few decades. Most of this new urban growth will take place in Africa and Asia and many governments seem unprepared for the challenges that this will bring. This report looks at the debates around urbanisation and strategies for ensuring that cities work for and not against people, examining the role of international organisations in achieving this.
• CityVision - Moscow, Russia
  From this guide to Russian cities on the web you can get information on your destination. Includes a growing list of links to web sites dedicated to cities throughout Russia.
• CIVITAS - Urban design & master planning
  An attempt to make the issue of urban environment a theme for debate and information, in a non-governmental scope. Contains accounts and information on alternative experiences and new methodologies for urban planning, research reports, articles and comments, with emphasis on informal urban settlements. (Portuguese and English versions).
• Cyburbia
  An urban planning portal, presenting links to sites with urban planning, architecture and landscape architecture related information. Most links have annotated descriptions. The site also contains information about 130 architecture and planning related mailing lists. The index is converted from a set of hard-coded Web pages to a true searchable, categorical database. Maintained on Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.

D

• Dieberger, Andreas - Vienna University of Technology
  • [2000] Navigation in Textual Virtual Environments using a City Metaphor - PhD Thesis
  • (with Andrw U. Frank) [1996] A city metaphor for supporting navigation in complex information spaces
    In: Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 9: 597-622
    A major problem in modern information systems is to locate information and to re-find information one has seen before. Systems like the Word-Wide Web are heavily interlinked but do not show structures that help users to navigate the information it contains. The use of appropriate navigation metaphors can help to make the structure of modern information systems easier to understand and therefore easier to use. The autors propose a conceptual user interface metaphor based on the structure of a city. Cities are very complex spatial environments and people know how to get information, how to reach certain locations in a city, and how to make use of the available infrastructure etc. Cities provide a rich set of navigational infrastructure that lends itself to creating sub-metaphors for navigational tools. A city metaphor makes this existing knowledge about a structured environment available to the user of a computerized information system.
• Digital Cities
  A comprehensive listing of all digital cities and villages in the Netherlands.
• Discussion Groups
  • alt.planning.urban
  • BSA-CITIES
    The discussion list of Cities, InteracTion, mobilitIEs, Space (CITIES) of the British Sociological Association (BSA). The study group serves a point of contact and collaboration for those interested in urban sociology and mobilities research. Architecture and urban design, transport and planning, understanding and tackling crime and deviance, patterns of consumption and disposal, immigration and social mobility, sense of place and identity and urban citizenship all fall within the group’s research interests. The group also organises a stream at the BSA Annual conference and your participation in this stream is very much encouraged.
  • CITIESAFTERTRANSITION
    The Cities after Transition (CAT) list brings together researchers working on any aspect of transitional cities, but is particularly focused on cities in the socialist communist and post-socialist worlds. List members work on urbanisation and sub-urbanisation, urban processes and planning, urban cultures and so on within the context of post-socialist transition. The CAT network hosts international conferences.
  • COMPLEXITY-PLANNING
    A list that supports communication between scholars exploring the complex nature of cities and the complex nature of urban planning. It is linked to the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) thematic group on Planning & Complexity.
  • URBAN-LABOUR-LEISURE-JOURNAL
    The International Journal of Urban Labour and Leisure (IJULL) is intended for an interdisciplinary readership. It is a social science journal covering all aspects of Labour, leisure and urban life. The list will be used to encourage debate around the issues published in the journal & any threads that people wish to start.
• Donath, Judith Stefania
  Inhabiting the virtual city: The design of social environments for electronic communities
  An approach to the design of on-line social environments. The thesis is that, in order to foster the development of vibrant and viable online communities, the environment must provide the means to communicate social cues and information: the participants must be able to perceive the social patterns of activity and affiliation and the community must be able to evolve a fluid and subtle cultural vocabulary. She starts with an analysis of the fundamental differences between real and virtual societies: the ways social cues are communicated in the real world, the limits imposed on on-line communities due to their mediated and bodiless nature, and directions that virtual societies can take that are impossible for physical ones. On this basis she develops a design platform for creating sociable virtual environments.

E

European Charter for Women in the City
Women are absent from, or particularly unobstrusive in, all decision making levels related to cities, housing and town planning. They are doubly excluded as city users and as town and housing planners. If a European town planning policy is to deal effectively with new challenges, a new approach and fundamental structural changes are unavoidable. Here you are informed how this can be done.

