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.

PrefaceIntroduction Part I: Contexts of Change: the limits of how we see cities today1. Cities Now2. Understanding the City as a Designing Event3. What Designs a City?4. The City, Humanity & Time5. Urban Imperatives6. New Imaginaries & the City7. Other Worlds are Coming8. Post-Sustainability Part II: Contexts of Action9. Metrofitting: Take Two10. Metrofitting, Thinking Otherwise11. Unlearning & Learning12. Metrofitting & the De-signing of Design13. Metrofitting & Urban Design Fictions14. Space, Time, Dwelling & Movement15. Metrofitting and Being in the City Part III: Introduction to the case studiesCincinnati Case StudyNew Cairo Case StudySelected BibliographyIndex