Image from Coce

Variations on a theme park : the new American city and the end of public space / Michael Sorkin, editor.

Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Hill and Wang, 1992Description: xv, 252 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0374523142
  • 9780374523145
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 307.76 23
Contents:
Variations on a theme park / Michael Sorkin -- The world in a shopping mall / Margaret Crawford -- Silicon Valley Mystery House / Langdon Winner -- New city, new frontier : the Lower East Side as wild, wild West / Neil Smith -- Inside exopolis : scenes from Orange County / Edward W. Soja -- Underground and overhead : building the analogous city / Trevor Boddy -- Fortress Los Angeles : the militarization of urban space / Mike Davis -- Cities for sale : merchandising history at South Street Seaport / M. Christine Boyer -- See you in Disneyland / Michael Sorkin.
Content advice: 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 pseudo-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.
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-249).

Variations on a theme park / Michael Sorkin -- The world in a shopping mall / Margaret Crawford -- Silicon Valley Mystery House / Langdon Winner -- New city, new frontier : the Lower East Side as wild, wild West / Neil Smith -- Inside exopolis : scenes from Orange County / Edward W. Soja -- Underground and overhead : building the analogous city / Trevor Boddy -- Fortress Los Angeles : the militarization of urban space / Mike Davis -- Cities for sale : merchandising history at South Street Seaport / M. Christine Boyer -- See you in Disneyland / Michael Sorkin.

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 pseudo-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.

Machine converted from AACR2 source record.

There are no comments on this title.

to post a comment.

Powered by Koha