Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century [Hardcover]

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Publishers
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631134441
• ISBN-13: 978-0631134442
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,333,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MAGNIFICENT HISTORY OF VARIOUS "NEW CITIES" MOVEMENTS, January 12, 2010

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (Paperback)

Peter Hall (Professor of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley) has written many books on urban planning, and this 1988 book is a wonderful summary and history of various progressive "new cities" movements from 1880 to the present.

Hall includes chapters on such subjects as "Cities of Imagination," "Reactions to the Nineteenth-Century Slum City," "The Garden City Solution," "The Birth of Regional Planning," "The City Beautiful Movement," "The Corbusian Radiant City," "The Automobile Suburb," and more.

He begins by noting that "The really striking point is that many, though by no means all, of the early visions of the planning movement stemmed from the anarchist movement, which flourished in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth."

Hall opines that "despite doughty competition, Ebenezer Howard (inventor of the "Garden City" concept) is the most important single character in this entire tale." He also observes that "The Stein-Wright Radburn cities are unquestionably the most important American contribution to the garden-city tradition. True, on strict criteria, like their European counterparts they fail to qualify; all three are now long since submerged in the general sprawl of suburbia, and to seek them out on the ground demands a good map and some degree of determination. But as garden suburbs, they mark perhaps the most significant advance in design beyond the standards set by Unwin and Parker."

Despite his enthusiasm, Hall is capable of objectivity: "the new towns are self-evidently good places to live and above all to grow up in; they do exist in harmony with their surrounding countryside and the sheer mindless ugliness of the worst of the old sprawl has been eliminated. But it is not quite as rich and worthy and high-minded as they hoped: a good life, but not a new civilization."

This book will be of considerable interest to persons interested in urban planning, the New Urbanism, Garden Cities, Ecocities, Village Homes, etc.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Planning History, September 21, 2008

By 

Daniel Lobo (Washington, DC More often than not.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (Paperback)

A reference classic to approach with a critical eye the history of urban planning. Probably what Peter Hall is most recognized for...

21 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read and study of planning history!, August 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cities of Tomorrow (Paperback)

My university is using this book as a text as part of our study of Planning History. It is a very good read and is unlike a textbook. Outlines planning history from 1880 to 1980.