G

• Girardet, Herbert 
  Giant Footprints
  Sometime around the turn of the millenium, an urban baby was born whose birth tips a crucial balance. That day will change humanity from being a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban species. Can the planet accommodate an urbanised humanity? And can humanity cope with living in concrete high-rise canyons? Girardet, a cultural ecologist, writer and film-maker from the UK, explains how people, planners and architects could create a sustainable life in the new mega-cities. He describes how cities trample across the world environment, and charts some steps away from destruction.
• Global Urban Sociology 

I

Informatie- en Kenniscentrum voor de Ruimtelijke Ordening (IKC RO)
Internet portal for spatial planning. All actors and events in the spatial planning field are clearly arranged and accessible for professionals and interested citizens.

J

Journals

• Urbana [full text]
  A tri-lingual journal for the interchange of ideas about methodology, teaching, practice and decision-making related to the study of urban and regional entities particulaarly in relationship to urbanism in Mexico, United States and Canada.

K

Kenniscentrum Grote Steden (KCGS) 
A database with research on the solution of problems in big cities in the Netherlands.

L

Latour, Bruno
Paris the invisible city - a sociological diorama

M

• Martinotti, Guido 
  The new social morphology of the cities
• May, Tim / Perry, Beth [2005]
  The Future of Urban Sociology
  In: Sociology, 39(2), April 2005
  Urban sociologists have continued to make valuable contributions to the increasingly interdisciplinary study of complex urban issues. At the same time, they have maintained a concern with social dislocation and fragmentation, conflict and tension, cultural diversity, the ‘symbolic’ economy and competitiveness and cohesion – issues which have long characterized social studies of the urban and have traditionally been less well articulated in other disciplines. There is a widespread agreement that urban sociology has lost its once leading role in urban studies, and therefore, it is important to raise questions about the future of urban sociology
• Mitchell, William J. 
  City of Bits
  A comprehensive introduction to a new type of city, a largely invisible but increasingly important system of virtual spaces interconnected by the emerging information superhighway. William Mitchell (Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT) makes extensive use of concrete, practical examples and illustrations in a technically well-grounded yet accessible examination of architecture and urbanism in the context of the digital telecommunications revolution, the ongoing miniaturization of electronics, the commodification of bits, and the growing domination of software over materialized form.

N

Novak, Marcos 
Trans Terra Form: Liquid Architectures And The Loss of Inscription
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon expressed the now obsolete desire to see everything from one place. It revealed an archaic impulse to enhance presence by choosing a special vantage point from which to survey the horizon, A new desire has overtaken us. That desire is manifest in the construction, everywhere, of the pantopicon. The word pantopicon describes the condition of being in all places at one time, as opposed to seeing all places from one place. The pantopicon can only be achieved through disembodiment.

