John Robert Gold
John Gold is Professor of Urban Historical Geography at Oxford Brookes University. The author or editor of nineteen books on architectural and cultural subjects, he has published widely on the urban aspects of the Olympic Games and other forms of sporting and cultural festivals. He is also now working on his book 'The Legacy of Modernism', the last in his acclaimed trilogy on the relationship between architectural modernism and the city.
Subjects: Built Environment
Biography
John R. Gold, Professor of Urban Historical Geography at Oxford Brookes University, is the author or editor, sole or shared credit, of nineteen books on architectural and cultural subjects. Over the last ten years, he has produced a series of books on the Olympic Games—including the second edition of his book Olympic Cities: urban planning, city agendas and the World’s Games, a four-volume set called a four-volume edited collection on The Making of Olympic Cities and a new version of the London County Council’s landmark report ‘The Planning of a New Town’, to which he contributed a new contextual introduction. At the end of 2015, Routledge will republish his classic text Geography, the Media and Popular Culture’. A number of new texts will appear in the near future. These include a book on Festival Cities, the third edition of Olympic Cities (both 2016) and The Legacy of Modernism, the last part of his acclaimed oral historically-based trilogy on architectural modernism (for publication in 2017).Education
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PhD, Birmingham University, 1987
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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I am an architectural historian specifically interested in city-wide issues. I have specialist interests in the rise and fall of architectural modernism, Olympic and festival cities, and in notions of the future.
Websites
Books
Articles
The making of a megastructure
Published: Jun 15, 2015 by Planning Perspectives
Authors: Gold, J.R.
Subjects:
Built Environment
The development of the Central Area at Cumbernauld New Town was a landmark in town centre design and an intriguing example of the convergence between architectural modernism and town planning in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper, which considers the genesis, development and subsequent reassessment of this extraordinary structure.
A SPUR to action?
Published: Jun 15, 2015 by Planning Perspectiveds
Authors: Gold, J.R.
Subjects:
Built Environment
This paper offers insight into the climate of ideas of a key period in the recent past by considering the work of the Society for the Promotion of Urban Renewal (SPUR), a pressure group that campaigned for resuscitation of urban reconstruction under the banner of ‘urban renewal.
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