Customer Reviews

City Life: Urban Expectations In A New World

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The back cover contains a quote from Wall Street Journal reviewer Roger Starr, stating that CITY LIFE by Witold Rybczynski is a "fascinating investigation of what cities - especially modern cities - should be like." This isn't strictly true. It's an investigation all right, but one more focused on what modern cities actually are and how they came to be that way, than a manifesto about the way things ought to be. A lot of history is covered, from brief mentions of the earlier dwellings of the Native Americans to the complexities inherent in our modern metropolises.

The book focuses mostly upon the development of cities in the United States and Canada. European cities are occasionally mentioned and discussed, but only in how they compare to their North American cousins. It's a history of cities, which combines modern-day thoughts on their development as well as some historical comments from what the people of the time thought of how their cities were emerging. Rybczynski also manages to touch on the roles of commercialism, art, and the unique qualities of North America that have helped to define our cities. Cities did not spring fully-formed, nor were they all laid out at the same time, and the author takes time to explore how different approaches to city planning created vastly differing results. He compares the many different approaches, from the organized and structured to the evolving and improvised.

The absolute biggest flaw with this text is that it is indeed just a text. Outside of the cover (featuring a sketching of a 19th Century street-scene and a poignant pre-9/11 photograph of the New York City skyline), there are no illustrations. No pictures, no diagrams, no maps, no charts, no blueprints, no photos -- nothing. Like Alice, I couldn't understand why someone would write a book such as this without including pictures. Rybczynski, therefore, spends far too much time describing city layouts, maps, street diagrams and other visual artifacts, leaving the reader without a pictorial aid. Photographs and maps are described rather than included. It's very frustrating. A picture is worth a thousand words, and in a book that is this heavily involved concerned with what things look like, some pictures would have been invaluable.

Rybczynski's writing style is relatively engaging, though he does have an unfortunate tendency to lapse into dry lists of various items (usually one word mentions of various architects and city planners). This can be infrequently distracting, leading one to wonder if perhaps some of the information could have been conveyed in a more interesting way. Still, the history of cities as well as the philosophy behind their growth makes for fascinating subjects, so whatever faults may lie in the book, it is still well worth reading.

I picked this book up out in Portland, Oregon. Out there for a conference, this was my first time in Portland. The city sat like a gem in my mind for years, a northwest Mecca of pleasant living and educated population. When my boss told me we needed to attend a conference there, for once I didn't gripe. But somehow, the city disappointed me, in much the same way this book did. Both held out an intriguing promise and both fell short, not from lack of expertise, but from good intentions.

I've read two other books by Mr. Rybczyncki, "Looking Around" and "The Look of Architecture". Both were fine reads, written and littered with pleasant insight. The same can be said of "City Life".

Rybczyncki obviously knows what he's talking about. And I think that's ultimately his problem. He sticks to what he knows. The book is clean, scrubbed of the messiness that makes cities so interesting. There aren't even any diagrams or illustrations. Instead he briskly walks you through the history of the American city in 200 pages. One of the reviewers here said he read this book for a high school history class. That seems about right. Facts and trends are revealed, but only one idea surfaces. In some ways this primacy of focus must be commended. The information is conveyed clearly and concisely. Rybczynski runs no risk of being called out on a theory that might prove wrong. The closet he treads to controversy is admitting a fondness for the mall.

Outlandish theories need not be the goal. But there the book offer so little to disagree with you almost feel like you didn't learn anything. It seems Rybczyncki with his gentile sensibility, has no wish to offend.

Portland's all clean lines, small blocks and mixed usage. The perfect city. Walkable and drivable. As I was strolling around, wasting time I should have been spending at the conference, the city tried to seduce me. Climbing the hills into the Rose Garden, I actually heard the city whisper to me, "Move here. Move here. Look around you. How nice is this? Leave dirty, loud New York. You can live here. You can be upper middle class too; drive an SUV Volvo, live in a pretty wood house painted dark green, go running in the hills, shop at the organic farmers market." My stomach warmed over the fantasy, as if I just drank a full glass of warm water. It seemed life would have no problems, if I lived in Portland. I would forget about Lisa; my career would trundle along; I would go to more dinner parties. Everything had been thought out. And that would kind of suck. Plus, I remembered: I hate driving, I don't run and I never cook. But the city plan is good.

