The City After The Automobile: An Architect's Vision - Softcover

Safdie, Moshe; Kohn, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813335450 ISBN 13: 9780813335452

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

Synopsis

In an age of virtual offices, urban flight, and planned gated communities, are cities becoming obsolete? In this passionate manifesto, Moshe Safdie argues that as crucibles for creative, social, and political interaction, vital cities are an organic and necessary part of human civilization. If we are to rescue them from dispersal and decay, we must first revise our definition of what constitutes a city.Unlike many who believe that we must choose between cities and suburbs, between mass transit and highways, between monolithic highrises and panoramic vistas, Safdie envisions a way to have it all. Effortless mobility throughout a region of diverse centers, residential communities, and natural open spaces is the key to restoring the rich public life that cities once provided while honoring our profound desire for privacy, flexibility, and freedom. With innovations such as transportation nodes, elevated moving sidewalks, public utility cars, and buildings designed to maximize daylight, views, and personal interaction, Safdie's proposal challenges us all to create a more satisfying and humanistic environment.

About this title

Review:

Reading Moshe Safdie's book The City After the Automobile feels at times like dipping into science fiction, particularly when considering his call for publicly owned electric cars kept in storage depots and rented to the masses. Most of the book, however, is a discussion of how to revolutionize city planning in order to reduce the necessity for cars. Safdie, an architect, uses his own plans for rebuilding portions of cities around the world as the basis for his argument supporting strong land-control laws and restriction of urban sprawl. Instead of suburban shopping malls, Safdie proposes a "linear center," a central area of concentrated development that would serve as a public arena.

By restricting land use and concentrating development in city centers instead of on the fringes, Safdie argues that reliance on gas-guzzling automobiles would become a nonissue. His truly is a revolutionary idea, especially for a culture that idealizes suburbia. Although some of the suggestions in The City After the Automobile might seem fanciful, any argument in favor of better planning, less pollution, and less waste of time, money, and resources makes a lot of sense.

About the Author:

Moshe Safdie

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0813335450
• ISBN 13: 9780813335452
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 198