P

• Paulos, Eric / Goodman, Elizabeth
  • Familiar Stranger Project
    As humans we live and interact across a wildly diverse set of physical spaces. We each formulate our own personal meaning of place using a myriad of observable cues such as public-private, large-small, daytime-nighttime, loud-quiet, and crowded-empty. Unsurprisingly, it is the people with which we share such spaces that dominate our perception of place. Sometimes these people are friends, family and colleagues. More often, and particularly in public urban spaces we inhabit, the individuals who affect us are ones that we repeatedly observe and yet do not directly interact with – our Familiar Strangers.
  • [2003] Familiar Stranger Project: Anxiety, Comfort, and Play in Public Places
    This paper explores our often ignored yet real relationships with Familiar Strangers. Several experiments and studies are described that lead to a design for a personal, body-worn, wireless device that extends the Familiar Stranger relationship while respecting the delicate, yet important, constraints of our feelings and relationships with strangers in pubic places.
• Paulos, Eric e.o
  • [2005] Metapolis and Urban Life
    The city has always been a site of cultural, social and physical transformation, on scales from the most personal to the most collective. However, with the rise of the “metapolis” and the issues it brings with it, 24/7 rush hours, the conversion of public space to commercial space, the rise of surveillance, transnational neighborhoods, polyvocal politics and architecture etc. the contemporary city is weighted down. We can no longer technologically or socially be constrained by something planned and canned, like another confectionary spectacle. We dream of something more, something that can respond to our dreams. As the field of wireless and locative technologies matures, it is interesting to explore a more enduring relationship between the physical and cultural multicity and its digital topographies. What might an authentic or native digital/physical relationship be? Authentic to whom? How can these be considered within the hybrid space emerging from the interaction between digital and physical practices?
  • [2007] Urban Computing
    Urban computing is the integration of computing, sensing, and actuation technologies into everyday urban settings and lifestyles. Those settings include, for example, streets, squares,pubs, shops, buses, and cafés—any space in the semipublic realms of our towns and cities. Pervasive computing has largely been applied either in relatively homogeneous rural areas, (where researchers have added sensors in places such as forests, vineyards, and glaciers) or in small-scale, well-defined patches of the built environment (such as smart houses or rooms). Urban settings are challenging places for experimentation and deployment.
  • [2008] Ubiquitous Sustainability: Citizen Science & Activism
    An exploration of new approaches to bring about real environmental change by looking at the success of empowering technologies that enable grassroots activism and bottom up community participation. Ubiquitous computing is transforming from being mostly about professional communication and social interaction to a sensor rich personal measurement platform that can empower individuals and groups to gain an awareness of their surroundings, engage in grassroots activism to promote environmental change, and enable a new social paradigm – citizen science.
• Photo Metropolis
  A visual approach to urban sociology, from the sociology department of the University of Milan, Italy.
• Portes, Alejandro / Itzigsohn, Jose / Dore-Cabral, Carlos [1994]
  Urbanization in the Caribbean Basin: Social Change during the Years of the Crisis 
  The survey data contained in this archive was gathered as part of the project Urbanisation in the Caribbean Basin during the Years of the Crisis. The project was undertaken between 1991 and 1994 and the survey data was collected in 1993. The goal of this comparative project was twofold: first to examine general propositions about Third World urbanisation in the context of the smaller nations of the Caribbean Basin; second, to gain greater insight into specific developments in each country. The countries selected included Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti and Jamaica.

R

• Rivertown Simulation
  Experimental interactive simulation of downtown revitalization in the fictional Rivertown.
• RUDI - Resource for Urban Design Information - Oxford Brookes University, UK
  A multi-media resource site for academics and practitioners developed by Oxford Brookes University Library and the Engineering Research & Development Centre at the University of Hertfordshire. One of the best internet sites for urban design information. RUDI’s 20,000-plus pages contain all the up-to-date material needed for research, proposal preparation, commissioning projects, fact-checking and general reference.

S

• Spot on Architecture | Architectuur Centrum Amsterdam (ARCAM)
  Centre for architecture in Amsterdam. The Architecture Centre of Amsterdam shares her love of architecture with visitors and residents of Amsterdam. Arcam is the starting point for anyone interested in architecture and urbanism of Amsterdam.
• State of the Nation’s Cities: A Comprehensive Database on American Cities and Suburbs - Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, USA 
  Part of a contribution to the United Nations' Habitat II conference in Istanbul in June 1996. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) contracted with the Center for Urban Policy Research to assemble a comprehensive database on 77 American cities and suburbs. The database brings together over 3,000 variables from a wide variety of sources, allowing easy comparability of indicators on employment and economic development, demographic measures, housing and land use, income and poverty, fiscal conditions, and a host of other health, social, and environmental indicators. Data files are available for download in several formats (Tab-delimited ASCII, SPSS portable file, Excel, and SAS).
• Stelter, Gilbert (Canada)
  Reading a Community: Doing Urban History at the Local Level
  An Internet Course Manual - Great stuff.

U

• UN-Habitat - For a better urbban future
  UN-Habitat is the United Nations programme working towards a better urban future. Its mission is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable human settlements development and the achievement of adequate shelter for all. The consequences of the phenomenal shift towards urbanization will be dramatic: lack of proper housing and growth of slums, inadequate and out-dated infrastructure, escalating poverty and unemployment, safety and crime problems, pollution and health issues, as well as poorly managed natural or man-made disasters and other catastrophes due to the effects of climate change. Mindsets, policies, and approaches towards urbanization need to change in order for the growth of cities and urban areas to be turned into opportunities that will leave nobody behind. UN-Habitat has been working in human settlements throughout the world, focusing on building a brighter future for villages, towns, and cities of all sizes.
• Urban Environmental Management
  The Urban Environmental Management Research Initiative (UEMRI) was created to assist communication and information exchange between researchers of urban environments around the world. The site contains information on urban environments and their management. It includes Documents (articles, reports, and books), Insights (short insightful write-ups highlighting the problems and solutions in the urban environmental management processes), Keywords (glossaries, definitions and indicators), Numbers (statistics), How-Tos (links to environmentally friendly technologies), Email Lists, and Networks (an extensive listing of environmental professional associations and links to associations for the life sciences, earth sciences, chemistry, and engineering).
• Urban Population Growth
  An overview of increases in urban populations worldwide, presented by the World Health Organization (WHO). The urban population in 2014 accounted for 54% of the total global population, up from 34% in 1960, and continues to grow. The urban population growth, in absolute numbers, is concentrated in the less developed regions of the world. The global urban population is expected to grow approximately 1.84% per year between 2015 and 2020, 1.63% per year between 2020 and 2025, and 1.44% per year between 2025 and 2030.
• Urban sociology theories
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
  HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. It strengthens the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination.

