No comments about Cities: People, Society, Architecture: 10th International Architecture Exhibition - Venice Biennale.

No comments about Instant Cities.

4 comments about The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City.

1. New unreleased census data bears out what the author predicted 10 years ago:
   cities are revanchist and want to redevelop with the wealthy in mind. Thus
   there is a great emphasis on downtowns with tax subsidized housing for the
   above average household. Indeed, the modern city is best described as
   the revanchist city.



2. Everyone in New Orleans needs to read this book. A tad academic, it is, but his points are valid. Preservationists need to understand that decaying buildings are not historical or the 'fabric' of the community, they are blight. If money does not exist in the community, and if there is not interest from outside within a defind period of time (three years, I propose) then razing the building is acceptable. Vacancy and blight are just as bad an evil as yuppies moving in to bring Starbucks and Walmart (only the new, urban version of their stores) to the old 'hood. It is amoral to force the indiginous inhabitants to live in a blighted area just because it "used to be" a place of substance or have some historical standing. I mean this in the sense of social history as well as with historical events. New Orleans: "bring on the chains" because the city is not getting any better with the local citizenry doing there part, or lack thereof!



3. The most useful part of the book in terms of understanding cities is the chapter on the economic theory of gentrification, that economic incentives force landlords in a declining residential area to under-maintain their building, causing further deterioration of the neighborhood's housing stock until the buildings are so undercapitalized relative to the land value underneath that capital swooshes back in with rich people. (OK so this is kind of complicated for us non-economists but it's an important theory) The role of artists and the rhetoric of "urban pioneers" is very interesting too.

   The downside that I kept thinking about in later chapters is that it's a shame that left-wing authors' writing tends to be very academic in tone compared to those of establishment thinkers. The content in this book is interesting if you can get past that. If you just want a good left-wing view of cities, Mike Davis' City of Quartz is much a more crisply-written and compelling read.




4. I have to be careful when writing about the book that has become the backbone to my undergraduate dissertation. Smith goes where others have not dared by suggesting the real reasons behind change in New York and other western cities. His ideas are sound, but as with so many reactionary books I got the impression that he had decided on the answers before asking the questions. Research has little balance at all, and you begin to worry about its values when the book somehow manages to link revanchism to such wide ranging issues as "the organized murder of street kids in Rio de Janeiro, the Hindu massacres in Bombay, the pre-election slaughter of South Africans in Durban, the mayhem in Baghdad streets after the barbaric US bombing in 1991". However once he gets down from his socialist soapbox, the theories of revanchism can be useful for interperating change in western inner-cities. Not a book you will put down easily, but also one not to taken at face value...

   If you are interested in this subject check out M. Davis (1990) City of Quartz, H. Liggett & D. Perry (1995) Spatial Practices, and P. Knox (1992) The Restless Urban Landscape.

No comments about Rural Environmental Planning for Sustainable Communities.

No comments about The City Builders: Property Development in New York and London, 1980-2000 (Studies in Government and Public Policy).

No comments about Urban Spaces.

No comments about Urban Transportation Systems.

No comments about Business Improvement Districts, Second Edition.

No comments about Victor Gruen: From Urban Shop to New City.

1 comments about Designing Community: Charrettes, Masterplans and Form-based Codes.

1. If you seek a global overview of ideas in contemporary architecture, then Walters offers some relevance. He explains trends that have been expressed in urban designs throughout the developed countries. Mostly since World War 2. Most of the examples are drawn from Britain and the United States.
   
   The ideas are varied. Always, there was a desire to create as attractive a region as possible. Often for mixed use, residential and commercial. You can compare the results shown, to see how successful these might have been. The perils of urban blight are shown. Where housing "estates" ended up being bleak areas of high crime and hopelessness.