Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (Paperback)

~ Steve Graham (Author) "During the period between about 1850 and 1960 there was a general movement, particularly in Western cities, from the piecemeal and fragmented provision of networked..." (more)
Key Phrases: infrastructural ideal, premium network spaces, premium networked spaces, United States, New York, United Kingdom (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Splintering Urbanism is a significant work and achievement, bringing together a tremendous amount of research on networks and urban technologies and putting them in one 'manual' or 'guide', whilst at the same time providing an authoritative view of implications and limitations of the 'splintering' process ... it should earn a position as an essential item in any up-to-date reading list.' - Urban Studies

'Splintering Urbanism is a timely and significant addition to the field of Urban Studies.  It is set to change urban theory radically, ushering in a new paradigm: a critical urbanism centred on examining infrastructure and flow. As such Splintering Urbanism should be required reading for scholars and students of globalisation, urban processes and city life.' - Rob Kitchen, Department of Geography and NIRSA for Environment and Planning

'Both interesting and important. It addresses the notion of the network city in a profound way ... a promising and fruitful approach.' - Journal of Housing and the Built Environment

Splintering Urbanism is a significant work and achievement, bringing together a tremendous amount of research on networks and urban technologies and putting them in one manual or guide, whilst at the same time providing an authoritative view of implications and limitations of the splintering process ... it should earn a position as an essential item in any up-to-date reading list. - Urban Studies

Both interesting and important. It addresses the notion of the network city in a profound way ... a promising and fruitful approach. - Journal of Housing and the Built Environment

Product Description

Two defining processes shape our age: the urbanization of our planet and the uneven connections of globalization. Both are underpinned by radical transformations of networked infrastructures: telecommunications, transport, energy, water, and even urban streets. Splintering Urbanism offers a path-breaking analysis of the contemporary urban condition through the lens of such infrastructure networks. It develops an unprecedented international and interdisciplinary analysis of the complex interactions between infrastructure networks, new technologies, and contemporary urban spaces.

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (July 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415189659
• ISBN-13: 978-0415189651
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #604,565 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars reworking urban thinking, April 13, 2002

By A Customer

Graham and Marvin change the way we look at the city. Borrowing from architecture, geography, urban planning and sociology they demonstrate how infrastructure, mobility and urban life are intertwined in messy, fragmented configurations. Splintering Urbanism illustrates the increasingly segregated city, describing the unequal access to infrastructures of energy, information and transport - where providing corporations `cherry pick' the most potentially profitable users. The books major value is its integration of a corpus of diverse theoretical and practical approaches to the urban. This book is likely to reinvent the imagining of the city for academics, planners and architects alike.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Aggravating, January 5, 2005

By	tierny - See all my reviews

This explores the sociopolitical causes and ramifications in the development of modern infrastructure. But due to continual stating and restating of simple points, a reader loses track of what the authors are attempting to train his attention on. With all the research the authors have done on the subject matter, you might expect that; but it could take you a year of poring over this to get the full thrust of this. It certainly isn't concise.

The books real problem is the writing style. The text is a hybrid of bureaucratic and academic writing, defensively constructed to obviate charges of ambiguity or assumption. Here's a typical sentence:
"Thus we could argue that the supplementation of state forms of collectivised infrastructure development that supported the modern ideal with privatised regimes that need to attract international finance capital seems very likely to support the splintering of integrated and bundled networks into a myriad of individually financed and managed infrastructure projects."

You can go a few pages before encountering a sentence that hasn't been overworked like this. Torpid.

The other big problem is it's design. What you get out of it will depend on whether you can overcome the disruptive format. Just when you've finally bit into a passage of that writing, a new heading in boldface interrupts both the text and your concentration. This occurs once or twice a page for 400 pages. It isn't helpful. Is this a book, or is it six hundred short articles? Frequent sidebars also induce reader distraction.