V

Virtual Tourist
A map-based interface to City.Net.

W

• Weiske, Christine / Hoffmann, Ute
  Die Erlebniswelt als Stadt - Über reale und digitale Städte
  Article on the experiences of real and virtual cities. 
  In: Informationen zur Raumentwicklung, 6:365-75.
• Wikipedia
  • City
  • Megacity | Megalopolis | Metropolis
  • New towns of Hong Kong | New towns of Singapore
  • Urban Sociology | Community Studies
  • Spatial Citizenship
  • Urbanization | Counterurbanization | Deurbanization | Suburbanization
• Winkel, Niko
  Webdam - Stadspoort
  A database with all digital cities and villages in the Netherlands.

Urban Research Centers

Australia

• Urbanet - Curtin University
  A network of researchers with interests including city planning, urban design, regional planning, transport planning, sustainability, and governance. The research hub is based within the School of Built Environment (BE).

Canada

• Centre Métropolis du Québec - Immigration et métropoles
  Centre for inter-university research on immigration, integration and urban Dynamics.
• Centre for Research in Urban Sociology (CRUS) - Ontario
  A not-for-profit organization, located in Toronto. It is the first organization of it's kind to bring about research, development and awareness of being urban in Canadian cities. The city is the most diverse place were people call home. Urbanization of social life is at the centre of social inquiry. The most frequent areas of study are urban housing, politics, intergroup relationships, class and stratification patterns, and economic structures and the nature of communities.
• City Institute at York University (CITY)
  An interdisciplinary institute that facilitates critical and collaborative research, providing new knowledge and innovative approaches to comprehending and addressing the complexity of the urban arena.
• Institute of Urban Studies (IUS) - University of Winnipeg
  The IUS examines inner city, environmental, Aboriginal and community development issues.
• Urban Geography - University of British Columbia
  With a majority of the world’s population now living in urban areas, nearly all of the problems and possibilities of society and human-nature relations are becoming urban questions. The research of the department covers a wide range of urban themes: from local to transnational, historical to contemporary, empirical to theoretical. In some urban research, the city is understood as the setting in which broad social, cultural, political, and economic processes unfold, mediated and shaped by local context. In other work, analysis focuses on urbanization itself as constitutive of social, political, and environmental transformation. Cities highlighted in recent research projects include large and small cities across Canada.

China

• Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) - Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) University
• Institute of Urban and Rural Economy - AnHui Academy of Social Sciences (AASS)

Germany

• Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie: Forschungsprojekte - Humboldt Universität Berlin

Hong Kong

• Center of Urban Studies and Urban Planning (CUSUP) - University of Hong Kong
  Research on sustainable urban development and high-density environments; urban and regional development in China; urban GIS methodologies; spatial economy and planning; housing policy and social development; and urban policy and governance.
• Center for Healthy High Density Cities - University of Hong Kong
  Studies spatial epidemiology; built-environment-public-health links; landscape urbanism and health; healthy construction practices; and building climatology, comfort and health.
• Smart High Density Cities lab - University of Hong Kong
• Rural Urban Framework (RUF) - University of Hong Kong
  The objective is to engage in the rural-urban transformation of China through built projects, research, exhibitions and writing.

Iran

• Architecture & Urban Planning - Shahid Beheshti University

Netherlands

• Institute for Housing Studies and Urban Development (IHS) - Erasmus University Rotterdam
  An international knowledge center. Operating on a global scale, IHS offers post graduate education, training, advisory services and applied research.
• Netherlands Graduate School of Housing and Urban Research (NETHUR) 
  Provides a structured educational program for the Ph.D. candidates and a collaborative prigramme of research by these candidates and their supervisors. The research school has been designated the task of reinforcing research on the city and urban society. A key element of this task is to enhance the coordination of the research performed by members of the diverse disciplines that participate in NETHUR.

