CITY LIFE : Urban Expectations In A New World

Rating:
Summary: Lazy and banal
Review: Anyone who's ever given half a thought to the influences which shaped American cities could have written this book. Rybczynski only brings a pedantic specificity and inane pseudo-historical perspective. It all really falls apart when he trots out de Toqueville. Don't bother reading it. And for God's sake don't waste your money on buying a copy.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting book
Review: I read this book in a high school history class and it was fascinating, a topic that I don't think about but was totally interested by. However, at times it got kind of dull and redundant. I had problems staying awake, though I never actually fell asleep. One of my friends also read this book and tells me that she fell asleep while reading, though it is interesting. It's a good topic, not one that is usually considered, but it was not written in a very exciting manner, but still interesting. There are pictures on the inside covers of the hardcover version. This book asks and answers some very good questions. Really, why are our cities like that? There are answers in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Informative
Review: The back cover contains a quote from Wall Street Journal reviewer Roger Starr, stating that CITY LIFE by Witold Rybczynski is a "fascinating investigation of what cities - especially modern cities - should be like." This isn't strictly true. It's an investigation all right, but one more focused on what modern cities actually are and how they came to be that way, than a manifesto about the way things ought to be. A lot of history is covered, from brief mentions of the earlier dwellings of the Native Americans to the complexities inherent in our modern metropolises.

The book focuses mostly upon the development of cities in the United States and Canada. European cities are occasionally mentioned and discussed, but only in how they compare to their North American cousins. It's a history of cities, which combines modern-day thoughts on their development as well as some historical comments from what the people of the time thought of how their cities were emerging. Rybczynski also manages to touch on the roles of commercialism, art, and the unique qualities of North America that have helped to define our cities. Cities did not spring fully-formed, nor were they all laid out at the same time, and the author takes time to explore how different approaches to city planning created vastly differing results. He compares the many different approaches, from the organized and structured to the evolving and improvised.

The absolute biggest flaw with this text is that it is indeed just a text. Outside of the cover (featuring a sketching of a 19th Century street-scene and a poignant pre-9/11 photograph of the New York City skyline), there are no illustrations. No pictures, no diagrams, no maps, no charts, no blueprints, no photos -- nothing. Like Alice, I couldn't understand why someone would write a book such as this without including pictures. Rybczynski, therefore, spends far too much time describing city layouts, maps, street diagrams and other visual artifacts, leaving the reader without a pictorial aid. Photographs and maps are described rather than included. It's very frustrating. A picture is worth a thousand words, and in a book that is this heavily involved concerned with what things look like, some pictures would have been invaluable.

Rybczynski's writing style is relatively engaging, though he does have an unfortunate tendency to lapse into dry lists of various items (usually one word mentions of various architects and city planners). This can be infrequently distracting, leading one to wonder if perhaps some of the information could have been conveyed in a more interesting way. Still, the history of cities as well as the philosophy behind their growth makes for fascinating subjects, so whatever faults may lie in the book, it is still well worth reading.