PD Smith

Today, for the first time in history more than half the population of the planet live in cities. Two hundred years ago, just three per cent were city dwellers, but by 2050, 75 per cent will be urbanites. My new book City is a guidebook to our urban age, taking the reader on a journey through the past, present and future of the world’s cities.

The experience of living in cities is universal. As one historian has written: ‘A town is always a town, wherever it is located, in time as well as space.’ The first cities were built in the fertile land between the rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates in the south of Mesopotamia, part of modern Iraq.

When the first city builders set out on their urban experiment thousands of years ago, they created far more than a new man-made environment built of mud bricks. From them emerged the building blocks of civilisation, including essential skills such as writing and mathematics.

City dwellers created a new way of being. Humanity was reinvented in these pioneering cities. Urban communities formed a revolutionary social and moral order that broke free from the rigid structures – tribes and clans – of the rural world. According to a medieval German saying, ‘Stadtluft macht frei’, city air sets you free. You can be whatever you want to be in a city.

Above all, what motivated me to write City was a desire to explore and celebrate what is undoubtedly humankind’s greatest achievement. They are complex and increasingly sophisticated technological environments that (pace Winston Churchill) shape us as we shape them.

When you have spent all your life in cities, it is easy to forget the exhilarating sense of awe felt by those who encounter the city for the first time. The German poet Heinrich Heine experienced this in 1827: ‘I have seen the greatest wonder which the world can show to the astonished spirit; I have seen it, and am more astonished than ever – and still there remains fixed in my memory that stone forest of houses, and amid them the rushing stream of faces, of living human faces, with all their motley passions, all their terrible impulses of love, of hunger, and of hate – I am speaking of London.’

Heine’s words speak powerfully of the potentiality and sheer concentrated energy of the city: intense, overwhelming, exciting, chaotic, and sometimes more than a little scary.

Poets like Heine make the world anew through their work, so that we see it as if for the first time. They make the stone stony, in Viktor Shklovsky’s memorable phrase. I hope my book will reawaken in you, the reader, something of the sense of wonder that Heine felt on seeing London for the first time.

Iain Sinclair is right when he says that ‘walking is the best way to explore and exploit the city’. To really understand a city, you need to walk its streets, reading its geography and history through the soles of your feet. My book is designed with this in mind, as a guidebook to an imaginary ‘Everycity’. It will accompany you on your way around those many features of urban life and geography that have been present in cities since the beginning and have become part of our urban genetic code.

City is divided into eight sections – Arrival, History, Customs, Where To Stay, Getting Around, Money, Time Out, and Beyond the City. Each section contains between three and five essays. In Customs, for example, you will find essays on writing, street language, graffiti, demonstrations and carnivals. Each of these also contains a mini essay exploring one aspect in more detail, such as the momentous events in Tahrir Square, which is part of the essay on demonstrations.

After each section there is a longer essay on a more concrete feature of the urban landscape, typically a structure or space common to most, if not all, cities. They explore the Central Station, the City Wall, the House of God, the Hotel, the Skyscraper, the Department Store, the Park, and the Ruins. All the essays are illustrated.

If you want, you can start on page one and read all the way through to the end. But I have tried to create a book in which you can wander and drift. The elements of surprise and discovery are important, just as they are when you explore a real city. Open the book anywhere and begin – there are no set routes.

From the Central Station you could strike out to Chinatown or the House of God. Then you could grab some Street Food to eat in the Park before making your way to the Department Store. In the evening you could explore the City and the Stage, or stroll through the Red-Light District, and then head back to your Hotel or Downtown apartment for the night. As in a real city, you can follow any number of pathways through the book. And don’t worry about getting lost. Some say it’s the only way really to experience a city.

A book such as City takes quite a while to write. (I’ve been working on it since 2007.) It’s a rich field for research and new material is appearing practically every day as cities evolve and grow. While writing City I came across many fascinating topics, quotations and images that could have been included in the book. In an alternative, Borgesian universe, City might morph into a neverending encyclopaedia of urban wonders. But in what we choose to call the real world, I limited the book to 120,000 or so words. The rest I hope to post on the urban Tumblr I have started, together with any new pieces that happen to come my way.

If you’re not familiar with Tumblr, one of the best ways of browsing it is through the archive. But I also try to use tags. Click these to see some of the past posts: urbanization, ecocities, transport, London, parks, photography, New York, graffiti, ideal cities, future cities, smart cities, urban planning and architecture. Many of the tags are the same as the essay titles in City.

I’m always interested in news about cities. If you have something to share, Twitter is a good way to get in touch. I use the hashtag ♯cities for urban topics.

If you want to read some of my reviews and articles on urban themes you can find them by clicking here.

You can find photos of some of my favourite cities on my Flickr page.

City is published on 10 May 2012 by Bloomsbury in the UK and on 19 June in the US. I hope you like it. You can see a digital sampler of the first section here.

I've also been interviewed by 3:AM Magazine about cities and my book.

What people are saying about City

"Whether evoking the slums of Mumbai, a 1905 dinner party at London’s Savoy Hotel, or the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán before Cortés conquered it in 1521, Smith proves a lively, learned narrator with a strong synthetic sense. Discursive, imaginative, and comprehensive, his analysis of everything from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to skateboarding and graffiti should be savored. Read in parts or whole, readers can wander and drift, and enjoy the element of surprise, just as in the exploration of a real city."
- Publishers Weekly, 13 February 2012. Starred review.

"Smith composes a polyphonic paean to our urban past, present and future... As exciting, sprawling and multifarious as a shining city on a hill."
- Kirkus Reviews, 15 March 2012. Starred review.

"Hugely enjoyed @PD_Smith's City, a deep and authoritative anatomisation of the place where most of us now live."
- Paul McAuley on Twitter

“Like any great city, this is a book to get lost in, to try out new areas, to sample to savor, to enjoy…VERDICT: A wonderful and revealing look at cities in all their glory from viewpoints throughout history. Highly recommended for readers across many subject categories, including urban studies, cultural history, and travel.”
- Library Journal, 137, no 6 (1 April 2012): 86-87. Starred review.

 

 

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