Why Cities Look the Way They Do
- ISBN-10
- 0745691846
- ISBN-13
- 9780745691848
- Category
- Social Science
- Pages
- 192
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-08-08
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons
- Author
- Richard J. Williams
Description
We tend to think cities look the way they do because of the conscious work of architects, planners and builders. But what if the look of cities had less to do with design, and more to do with social, cultural, financial and political processes, and the way ordinary citizens interact with them? What if the city is a process as much as a design? Richard J. Williams takes the moment construction is finished as a beginning, tracing the myriad processes that produce the look of the contemporary global city. This book is the story of dramatic but unforeseen urban sights: how financial capital spawns empty towering skyscrapers and hollowed-out ghettoes; how the zoning of once-illicit sexual practices in marginal areas of the city results in the reinvention of culturally vibrant gay villages; how abandoned factories have been repurposed as creative hubs in a precarious postindustrial economy. It is also the story of how popular urban clichés and the fictional portrayal of cities powerfully shape the way we read and see the bricks, concrete and glass that surround us. Thought-provoking and original, Why Cities Look the Way They Do will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the contemporary city, shedding new light on humanity’s greatest collective invention.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Reyner Banham Revisited
By Richard J. WilliamsRichard J. Williams. 49 50 51 Interview with Paul Barker. Banham, 'The Crisp at the ... On Frampton's and Banham's politics, see Stan Allen and Hal Foster, 'A Conversation with Kenneth 67 Frampton', October, 106 (Fall 2003), pp. 35–58.
-
Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-century New York & Boston
By Mona DomoshWhy do cities look the way they do? In this intriguing new book, Mona Domosh seeks to answer this question by comparing the strikingly different landscapes of two great American cities, Boston and New York.
-
Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-century New York & Boston
By Mona DomoshInvestigating why cities look the way they do, this work compares the landscapes of Boston and New York.
-
The Eagle and the Dragon: Globalization and European Dreams of Conquest in China and America in the Sixteenth Century
By Serge GruzinskiIn this important new book the renowned historian Serge Gruzinski returns to two episodes in the sixteenth century which mark a decisive stage in global history and show how China and Mexico experienced the expansion of Europe.
-
Classical Styles in Modern Architecture: From the Colonnade to Disjunctured Space
By Thomas DoremusLavishly illustrated and impeccably credentialed, this book includes: Photographs that show and reference ordinary, everyday buildings and civic structures along with some of the more familiar monuments of architecture A historical section ...
-
Urban Revitalization: Remaking cities in a changing world
By Carl Grodach, Renia EhrenfeuchtREFERENCES Abbott, Carl. 1981. The new urban America: growth and politics in Sunbelt cities. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Bagwell, Orlando and W Noland Walker. 2004. Citizen King, edited by W Noland Walker.
-
The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us
By Keith LoweIn the coming weeks, the Secretary of State, George Marshall, would announce a further massive aid package to help stave off the threat of communism throughout western Europe: the Marshall Plan USA 233.
-
Social Capital
By Joonmo SonJoonmo Son categorizes this wealth of work according to whether its focus is on the necessary preconditions for social capital, its structural basis, or its production.
-
Cities from the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America
By Thomas J. CampanellaThis large format book has over 125 extraordinary photographs from the 1920s to the 1960s. Valuable as works of art and as historical documents, they capture places like the Capitol Building during Roosevelt's first inauguration.
-
War in the Nineteenth Century: 1800-1914
By Jeremy BlackThis book provides an accessible and up-to-date account of the rich military history of the nineteenth century.