Cities For A Small Planet (Icon Editions) [Paperback]

Richard Rogers (Author)

Book Description

Series: Icon Editions | Publication Date: July 24, 1998

Nothing else damages the earth’s environment more than our cities. As the world’s population has grown, our cities have burgeoned, and their impact on the environment worsened. Meanwhile, from the isolated, gated communities within Houston and Los Angeles, to the millions of residents of Bombay living in squalor, the city has failed to serve its ideal function—as the cradle of civilization, the engine of culture, and the inspiration for community and citizenship. In Cities for a Small Planet, Sir Richard Rogers, one of the world’s leading architects and the designer of the Pompidou Center in Paris, demonstrates how future cities could provide the springboard for restoring humanity’s harmony with its environment.Rogers outlines the disastrous impact cities have had and will continue to have on our world, from waste-saturated Tokyo Bay, to the massive plumes of pollution caused by London’s traffic, to the depleted water resources of Mexico City. He traces these problems to the underlying social and cultural values that create them—unchecked commercial zeal, selfish individualism, and a lack of community. Bringing to bear concepts such as that of “open-minded” space—places within cities that serve multiple functions such as markets, parks, and sidewalk cafes—he explains how urban design can be used to give citizens a sense of shared experience. The city built with comfortable and safe public space can bring diverse groups together and breed a sense of tolerance, awareness, identity, and mutual respect. He calls for a new theoretical shift in the way cities do business and interact with the environment, arguing that many products come to market and are sold without figuring their social or environmental cost.Rogers goes on to describe the city of the future: one that is sustainable within its own environment; that can make a positive impact on its surroundings; that encourages communication among its citizens; that is compact and focused around neighborhoods; and that is beautiful, a city whose buildings and spaces spark the creative potential of its inhabitants.As our population grows larger, our planet grows smaller. Cities for a Small Planet is a passionate and eloquent blueprint for the cities we must create in response, cities that provide for the needs of both their residents and the earth on which they live.

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (July 24, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813335531
• ISBN-13: 978-0813335537
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #181,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, innovative interesting ideas, May 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cities For A Small Planet (Icon Editions) (Paperback)

After reading this book, I wanted to pack my bags and head to London to study with Richard Rogers. His observations on the importance of balancing population, resources and the environment is right on. He identifies the need for compact cities, but seeks to reinvent the dense city model to be a cleaner, greener, more integrated place. Rogers pays specific attention to positive social changes that compact cities can make, and he addresses the importance of regionalism to acheiving sustainability goals. Also, he explains how proximity allows for creative reuse of resources and efficient building design. The book is unique; Rogers makes concrete suggestions and offers actual examples of ways to acheive sustainability.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...But I like my life in the suburbs, May 24, 2006

By 

Charlie (Joliet, Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cities For A Small Planet (Icon Editions) (Paperback)

"Cities for a Small Planet give me the reassurance that there are influential people trying to reduce the destructive impact of human activities on the world. The case study of Curitiba, Brazil is particularly inspirational.

Author Richard Rogers looks for ways to make city centers more sustainable and points out the importance of public space within a city. He makes a case against single-use developments, the sprawl of the suburbs and the need for automobiles. I can't help but to wonder, though, about the average family living in a suburb in their own house with a backyard garden, two dogs and a cat. Those average people are quite happy to be away from the city centers, from the panhandlers and predators, from unsafe feelings while riding public transportation, from the sounds of police sirens and honking horns. Will dense sustainable city developments change that?

Not everyone is cut out to live in dense cities. A more appropriate question (at least in the United States) might be, "What can we do to make our suburbs more sustainable?"

Just an aside: I found the font size of this book to be a bit on the small side, and the captions under the pictures to be small to the point of near unreadability.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars future, May 8, 2007

By 

V. Mark (italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cities For A Small Planet (Icon Editions) (Paperback)

There's probably a great truth in the fact that the last 50 years of planning have enrich few and impoverished many.
Zoning is simple, clear, fast and economically definable, but it isolates the people who are destined to live there, and enslaves them to the use of car.
Overlapping and dense urbanism is historically a step back, is more work for planners, more difficult to understand for the laymen and developers and will cost more, but it will ultimately favor humane contact, regenerate sense of community, diminish the slavery of people on machine and last but not least reduce pollution.
We have to reconsider the word coined by the Polish American Architect Lubicz of Nycz: Urbantecture.
Urbanism & architecture are very delicate matters, intimately tided they create the frame for the world we live in.
This is a great book for planner, politicians and people, because everybody today is oblige to look at cities as sustainable places where life can prosper only in respect of nature.