nicknicknicknick reviewed City Life by Witold Rybczynski
Review of 'City Life' on Goodreads
3 stars
1) "...there is something fleeting about the American city, as if it were a temporary venue for diversion, a place to find entertaining novelty, at least for a time, before settling down elsewhere. The historian John Lukacs has written about Americans' recklessness: the tendency to want to move around, not only from one part of the country to another, but from one neighborhood to another, even from one house to another. For such a mobile people, street corners would be appealing. The permanence of residence that was and is the stable foundation of European cities has always been absent in America, and accommodation to this transience has had an effect on the way that cities evolve and are altered. Lukacs speculates that this restlessness may have something to do with the vast, open continent itself."
2) "The original parts of these campuses, where buildings, landscaping, and public plazas complement each …
1) "...there is something fleeting about the American city, as if it were a temporary venue for diversion, a place to find entertaining novelty, at least for a time, before settling down elsewhere. The historian John Lukacs has written about Americans' recklessness: the tendency to want to move around, not only from one part of the country to another, but from one neighborhood to another, even from one house to another. For such a mobile people, street corners would be appealing. The permanence of residence that was and is the stable foundation of European cities has always been absent in America, and accommodation to this transience has had an effect on the way that cities evolve and are altered. Lukacs speculates that this restlessness may have something to do with the vast, open continent itself."
2) "The original parts of these campuses, where buildings, landscaping, and public plazas complement each other, remain the most fully realized examples of the civic art ideal and probably its most tangible legacy. These academic enclaves, many of which were built from scratch, gave architects the opportunity to design what were in effect small, self-contained towns. With the advantage of a private (and rich) patron and without the constraints imposed by zoning, commercial interests, multiple landowners, and municipal politics, architects could build large, comprehensively planned environments on a scale and with a consistency impossible in the city itself."
3) "Families ate lunch in the food court, a sunny space that almost felt like the outdoors thanks to the fairly large trees and the natural light filtering through the stretched fabric roof. The large open area, which was the convivial focus of the mall, was full of tables and seating; on the periphery were counters whose colorful overhead signs proclaimed a variety of take-away foods: Tex-Mex, Chinese, Italian, Middle Eastern. People carried their trays to the tables. Because there was no physical boundary between the eating area and the surrounding mall, the impression was of a giant sidewalk café.
I suppose that some people would find this an unsophisticated version of urbanity (although you could get a reasonable espresso here), and some of my academic colleagues would refer darkly to 'hyperconsumerism' and artificial reality. But I was more encouraged than depressed by the Plattsburgh mall. I saw people rubbing shoulders and meeting their fellow citizens in a noncombative environment---not behind the wheel of a car, but on foot. As for hyperconsumerism, commercial forces have always formed the center of the American city---the old downtown no less than the new---and it is unclear to me why sitting on a bench in a mall should be considered any more artificial than a bench in the park. Admittedly, I still liked to walk down Margaret Street, but it was a nostalgic urge. When I wanted to be part of a crowd, I went to the mall."