And somehow "City Life" reminds me of this feeling. The prose whisks you along, laying facts before you. I actually underlined quite a bit. But then I got to the last twenty pages, realized there's not much left and asked, "That's it?"

I met a city planner out in Portland who extolled to me, "Portland has more jazz clubs than any other city in the U.S. other than New York." Which made me think, jazz may be dead.

While driving up the Ohio River valley to Cincinatti, my husband and I read this book aloud to each other. City Life provides a framework for thinking about city development and the history of American expansion. It confirmed our intuitions plus provided new food for thought. If you're the type who enjoys meandering through a city wondering about the hows and whys of the city's rhythm, layout and buildings, this book is for you.

This book attempts to answer the question-an important one to my thinking-"Why don't our cities look like the great ones: Paris, Rome?" Rybczynski, a student of architecture and city planning discusses the history of American blunders from the highway to the skyscraper, from the "City Beautiful" movement, to the negro rush toward city centers in the late 60's. It seems that everything that could've gone wrong, essentially has. Still, the author sees hope in the forms of a few master-planned towns (east coast), and of the modern suburban mall, which he sees as a place for people to gather and do commerce, while feeling safer than they would in urban areas due to the malls' governing rules and aesthetic uniformities which have been abolished in the name of individual freedoms elsewhere, to our peril.

How does one write a book on city planning and not include a single illustation?

Rybczenski is a scholar with the fluid, conversational style of a magazine feature writer. In this thoughtful, accessible book he explains why American cities, even the most beautiful and vital, never seem to achieve the grandeur or civic grace of European capitals.

In just over 200 pages Rybczynski glides through the history of North American urbanization, from Anasazi cliff towns to suburban Levittown. In the process, he examines the failures of urban renewal, the surprising virtues of shopping malls and the enduring livability of "garden suburbs" such as Lake Forest, Illinois and Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. Throughout, he is insightful and refreshingly open-minded, never resorting to the simple-minded cities good/suburbs bad dichotomy that characterizes much writing about urbanism today. While conscientious readers may go away with plenty of ideas on how to improve their own streets, towns and cities, Rybczynski's task is to describe, rather than proscribe.

I read this book as I was considering where to buy a house in the DC Metro area. It was without a doubt the most helpful thing in making a wise choice since there were conflicting ideals regarding the accessiblity to activities if you live in the middle of a city versus the convenience and quality of life of living in a new suburb. In the end, I decided that Mr. Rybczynski had made all the arguments and fleshed them out beautifully allowing me to also discover the value of living in a very old, very close-in suburb. The architecture is interesting, the communities are set up to be cooperative, the drive is quite short to downtown and the only thing I am missing is mega-stores and malls in my neighborhood. This book makes it clear that there are many ways to look at the issue of "whatever happened to city life that I once knew." I could not put it down. Highly recommended.

Author touched upon interesting ideas on why American cities are different than those of the European/Asian cities, but more often than not it reads like a histroy book of urban development, rather than the in depth analysis that one would assume from the title/description. Many key points are revealed, but all need further development before one can be convinced of their validity

Rybczynski has compiled an excellent commentary on urban America and why it looks and functions the way it does. It is required reading for my graduate students. I hardily recommend it for anyone interested in the history, state and future of our cities.

THIS WAS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I READ LAST YEAR. YOU WILL NEVER LOOK UPON A CITY THE SAME WAY AGAIN. IT IS FILLED WITH INTERESTING FACTS. THE AUTHOR'S WRITING STYLE IS FRESH AND CONVERSATIONIAL. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT.