The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.35 (602 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0743227239 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-05-25 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
In the highly acclaimed The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler declared suburbia "a tragic landscape" and fueled a fierce debate over how we will live in twenty-first-century America. Here, Kunstler turns his discerning eye to urban life in America and beyond in dazzling excursions to classical Rome, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, Louis-Napoleon's Paris, the "gigantic hairball" that is contemporary Atlanta, the ludicrous spectacle of Las Vegas, and more. His authoritative tour is both a concise history of cities and a stunning critique of how they can aid or hinder social and civil progress. Seeking to discover what is constant and enduring in cities at their greatest, Kunstler explores how America got lost in suburban wilderness and locates pathways that might lead to civic revival. By turns dramatic and c
And one is also left wondering what the "urban condition" might be in more easterly world cities. Pei: "Few architects have done as much wholesome damage to any city as the partners I.M. Instead, he favors snappy observations such as "If Las Vegas truly is our city of the future, then we might as well all cut our throats tomorrow." Kunstler tosses off insults to icons like the distinguished architect I.M. From Publishers Weekly Author and urban gadfly Kunstler (Home from Nowhere; Geography of Nowhere) has graduated from the nowheresville of previous titles to a punchy new study of eight cities in as many chapters: Paris, Atlanta, Mexico City, Berlin, Las Vegas, Rome, Boston, and London. Outspoken and straining for an aphoristic st
"Kunstler Strikes Again" according to Goodsalt. Any review of a James Howard Kunstler book must nearly by necessity begin with a tip of the hat to his "Nowhere" books, to acknowledge their quality, to (perhaps) lend an air of authority to the reviewer, but most of all to place in context his current offering. The City in Mind enlarges and dee. Another claim that the book did not achieve is providing vocabulary for articulating what [we] love and loathe about [our] surro Mundher Al Alawi Exactly what it says it is on the cover, "notes on the urban condition." Incoherent notes though, they are marshelled to build a case for the authors disparate theory of urbanism. A theory he either deliberately ignores to articulate or fails to articulate. There is no method in his examinations. a quick if disjointed read A City in Mind is a quick read. Each chapter presents a city from Kunstler's unique point of view. He often spends a great deal of time on the history of the city - sometimes too much time - but the reader learns about why the city developed as it did. Some chapters are brilliant. The history of