Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space [Paperback]

Michael Sorkin (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374523142 | ISBN-13: 978-0374523145 | Publication Date: March 1, 1992 | Edition: 1

America's cities are being rapidly transformed by a sinister and homogenous design. A new Kind of urbanism--manipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditional public space--is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and psuedo-historic marketplaces. If anything can be described as a paradigm for these places, it's the theme park, an apparently benign environment in which all is structured to achieve maximum control and in which the idea of authentic interaction among citizens has been thoroughly purged. In this bold collection, eight of our leading urbanists and architectural critics explore the emblematic sites of this new cityscape--from Silicon Valley to Epcot Center, South Street Seaport to downtown Los Angeles--and reveal their disturbing implications for American public life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Eight essays by architects and academics criticize as elitist and alienating such contemporary urban and extra-urban phenomena as mega-malls, historical re-creations and gentrification. Margaret Crawford uses Canada's West Edmonton Mall as a paradigm of the consumption-oriented pleasure dome. Langdon Winner offers a chilling analysis of Silicon Valley ("a vast suburb with no central city to give it meaning"), while Neil Smith discusses the greed and injustices that accompany the gentrification of New York's Lower East Side. And M. Christine Boyer dissects New York's South Street Seaport as an example of "historicized, commodifed, and privatized places." Nearly all the writers take easy aim at yuppies, as both perpetrators of inequality and victims of consumerist illusions, who care little about the poor and homeless excluded from these havens of affluence. In much softer focus, though, are the governments that have so tragically failed our cities. This bias detracts from an overall thought-provoking collection on our urban malaise. Sorkin is former architecture critic of the Village Voice.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This book offers eight leading architectural critics' views of the sameness that invades our public architecture and public space. Whether we live in California or Boston, shopping malls, office complexes, and other forms of construction offer, according to these essays, an astounding lack of individuality. What does this say about us, the recipients of and dwellers in these spaces? What does it say about our cultural differences that are being sacrificed? Cases in point are given: Montreal's Place Ville Marie, Manhattan's Lower East Side, Houston's The Gallerie shopping center, and others illustrate the placelessness of architecture today. Good reading. For public and special collections.
- Carol Spielman Lezak, General Learning Corp., Northbrook, Ill.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang; 1 edition (March 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374523142
• ISBN-13: 978-0374523145
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Critics' Contempt for Simulated Spaces, August 11, 2001

By 

"disneychick" (Main Street, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (Paperback)

This is a very thoughtful and provocative collection of eight essays on various simulated spaces which have infiltrated the American landscape. The book's overall thesis is that public space and "authentic" urban life increasingly has been replaced by simulations of urban life, usually as spaces of commodification (e.g. malls, gentrified districts, theme parks). In this process of replacing public space, aspects of American public life--open space for assembly, the interaction of different people, concern for communities--also get erased. While simulated spaces may seem to improve public space and public life, they do so at a cost, one that the critics seem to suggest is the loss of real public space and perhaps even of democracy.

The purpose of this book is not only to describe these spaces, but to oppose them. Each of the authors point to the negative effects of simulated space. In many cases, the essays' implications jump right out of the page and into your neighborhood. Margaret Crawford's essay on the Edmonton shopping mall could be applied to any mall in Anytown, USA. Neil Smith's essay on gentrification points out the high price that comes with "revitalization"; one is reminded of many similiar projects outside his NYC example: Philadelphia, Detroit, Seattle,and so forth. Edward Soja and Trevor Boddy both contribute well-written essays which demonstrate growing chasm between the "haves" and the "have-nots." With these essays, extended and local comparisons with dying urban areas and suburbia, sprawl, gated communities, and so forth are appropriate. Michael Sorkin's own essay on Disneyland turns a well-wrought phrase, and gives the Disney Studies scholar much to think about. (NOTE: Those interested in Disney should read this article if nothing else in the collection, although many of the essays are applicable to the study of Disney.) Of the essays, it is perhaps the one least obviously applicable to "real" life. But then again, Sorkin notes the distance between the simulated environment of the theme park and the reality of the city is decreasing.

Of course, the scholars' analyses are dark and even depressing. And more than once, the authors manage to sound like angry young critics filled with more agenda than action. More than once, extended discussion of the issues raised in the essays would have helped--although many of these authors do have full-length treatments elsewhere--or perhaps alternative perspectives which would have varied the collection's tone and helped sustain readers' interest. And like any collection some of the essays are stronger than others. Overall, though, the collection makes a reader stop and think. Many readers will end up carefully reconsidering 1) the state of American life and its public space and 2) one's participation in these developments. Variations deserves recognition for addressing these issues.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very comprehensive, April 21, 1999

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[e-mail] (New Brunswick, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (Paperback)

This book enlists many different authors, who all have an amazing point of view on the built environment. From gated communities to Disneyland, every chapter expresses concerns of fast-changing developed environments. Our cities are quickly becoming cold, enclosed enclaves. This book helped me realize how our society has snubbed the utilizaton of public space. This is definitely a book for every person interested in city planning, urban studies,or sociology. Whether a student or leisure reader, this book will open your minds to what is really taking place in our cities, suburbs, resorts, and recreational facilities. Any place in which society is forced to interact with one another is referred to in "Variations on a Theme Park". Read it. It will open your mind!