The Dictionary of Urbanism

Top navigation

Sample entries
Sponsor the 2nd Edition
Reviews
Illustrations
@cowanrob

Welcome Hero

Some of Rob Cowan’s illustrations

for the second edition of the dictionary

Illustration of a 1910 crest

Illustration of a balcony

Illustration of a balcony

Illustration of a balcony

Illustration of brutalism at Brunel University

Illustration of a canopy in Lubljana

Illustration of Capital ammonite

Illustration of capital art deco

Illustration of capital, egg and dart

Illustration of capital ionic

Illustration of model capital

Illustration of modern capital

Illustration of Coal-hole covers

Illustration of doorway

Illustration of Tery Farrell at Alban Gate

Illustration of Walter Hood

Illustration of Ian Nairn

Illustration of Octavia Hill (1838)

Illustration of Ada Salter (1866)

Illustration of Rachel Carson (1907)

Illustration of Ruth Glass (1912)

Illustration of Jane Jacobs (1916)

Illustration of Witney Young (1921)

Illustration of James Baldwin (1924)

Illustration of Denise Scott Brown (1931)

Illustration of Saskia Sassen (1947)

Illustration of Somaya (1949)

Illustration of Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (1950)

Illustration of Sri Prakash (1955)

Illustration of Griffin (1950)

Illustration of Sadik Khan (1960)

Illustration of Ash (1965)

Illustration of Jenifer Keesmaat (1970)

Illustration of Jay Pitter (1971)

Royal Arcade, Cardiff

Art Deco Panel

Balcony 556

Birmgingham in 1731

Boundary Street Estate and the streets it replaced

Brindley Place, Birmingham

A brownstone

Brutalism

Buckingham's plan for a model town

Buffalo, NY, park system 1880

Daniel Burnham

Catslide Roof, Wimbledon

Hathaway's 1834 map of Chicago

Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1815

MRG Conzen

Coping

A diagram of London's communities from the 1943 County of London Plan

A crinkle-crankle wall

Cule de sac plan of the Monkston District of Milton Keynes

A 1807 plan fro Detroit

Door

BV Doshi

Eyewear worn by (from top) Le Corbusier, Jane Jacobs and Daniel Libeskind

Dymaxion car

Cedric Price's diagram

Ralph Erskine

Fanlight (MM)

Fasces

The Copenhagen finger plan

The dome of the Reichstag, Berlin, designed by Norman Foster

Buckminster Fuller

Gant

Dancing House, Prague, Gehry

Gothic

Griffin

A plan for a hamlet from Raymond Unwin's 1901 The Art of Building a Home

Hanging baskets, Cardiff

Sculpture, Harlow

Gideon Ouseley's diagram of a heptapolis

Michael Heseltine

A Hindustan Ambassador

Part of a neighbourhood of hutongs in Beijing, China

Donald Insall

Allan B Jacobs

Geoffrey Jellicoe

Philip Johnson

Kiosk

Leopold Kohr

Third floor plan, Denver Art Museum, Daniel Libeskind

Lodge

Bertold Lubetkin

Edwin Lutyens

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Birmingham airport maglev

The Magic Roundabout, Swindon

Mall

Marinetti

The medieval city of Rothenburg, Bavaria

Miami

Mitcham Garden Village

Huntly, Aberdeenshire, planned as a new town in 1769

The 1641 Nine Square Plan of New Haven, Connecticut

John Nolen's 1926 plan of Venice, Florida

Oriel

Outshoot

Park, shopping

Thomas Love Peacock

Pediment

Perimeter blocks on a 1997 masterplan for 3,000 homes on the site of the former Ravenscraig steelworks in North Lanarkshire, Scotland

Venice, St Marks Square

Pinwheel layout

Plecnic

Some types of pointing

Porch

Porch

Porch, Lubetkin, West Sussex

Quasi-semi-detached houses

Plan of part of Radburn, New Jersey

Radburn, New Jersey

Kristien Ring

Great Yarmouth rows shown in the 1797 plan

The Rows, Chester

David Rudlin

Richard Seifert

Richard Sennett

Shotgun house

Siena in the nineteenth century

Plan of Silchester

Slogans

SoHo, New York

Rebecca Solnic

Myddelton Square

St James Square in London's west end

Thornhill Square and Crescent, London

St Petersburg

Seven hills of Rome

Silver End

Quinlan Terry

Klas Tham

Thamesmead

Fish-scale wall tiles

The village of Tomintoul, Banffshire, in the nineteenth century

Townhouse

Turret

Unkown

A residential quarter of UR

Plan of the 1922 Daily Mail Model Village at Welwyn Garden City

Frank Lloyd Wright

Charles Tyson Yerkes

Michael Young

Top down image of a palace

The Ampelmännchen

Arcade (Washington Union Water)

Arcade 1906

Arches

Arcosanti

Area (curve)

Area, London

Illustration of a Balcony

Illustration of Balustrade

Illustration of a barricadoe

A barrio sign in Barcelona

Illustration of Decorative bargeboards

Illustration of Bedford Square

Illustration of Bedzed

Illustration of The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Illustration of a Bracket

Illustration of a broken pediment

Illustration of a brownstone

Illustration of a Broken pediment

Illustration of The Bullring, Birmingham

A cabman's shelter

Chicago's municipal device

A civic building

A concrete-framed building, unfinished

Console

Corbel table

Coronation Street

Cross Stow-on-the-Wold

Dereliction

A Diocletian window

Dripstone, Scotney Castle, Kent

Dumbell plan apartments

Pottinger's Entry, Belfast

Illustration of Faience

Illustration of a Fanlight

Illustration of a Fanlight

The Alban Gate office building in London by Terry Farrell

Fleet Street

The dome of the Reichstag, Berlin, designed by Norman Foster

South Africa's first garden city

A rectory in gothic style

Illustration of The Empire State Building

The Dictionary of Urbanismby Rob Cowan

Follow Rob Cowan on X and LinkedIn

@cowanrob
Rob Cowan