Free Download A History of Future Cities

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A History of Future Cities

Free Download A History of Future Cities

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Review

In these deft portraits of St. Petersburg, Russia; Bombay, India; Shanghai, China; and Dubai, UAE; journalist Brook (The Trap) artfully condenses and illustrates three centuries of revolutionary urban development and globalizing impulses.An intimate, canny comparative study of four of the great world cities--St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai. . . . [With an] accessible, entertaining generalist's perspective . . . Brook looks at these metropolises as a testament to human imagination and as a barometer of future promise. . . . Enormously elucidating and relevant. --Kirkus ReviewsPersuasive and lushly detailed.Uncommonly interesting and intelligent.The pleasure in Mr. Brook's unusual history is in his descriptions of the creation of these cities. The deeper message, though, is about the tensions such cities create.An interesting thesis about the city's role in fomenting political change in the modern era.'Instant cities' like Shenzhen, China, may seem like twenty-first-century twins of 'disposable cities' like rust-belt Camden, New Jersey. But in this probing new book that is at once both charming and reflective, Daniel Brook tells the story of urban hybrids conceived to fuse Western cosmopolitanism and local culture. His close but never pedantic reading of these metropolises puts the city back at the center of our vision, reminding us that in new and old towns alike, the urban amalgam of creativity, diversity, and mobility offers a key that not only unlocks the past but also opens the door to our future. --Benjamin R. Barber, author of Jihad vs. McWorld[An] inspired tour of the postmodern city. . . . Invigorating. "Persuasive and lushly detailed. "Uncommonly interesting and intelligent. "

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About the Author

Daniel Brook is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. His last book, A History of Future Cities, was longlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize and selected as one of the ten best books of the year by the Washington Post. Brook’s research and writing have been supported by fellowships from institutions including the Library of Congress and Tulane University’s New Orleans Center for the Gulf South. Born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island, and educated at Yale, Brook lives in New Orleans.

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Product details

Paperback: 480 pages

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (April 21, 2014)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780393348866

ISBN-13: 978-0393348866

ASIN: 0393348865

Product Dimensions:

5.5 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches

Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.2 out of 5 stars

29 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#198,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

This book follows the inception and the progress of four cities; St. Petersburg ,Shanghai, Bombay, and Dubai. They share two important characteristics: they were planned as cities of the future and they are Eastern cities oriented toward the West. He points out that Orient is a noun meaning east and a verb meaning to place oneself in space. All four of these cities were founded on a vision. Peter the Great converted a swampy backwater into his vision of Amsterdam, then the wealthiest city on the earth. Historians have often noted that the city appeared as if set there from the sky. Shanghai was the vision of foreign investors. After forcing China to open its gates to trade, they developed Shanghai as the modern foreign capital of import/export. Bombay was modeled on the British model of civilization and commerce. Dubai was the dream of a sheikh to build infrastructure and convert a desert into the center of the world.The premise of the city of tomorrow is a fascinating one, and this book is a wealth of information. Brook has a scholarly style and the reading is dense but accessable. I am familiar with all four cities, but was interested and surprised by many of the observations. Brooks compares and contrasts the cities through the years of their growth and development. In Dubai's case, there are not so many years. He discusses how the architecture reflects the philosophy of each period and traces the trends of building in context of politics. In the final section, he examines the status of each city and the ways it has or has not lived to the dream of its inception.Most cogent to me was reading how each of the cities had the same startling appearance to the world in their birth as Dubai presents now. Each city has had a dream for its citizens, although mostly this dream was only meant for the wealthy and sometimes for some nationalities and not others. But in its day, each city depended for its growth on the huge numbers of refugees seeking work and shelter within its walls. It is a fascinating premise and a book well worth reading.

This book describes the transformations of four artificially created cities: St Petersburg, Mumbai, Shanghai and Dubai. Cities open on the world but without an hinterland. Their architecture and mores borrowed from outside . But on this apparent artificial soil an incredible creative culture flourished. The first Chinese newspaper free of censorship appeared in Shanghai in the 30s, in a city created by opium traders!This book is a celebration of cities as international meeting places of cultures, ideas and technology.

This is a well thought out survey of up and comer cities throughout the last few centuries. It identifies cycles of growth, overgrowth, reinvention, stagnation, revolution and hope that are worth considering today as we look at our own urban hubs and follow their evolution. HFC is a thinking person's time travel book to urban centers that promised to change the world (in fact, they did).

Brook's analysis of St. Petersburg, Mumbai, Dubai and Shanghai is phenomenal. In the first level, he presents a detailed overview of the history of these three cities which, in and of itself is quite interesting to an average reader. However, his analysis has even larger implications with regards to globalism and exchange of ideas. His analysis of the cities' roles as catalyzers of change and development via bringing millions of people together is an interesting and a valid perspective.

As a matter of full disclosure, I'll admit that I'm a long-time friend of the author's, a fact that upon finishing this book fills me with both pride and a little bit of envy. It's a brilliant book, and for starters far more gracefully written and genuinely funny than a book of its intellectual ambition has a right to be. Dan is the anti-Thomas Friedman: he visits the "flattest", most globalized places on earth and emerges with (often hilarious) stories that illustrate both the uniqueness and the humanity of their inhabitants.On to that intellectual ambition. As I see it, the book concerns two pressing questions.First, when will we reach a point where "modernity" is no longer "Western" any more than agrarian culture is "Sumerian"? To some degree, the answer might lie elsewhere from the four cities the book considers: Tokyo and Seoul come to mind as cities that are both thoroughly modern and thoroughly non-Western (or at least that show the ability to assimilate Western influences on their own terms). But for much of the world, the legacies of colonialism and underdevelopment remain pressing realities. In describing the history of St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai, the book gives a clear impression of how the Russian, Chinese, Indian, and Emirati inhabitants of their global cities struggled with the implications of aspiring to foreign, modern ideals and contending with the power of foreign, modern institutions.Second, what does it mean for a city to be "organic" in an age where powerful agents, whether the Chinese Community Party, Dubai Inc., or the private developers of Mumbai, can finance and project manage ready-made districts constituting entire cultural milieus. To the extent that the cities described in the book inflict on cultural vertigo their inhabitants, they are extreme examples of the scale on which urban development now happens throughout the world. In Atlanta, there might not be a need or demand for an English-themed suburban village complete with British-style public school, but there are developments on the scale of towns or even small cities that cater to buyers of homes in the $220,000 to $240,000 range. What does it mean for our social and cultural environments to be curated by powerful institutions? Implicit in the book's probing of the meaning of these Frankensteinian cities is the question of how residents of any contemporary city form their own genuine culture.Highly recommended.

Bought this book for a brother in-law-in-law. I liked it already so I bought it for him because he's a history teacher. He will like it too. Packed in a bit too tightly with another order.

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