Originally published in 1997, as part of the Ethnoscapes: Current Challenges in the Environmental Social Sciences series, reissued now with a new series introduction, Tradition, Location and Community: Place-making and Development brings together the selected papers of seventeen architects, social scientists and planners. It offers a range of original perspectives on the relationship between the design and habituation of the built environment on the one hand and social and cultural development on the other. As an archival volume, it attempts to present a mixture of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives. It explores the view that planning and design (the organization of the physical/built environment) which follow from the rapid transformations wrought by development must respond to, and be based on, the wants and needs of the people affected; that is, it must be in accord with their notions of environmental quality.

Divided into two sections. The first section has five chapters which explore the theoretical and conceptual aspects of place-making and development. Section two consists of twelve chapters, each of which presents a case study.

Adenrele Awotona recently retired as a professor of Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA, where he has been a dean of the College of Public and Community Service as well as the Director of the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters.

He was previously a Director of Studies for the British Council International Seminars (Reconstruction after disasters) in the United Kingdom. During his career, he served as an academic administrator (Dean, Associate Dean, Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Research Centers, and Chair of Departments), university professor, researcher, and practitioner. He earned his Doctorate degree from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a Certificate from Harvard University’s Institute of Management and Leadership in Education in the USA.

He now lives in Cambridgeshire in the United Kingdom.

Professor Necdet Teymur (1945-2017) studied architecture, design and social theory; and taught and researched at universities in UK and elsewhere on architectural theory, design and education – with housing as one of the primary focus. He was the course director of Postgraduate Course in International Architectural Practice (1990-94) and the director of the Centre for International Architectural Studies (1991-94) at the School of Architecture, Manchester University (1990-94); and the Dean of Faculty of Architecture at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey (1997-2000).

Necdet Teymur was the author and editor of numerous books, papers and articles on architecture, the environment, housing, design, theory, history and education. His first major book Environmental Discourse won the First Prize and Gold Medal at the II. World Biennale of Architecture in 1983. He was an active member of UIA, IAPS and DRS, editor of Design Research (1982-87) and Bulletin of People-Environment Studies (1995-98) as well as Associate Editor of Journal of Architecture and Planning Research, Environments by Design and Datutop.