15 May 2012 | cities, City, My Books |
"Human history would be vastly different without cities. The move from village life, where one is surrounded by family and kin, to urban life among strangers – this has fundamentally shaped us as a species. Cities, as Lewis Mumford has said, are 'the molds in which men’s lifetimes have cooled and congealed.' Writing begins in cities, and cities are where the first libraries and museums are built. These dense centres of humanity have nurtured trade, science, religion, philosophy and theatre. The story of cities is also the story of human civilisation."
I've been interviewed about my new book City by Karl Whitney. Read the full interview at 3:AM Magazine.
14 May 2012 | cities, London |
When I was reviewing a collection of Michael Moorcock's non-fiction recently, I was struck by this passage from a piece he wrote about London in 1988, called 'Building the New Jerusalem':
'Cities can be neither simplified nor easily defined. They are hard to interpret. They are the ultimate and natural expression of human evolution, of human dreams and needs; they are as complex as the people who build them, as the planet itself; they have a sensitive ecology. In their architecture and their social organisation they are capable of reflecting the very best in us.'
That's a wonderful quote that neatly encapsulates what I was trying to achieve in my book City. On the future of London, he writes:
'Instead of retreating from the notion of the megametropolis we should have embraced it, celebrated it, grown comfortable with it, equipped it with hospitals, crèches, schools, houses set among imaginatively laid-out parks and "wild gardens", with low-rise asymmetrical buildings designed to blend with and reflect the organic world around them. We should acknowledge and revel in the natural complexity of the London we can create for ourselves.'
It's an inspirational piece of writing about cities in general and London in particular. The collection - London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction - is well worth reading.
08 May 2012 | cities, City |
"The character of a city comes from its people. And that’s why the best cities are multicultural and cosmopolitan: there’s a unique atmosphere when people are constantly negotiating the differences between cultures and languages. I hope what this book shows is how positive that is, and how urbanism isn’t a new thing. It’s our natural mode of living.”
From my interview with Vision magazine about urbanism, Dubai and my new book, City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age.
Read more here.
11 April 2012 | cities, Japan, Kyoto, Tokyo |
I’ve just returned after a holiday in Japan. It was my first time there. We stayed in Tokyo and Kyoto, with a few days in the mountains of Hakone. As I write, my brain keeps telling me it’s the middle of the night. I’m dog-tired but my mind is also buzzing with the sights and sounds of Japanese cities.
In the sixteenth century, Tokyo was little more than a small town. Now it’s the largest metropolis on the planet, with some 33 million people living in the metropolitan region. That’s about the same number as live in the whole of Canada.
Continue reading...
05 March 2012 | City |
Very pleased to see this description of City in today's Kirkus Reviews: "As exciting, sprawling and multifarious as a shining city on a hill."
Bloomsbury Publishing have also just sent me a link to a digital sampler of the book, so you can judge for yourself. It's online here.
