Customer Reviews

Cosmopolis II

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This overview and mini-diatribe tries to pick up where Cosmopolis left off, and succeeds rather well--unfortunately, Sandercock's first book in this series didn't really take us anywhere. She seems to be responding to criticism that her superficial synthesis of multicultural planning theory is long on posture and short on application, but there isn't enough meat on this dog's bones to really meet these expectations. Chapter 6, "There is no hiding place: Integrating immigrants," best addresses these concerns. However, her attempt at positive recommendations quickly decays into another hodgepodge of case studies a la Cosmopolis I, where planners' previous mistakes are scowled upon as cautionary tales, with no path to an enlightened practice shown for the reader.
Overall, a well-intentioned work, but incomplete. Sandercock's ivory-tower theorist's perspective belies her self-proclaimed gritty street-level expose of the 'invisible.' It is left to the reader, or a researcher more inspired than herself, to give this stray dog a home with the working planner.

Leonie Sandercock has produced a magnificently readable and cool 'sequel' to her 1990s offering of Cosmopolis. Cosmopolis II is a breath of fresh air in the increasingly stale debate over urban planning processes and their links to theory. This could take planners beyond the 'facilitating/mediating' role in battles over planned developments and their impacts, particularly on marginalised peoples and groups. Planners need to become listeners rather than stage-managers, to learn the community's stories and aspirations BEFORE, not after, firm plans or alternatives are devised. A more inclusive approach, which affords communities the chance to tell their own stories and to identify the special values and places in their environments that they want respected, is called for. Sandercock gives current examples of such approaches restoring the development balance in favour of people. They are drawn from progressive 'mongrel cities' : this is not a mere post-modern pipe-dream.

Sandercocks book transports the readers to a different realm of a world where difference is celebrated and not avoided. The text forces the reader to confront the realities of our less than perfect society and dares to propose solutions that can only be achieved in utopia. overall a good read for a planner who desires to open the mind to a new world of possibilities; and maybe even a paradigm shift which is much needed in the era of postmodernist relativist limbo.
One thing that did not appeal to me though were the graphic images which i believe is somehow celebrated creativity but i find rather unappealing .overall a very interesting book that provided food for thought. Highly recommended