City Life: Urban Expectations in a New WorldScribner, 1995 - 256 pages "From the architect and social historian who changed the way we look at houses in Home: The Short History of an Idea comes an elegant, provocative exploration of the world outside our walls and of the fascinating, revelatory history of American city life. "Sweeping cultural history... full of delicious information," said Vogue of Witold Rybcynski's Home. His next three books - The Most Beautiful House in the World, Waiting for the Weekend, and Looking Around - confirmed his reputation as one of our most engaging writers of cultural and domestic history. "At once charming and intelligent," said The Boston Globe. In City Life, Witold Rybcynski looks at what we want from cities, how they have evolved, and what accounts for their unique identities. In this vivid description of everything from the early colonial settlements to the advent of the skyscraper to the changes wrought by the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and telecommuting, Rybycynzki reveals how our urban spaces have been shaped by the landscapes and lifestyles of the New World. With marvelous detail about such cities as Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Washington, Savannah, Boston, New Orleans, and Charleston, this is an inspired, engrossing book by "an unerringly lucid writer" (The Dallas Morning News)." -- |
Contents
PREFACE II | 11 |
The Measure of a Town | 35 |
A New Uncrowded World | 51 |
Copyright | |
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acres American urban Annapolis architects architecture areas automobile avenues Boston boulevards British builders built Burnham Cabrini-Green capital cars central century Chestnut Hill Chicago City Beautiful City Beautiful movement city planning civic art colonial commercial construction Corbusier culture Daniel Burnham decade department store downtown Europe European feet French garden suburbs grand green grid grid planning industrial Jane Jacobs John John Lukacs land landscape largest Le Corbusier live Llewellyn Park located London Louis Manhattan medieval ment metro miles million Montreal neighborhoods nineteenth-century Olmsted Paris Parisian pedestrian Philadelphia planners Plattsburgh Plaza population projects public buildings public housing railroad residential river Robert A. M. Stern Saint Savannah shopping centers shopping malls sidewalks skyscrapers small town social spaces square street layout suburban surrounding tion Tocqueville towers town planning traditional trolley United University Press urban design village walls Washington Williamsburg Woodward World Yorkship Village