Review by Choice Review
This short, well-written book by an architect with more than 30 years of international prominence deserves attention. It makes current interpretations and dramatic solutions to the ever-expanding worldwide urban crisis easily accessible to the lay audience it addresses. If present trends continue, our world will be overwhelmed with cities and our cities overwhelmed with people. The uncoordinated practices now at work in urbanization are inadequate. Required are large-scale remedies undertaken by regional-scaled administrative authorities. The book is characteristic of a current genre: it does not challenge the premises of the modern world, which accepts consumerism as the basis of community, sees ease of mobility as a right, and thinks privacy is a public good; therefore, the affluent world of livable cities it envisages remains curiously unconnected to our world, in which the population is impoverishing itself and consuming nature's bounty at an even more rapid rate than it is expanding in number. A few sketches and endnotes complete the presentation. General; undergraduate; graduate; professional. C. W. Westfall; University of Virginia
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Architect Safdie examines the car's tremendous impact upon our urban centers while arguing for the formation of new cities that incorporate the best of the old model with the open feel of the suburbs. The car's impact on the urban landscape became most pronounced after World War II, with a boom in both auto and highway production. City planning was then formulated around traffic flow and the need for parking. But with mobility, people headed out and away from the urban core, forming a new American city. We see it today in the housing enclaves, office buildings, and strip malls lining our highways. Safdie calls for a revolutionary change in city and regional planning to revitalize cities and give people the connection to nature they currently find in the suburbs. Insightful and thought provoking, the book is required reading for anyone concerned about the decline of the American city. --Brian McCombie
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Forty-three percent of the world's 5.5 billion inhabitants live in cities, many of them, says architect Safdie, regional mega-cities that are growing recklessly, with traffic congestion that daily threatens the environment. Safdie, who achieved prominence for his futuristic Habitat housing complex at Montreal's Expo '67, blames a lack of regional planning and the unexpected impact of the automobile for our deteriorating cities. In the first two parts of his book, Safdie treads familiar territorynoting the dispersal of affluent families to the suburbs that left empty downtowns and contributed to social polarization, monolithic office buildings that dwarf pedestrians, and the vast, unsafe garages in airports and commercial buildings. Along the way he touches on the role of the architect, several of his own projects that were derailed by shortsighted clients and the need for buildings to take best advantage of their natural sites. In the last third of the book, Safdie describes his vision of a new kind of urban center, one that accommodates the beauties of its particular topography and is a central spine of intense activity. He also proposes a new method of transportation, replacing private ownership of cars with a pool of government-owned electric vehicles that would be at drivers' disposal by the hour, day, week or month. These Utility cars would be instantly available from a storage depot and left there after use. But radical ideas such as this are best bolstered by practical details for implementation, which Safdie fails to offer. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Some contemporary urban realities are confronted head-on here, while others are ignored, making it difficult to decide whether Safdie's ideas are visionary or merely silly. Much of this book is an erudite survey of familiar ground. The automobile has undoubtedly reshaped urban topography, with the flight to suburbia producing the need for more roads, parking, and cars. Accompanied by a diminished concern for public spaces, this has turned architects, once the planners of communities, into designers of individual sites. Habitat '67 creator Safdie (Architecture/Harvard) is not blinded by nostalgia for bygone days when parks and plazas were the shared center of city life, however. He recognizes that Americans are devoted to the convenience and independence of travel by automobile, and he envisions a transportation system that will retain these qualities while also revitalizing urban areas. Within his imagined city, ``conveyors''- -essentially elevators that move horizontally--will provide easy movement between buildings. Regional transportation will be based on ``U-cars''--publicly owned carlike vehicles--that can be picked up and dropped off as needed at depots located next to conveyor stops and rail stations. (High-speed trains will link cities.) Pedestrian walkways and open spaces in the core of the city will be protected from the elements by gigantic, retractable glass roofs, optimizing conditions for enjoying public life. While creating an urban utopia without completely removing automobiles, however, Safdie is amazingly obtuse about the political and economic values that he recognizes are at the heart of Americans' love for cars. A culture that worships private car ownership is not fertile ground for public spaces involving massive government expenditure and administration, and to imagine that the affluent will be willing to pay the necessary taxes is more fanciful than conveyors or U-cars. Architects should be dreamers, but we need more from them than castles in the air. (illustrations, not seen)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