South Korea

• Urban Research Institute - Dankook University

Turkey

• Environmental & Urban Planning Research Center (CEVSE) - Istanbul Technical University
• Unit for Urban Design and Research / Unit for Housing Research - Middle East Technical University
  The research interests of the department of City and Regional Planning (CRP) covers a wide range: urban and regional geography, regional planning and policy, urban and regional governance, institutional transformation, planning history, strategic spatial planning, risk analysis and planning for disaster, housing policy, urban history, urban conservation, urban archeology, sustainable development, urban transport, urban design, ecological planning, etc.

United Kingdom

• Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) - University of Birmingham
  An international centre for research, teaching and consultancy in spatial and social planning studies, an academic and policy discipline that encompasses agendas around housing, regeneration, economic development, communities and the governance of public policy.
• Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC) - London School of Economics
  The Department of Geography and Environment is committed to research across the social sciences. Its research strategy has been developed from the view of geography as an integrative discipline whose contribution depends on a strong two-way engagement with other disciplines. Much of the research has a strong applied, policy relevant focus. Research is organised around three clusters of interest: Cities and Geography, Economic Geography (EG), Environmental Economics and Policy (EEP).
• Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) - University of Glasgow
  UBDC is a research resource promoting the use of innovative methods and complex urban data to address global city challenges.

U.S.A.

• Center for Community Planning & Development - Cleveland State University
  The mission of the Center is to strengthen the practice of planning and community development through independent research, technical assistance, and civic education and engagement.
• Center for Sustainable Suburban Development (CSSD) - University of Californa, Riverside
  CSSD conducts and disseminates research on issues of suburban growth and the impact of this growth on social, environmental, and transport systems.
• Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) - Columbia University
  There is a widespread belief that while sustainable urban development is conceptually possible, it is practically impossible because environmental sustainability is antithetical to economic development. One goal of this center is to demonstrate ways in which this “green”—“brown” divide can be bridged.
• Center for Urban Research & Policy (CURP) - Columbia University
• Center for Urban Sustainability - University of Nebraska, Omaha
• Dukakis Center for Urban & Regional Policy - Northeastern University, Boston
  The Dukakis Center conducts interdisciplinary research, in collaboration with civic leaders and scholars both within and beyond Northeastern University, to identify and implement real solutions to the critical challenges facing urban areas throughout Greater Boston, the Commonwealth, and the nation.
• Florida Planning and Development Lab (FPDL) - Florida State University
• Integrated Urban Infrastructure Solutions for Environmentally Sustainable, Healthy, and Livable Cities - University of Minnesota
  Focuses on ways to reimagine infrastructure —energy grids, transportation networks, green spaces, and food and water systems— to create cities that are highly functional, promote the health of residents and the environment, and have that intangible feeling called livability, that makes cities desirable places to live and work. The project explores a new movement gaining momentum in cities around the world toward distributed, or more local, infrastructure such as urban farms, district energy systems, bicycle paths, and car-sharing systems.
• Kinder Institute for Urban Research - Rice University
  A multi-disciplinary “think-and-do tank” that advances understanding of the most important issues facing Houston and other leading urban centers through rigorous research, policy analysis, and public outreach.
• Metropolitan Institute - VirginiaTech
  MI conducts basic and applied research on the dynamics of metropolitan complexities, such as demographics, environment, technology, design, transportation, and governance. With most of the globe’s population moving to urbanized areas, the major public policy challenges of this century will require a deeper understanding of how metropolitan complexities play out across multiple jurisdictions, locations, infrastructures, and stakeholders.
• Transportation, Land Use and Accessibility in the Modern City - Florida State University
  Examines the connections between the way we plan and organize transportation systems and the pattern of urban development in order to identify strategies to enhance the accessibility of people of all ages and abilities. And particularly interested in ways to make transit and non-motorized transportation more useful to travelers and more economically viable in decentralized urban environments.
• University Center for Social & Urban Research (UCSUR) - University of Pittsburgh
• Urban Design Lab (UDL) - Columbia University
  UDL addresses the need for a design-based approach to shaping the long range future of sustainable urbanism. the UDL has assisted New York City communities in tackling environmental remediation, high performance and green building design, micro-infrastructure, public health, climate change, and sustainable economic development. It has also worked in numerous other global locations including Ghana, Kenya, People’s Republic of China, and India.
• Urban Sociology - University of Chicago
  The Chicago School of urban sociology provides a grand tradition. A core group of sociology faculty members are engaged in research projects that are reinventing the classic concept of community study by placing local community, city, and global processes on a new theoretical foundation and recognizing the ways in which metropolitan life has been transformed.
• Virginia Center for Housing Research (VCHR) - VirginiaTech

