Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites--separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources--to support a soft city approach?

In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions.

Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society.

Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond.

Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.

The Roman Empire depended on the power of its armies to defend and extend the imperial borders, enabling it to dominate much of Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Success was, in large part, founded on well-trained, well-disciplined soldiers who were equipped with the most advanced arms and armor available at that time. This is the story of the production of that armor. Roman Imperial Armor presents an examination of the metals the armor was made from, of how the ores containing those metals were extracted from the earth and transformed into workable metal and of how that raw product was made into the armor of the Roman army. The policing and protecting of such a huge empire required a large and well-organized force and the book goes on to consider the organization of the army, its size, composition, the logistics involved in its deployment and provisioning and the training, remuneration and benefits offered to its men at arms.

In the mid-nineteenth century the Irish question--the governance of the island of Ireland--demanded attention on both sides of the Atlantic. In A Union Forever, David Sim examines how Irish nationalists and their American sympathizers attempted to convince legislators and statesmen to use the burgeoning global influence of the United States to achieve Irish independence. Simultaneously, he tracks how American politicians used the Irish question as means of furthering their own diplomatic and political ends.Combining an innovative transnational methodology with attention to the complexities of American statecraft, Sim rewrites the diplomatic history of this neglected topic. He considers the impact that nonstate actors had on formal affairs between the United States and Britain, finding that not only did Irish nationalists fail to involve the United States in their cause but actually fostered an Anglo-American rapprochement in the final third of the nineteenth century. Their failures led them to seek out new means of promoting Irish self-determination, including an altogether more radical, revolutionary strategy that would alter the course of Irish and British history over the next century.

The book describes a series of experiments carried out in order to replicate the working environment of a Roman blacksmith, by using tools and equipment as close to originals as possible. The results provide a database that will enable archaeologists to compare evidence found in archaeological records with the experiment results.

Annoying tasks are as much part of our lives as easy ones. We all have to wait for the bus on cold winter days, do the washing up, take out the bins, or spend long commutes in the car. David Sim, however, says that the solution to these problems is just around the corner. He believes that life in the city could be made easier and more pleasant through simple, cost-effective measures and by focusing on the human scale: simply put, it could become softer.
Sim demonstrates that the deciding factor in achieving these improvements lies in finding a balance between density and diversity, as well as in making use of the possibilities that already exist in the urban environment. The goal is to create comfortable neighborhoods that are easy to live in and adapt to our constantly changing needs. David Sim paints a picture of the good life in urban neighborhoods that are slower, better apportioned, and quieter.

The invasion of AD 43 began the Romans' settlement of Britain. The Romans brought with them a level of expertise that raised iron production in Britain from small localised sites to an enormous industry. Rome thrived on war and iron was vital to the Roman military establishment as well as to the civil population.In this pioneering work, David Sim combines current ideas of iron-making in Roman times with experimental archaeology. The Roman Iron Industry in Britain stretches far beyond dry theory and metallurgy alone; it covers all the stages of this essential process, from prospecting to distribution, and describes the whole cycle of iron production.Photographs and line drawings illustrate the text well enough to allow keen readers to reproduce the artefacts for themselves. Fascinating to the general reader and all those with an interest in Roman history, this book is invaluable to students of archaeology and professional archaeologists alike. Dr David Sim is an archaeologist who has combined studies of the technology of the Roman Empire with his skills as a blacksmith.