City Life: Urban Expectations In A New World - Hardcover

Rybczynski, Witold

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684813025 ISBN 13: 9780684813028

Publisher: Scribner, 1995

Synopsis

A architectural perspective on urban development explains how cities have evolved into the individual locales of the present, focusing on places as diverse as New York City, Charleston, Chicago, and New Orleans. 40,000 first printing. BOMC & QPB Alt. Tour.

About this title

About the Author:

Witold Rybczynski is Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.

From Booklist:

Gazing at elegant Paris, a visitor from North America plaintively asked her companion, "Why aren't our cities like that?" Fortunately that companion was Rybczynski, an astute architectural historian whose knowledge and sparkling writing (e.g., Home, 1986) ensure that his readers will no longer think of their American cities as apres-teardowns in progress. Rather, they might reimagine their cities' potential for beauty and sociability in light of this history of urban development, from the first planned towns, Philadelphia and Williamsburg, to the chaotic sprawls of Houston and Los Angeles. Deftly conveying what planners expected their new towns to become, Rybczynski commands a wealth of trenchant detail that reveals bucolic attitudes (e.g., the American penchant for naming streets after trees) or evolving architectural fashions, such as the faddish "urban renewal" movement of the 1950s. An early reform that achieved aesthetic success, the "City Beautiful" movement of the 1900s, exemplifies periodic civic self-examinations. Rybczynski's able perceptions illuminate all those developments, making this fascinating reading trip from de Tocqueville's observations to the present exurbs both exhilarating and rueful by turns. Gilbert Taylor

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0684813025
• ISBN 13: 9780684813028
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256