Maps of cities, countries, continents and the world

General

• Altapedia
  Contains full color physical maps, political maps as well as key facts and statistics on countries of the world.
• Bing Maps
  A web mapping service provided as a part of Microsoft’s Bing suite of search engines and powered by the Bing Maps for Enterprise framework.
• Exploring Africa
  An exhibit of maps and travel narratives from Leo Africanus to Chinua Achene. The virtual exhibit is organized in into islands of materials. Created by Patrick Scott (selection and text) and Jason Pierce (hypertext development).
• Gheos World Guide
• Google Maps
  Provides directions, interactive maps, and satellite/aerial imagery of many countries. Can also search by keyword such as type of business.
• Historical & Cultural Atlas Resource Library - University of Oregon
  Atlas resources for Europe, Middle East, North Africa & North America.
• Infoplease - Atlas
• MapQuest
• National Geographic - Map Machine 
  A dynamic atlas to locate nearly any place on earth, then search for and print historical, weather, population, and other mpas of the sport.
• Outline Maps - Education Place
  A selection of outline maps for use in the classroom or at home.
• Perry-Castañeda Library - Map Collection - Univ. of Texas in Austin, USA
  Maps of almost all countries, including historical maps. It contains many links to other map-related sites and to city map sites.
• Travel Guides
• WorldAtlas.com
• World Factbook - CIA
  A reference resource produced by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. It provides a summary of the demographics, geography, communications, government, economy, and military of each of 267 international entities.
• Wikipedia
  • Map
  • Cartography
  • Counter-mapping

Canada

• National Atlas of Canada

Netherlands

• Atlas van Nederland - Atlas of the Netherlands
  A large collection of atlasses on: population, history of dwelling, cities, villages, housing, recreation, work, industries, infrastructure, geology, water, landscape, environment.
• Kartografie in Nederland - Cartography in the Nederlands
• Plattegronden - Dutch City Maps
• Searching for maps and routes
  If you’re looking for a topographical map of a particular address, or a map of a city, here you will probably find it.
• www.kaart.nl - Map of the Netherlands
  Zoom in from country to province, region, town, district and street. You can search a place by zip code.

United Kingdom

• Historical GIS Program
  A Historical Geographical Information System (GIS) for Great Britain covering the period from the late 1830s, when modern statistical data collection can be said to have started, until the early 1970s, when data starts to become available in digital form. It offers an effective mapping tool to historians and historical geographers. It contains maps and statistical data that appeal to a wider audience, containing animations and 3D scenes. Open the electronic Altas of Industrialising Britain, and see how is works (many maps require a Tcl/Tk plug-in).

U.S.A.

• Chicago Imagebase
• CitySearch
• Panoramic Maps Cities in the United States and Canada, 1847-1929
  Presented by American Memory (Historical Collections for the National Digital Library).
• U.S. Gazetteer
  The gazetteer is used to identify places to view with the Tiger Map Server and obtain census data from the 1990 Census Lookup server. A project sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The goal of this service is to provide a public resource for generating high-quality, detailed maps of anywhere in the United States, using public geographic data. Views may be zoomed in or out.

