Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World - Softcover

Graham, Wade

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1445659735 ISBN 13: 9781445659732

Publisher: Amberley Publishing, 2016

Synopsis

Dream Cities is a lively, unique and accessible cultural history of modern cities which allows us to view them through the planning, design, architects and movements that inspired and built them. It explores our urban areas in a new way as expressions of ideas, often conflicting, about how we should live, work, play, make, buy and think and tells the stories of the people who imagined the cities that became the blueprints for the world we live in.

Starting in the nineteenth century and continuing to today, what began as visionary concepts sometimes utopian, sometimes outlandish, always controversial were gradually adopted and constructed on a massive scale in cities around the world, from Dubai to Ulan Bator, London to Los Angeles. Our leafy suburbs, city skyscraper districts, infotainment-driven shopping malls and sustainable eco-developments are seen here as never before, from the fantasy villages of Bertram Goodhue to the superblocks of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright s Broadacre City.

In this elegantly designed and illustrated book, Graham uncovers the original plans of brilliant, obsessed and sometimes megalomaniacal designers, revealing the foundations of today s varied urban environment. Dream Cities is nothing less than a field guide to our modern world.

About this title

Review:

An ambitious study of the forms and ideas of the contemporary city. --New York Times

An excellent and novel exploration of key ideas behind city spaces ... Mr Graham is as masterly as a novelist ... He contends that the seven ideas that he considers are ones that shape the world ... with a continuing influence on the way our cities look and function today. Urban life may occasionally appear to be chaotic, but it in fact possesses an order that a thoughtful man like Mr Graham can see. --Wall Street Journal

From the Back Cover:

A lively, unique, and accessible cultural history that explores our cities in a new way--as expressions of ideas, often conflicting, about how we should live, work, play, make, buy, and believe

Beginning as visionary concepts, the blue-prints for the world we live in today--sometimes utopian, sometimes outlandish, always controversial--were gradually adopted and constructed on a massive scale in international cities from London to Dubai to Ulan Bator to Los Angeles. Wade Graham uses the lives of the pivotal dreamers behind these archetypes, as well as their acolytes and antagonists, to deconstruct our urban landscapes--the houses, towers, civic centers, condominiums, malls, boulevards, highways, and spaces in between--exposing the ideals and ideas embodied in each.

Through in-depth portraits that take us from the baroque fantasy villages of Bertram Goodhue to the superblocks of Le Corbusier's Radiant City to the pseudo-agrarian dispersal of Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City, our upscale leafy suburbs, downtown skyscraper districts, infotainment-driven shopping centers, and "sustainable" eco-developments are seen as never before. In this elegantly designed and illustrated book, Graham uncovers the original plans of brilliant, obsessed, and sometimes megalomaniacal designers, revealing the foundations of today's varied municipalities.

Dream Cities is nothing less than a field guide to our modern urban world.

Praise for Wade Graham's American Eden

"Mr. Graham recounts his tale with considerable verve and a vast erudition in the history of gardening and the arts generally. . . . Among much else, Mr. Graham shows us that the history of how our nation grew can be found in what it has grown."--Wall Street Journal

"A blazingly fresh, critical, and ecologically astute masterwork."--Booklist (starred review)

"Enjoyable . . . well researched, posing an interesting historic tie from the past to the present."--Washington Post

"Informative and absolutely engrossing . . . an astute analysis--and, ultimately, a joyous celebration--of four hundred years of ingenuity and vision."--Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome

"We are what we plant, LA-based writer Wade Graham posits in his history of gardens. When he isn't explaining the economic and cultural influences, he crafts fascinating profiles. . . . An engaging look at our own pieces of paradise."--Los Angeles Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1445659735
• ISBN 13: 9781445659732
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336