Housing and Cohousing

• Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI)
  Provides an independent service to government and private sector organizations to develop policy and programs from inception to implementation. The site contains some interesting research project publications.
• Beer, Andrew - University of Adelaide
  • Private Rental Housing in Europe: The View from Australia 
    In: National Housing Action 13(1), 1997
  • Overcrowding, Quality and Affordability: Critical issues in non-metropolitan rental housing
    In: Rural Society, 8(1), 1998
  • Housing Governance
    In: Smith, S.J. / Elsinga, M. / O’Mahony, L.F. / Eng, O.S. /Wachter, S. /Wood, G. (eds) [2012] International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home, vol. 3, pp. 497-501, Oxford: Elsevier.
• Bravo-Neighbours (Buren met Respect en Aandacht Voor de Omgeving)
  A Belgian social movement which tries to organize neighbours with respect for the environment. Includes some sociociological hypotheses concerning social control and help-structures in modern cities. English, Dutch, French, German and Esperanto versions. Editor: Anna Missinne (Leuven, Belgium).
• Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) 
  The federal housing agency of Canada. Created by Kenneth A. Schwartz.
• Chew, Valerie
  Public Housing in Singapore 
  A research paper that looks at the main functions and roles of the Housing and Development Board (HDB). Its philosophy in design and planning and, the measures taken in estate management. The basic goal of the HDB has been to solve housing shortage by providing basic shelter in a high-rise, high-density environment.
• Charlottesville Urban Design and Affordable Housing
  A project examining urban design and affordable housing in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.
• Cohousing Association of the United States - UC Davis
  Cohousing is the name of a type of collaborative housing that attempts to overcome the alienation of modern subdivisions in which no-one knows their neighbors, and there is no sense of community. Cohousing communities are intentional, collaborative neighborhoods created with a little ingenuity. They bring together the value of private homes with the benefits of more sustainable living. That means residents actively participate in the design and operation of their neighborhoods, and share common facilities and good connections with neighbors.
• Cohousing Company, The
  An architectural and consulting firm that works with resident groups and developers to create communities that cluster private homes around extensive common facilities. Pioneers of the cohousing movement, Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett draw extensively on their direct experience with European and American CoHousing communities to provide workshops and services in the areas of group formation and facilitation, site search and acquisition, land development, architectural design, project management, and finance. The site provides information on cohousing, the company, services provided for developing cohousing communities and a list of resources available through the cohousing company.
• Cooperative Business Journal
  Information about cooperatives to help people understand how they can use the cooperative model to improve their lives and their communities. Presented by the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA)
• Discussion Groups & Mailing Lists
  • alt.housing.nontrad - Nontraditional housing
  • alt.mobilehome - Manufactured housing
• Federation of Egalitarian Communities - Sharing The Dream
  A network of communal groups spread across North America. They range in size and emphasis from small agricultural homesteads to village-like communities similar to the Israeli kibbutzim.
• Fernster, Marc [1999]
  Community by convenant, process, and design: Cohousing and the contemporary common interest community
  In: Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law, 15(1)
• GHab - Research on Housing 
  Research group at the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), working on alternative design and materials for contemporary housing.
• Habitat for Humanity International
  An ecumenial Christian housing organization building simple, decent places to live in partnership with people in need. See also Habitat Canada
• Home Performance Coalition (HPC)
  HPC creates energy-efficient, healthy, sustainable homes through education, training, advocacy, and outreach. It unites the many voices of the home performance and weatherization industry, analyzes industry trends and issues, provides education to advance the standards and practices of our industry, and supports collaboration and business development throughout all sectors.
• Housingnet - The Social Housing Database
  A social housing resource site from the UK.
• International Co-operative Alliance (ICA)
  An international non-governmental organisation which unites, represents and serves co-operatives worldwide. It provides information on the co-operative movement in different economic sectors: agriculture, banking, credit, consumer, energy, fisheries, housing, insurance, workers, tourism and health care, and from all continents. It also includes links to other sites and issues of interest to co-operators.
• Sazama, Gerald [1996] - University of Connecticut
  A Brief History of Affordable Housing Cooperatives in the United States
  For over more than 75 years housing cooperatives have been a source of affordable housing. Currently, the dwelling units of affordable cooperatives is equivalent to seventeen percent of the rent reduction units owned by publichousing authorities. Can cooperatives play a role in the future supply of affordable housing. The history of affordable co-ops starts during the 1920s and after World War II with the ethnic, union, and New York government financed co-ops. Through the 1960s and the early 1970s cooperatives were financed by various federal direct assistance programs. Since the late 1970s co-ops have been sponsored by nonprofit organizations and by federal and municipal government privatization programs. A workable institutional structure for affordable cooperatives has developed as a result of this historical evolution.
• Tramontano, Marcelo - University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
  Metropolis21 - New Ways of living, new spaces to live
  Research about new possible design for living spaces, consideringthe profile of today’s metropolitan society.
• Wikipedia
  • Affordable housing
  • Cohousing
  • Egalitarian community | Intentional community
  • Co-operative living arrangements
  • House
  • Housing
  • Public Housing in Hong Kong | Public housing in Singapore

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