As urban problems abound, so do radical solutions. This thread shows some selected books of writers who have been guiding stars in my analysis of urban space over the past ten or so years, and some which I still want to read and interrogate more closely.
Justin McGuirk’s “Radical Cities” is the titular book of this thread–and it sensitized me to Latin American urbanisms and the inspiring lessons they hold for the rest of the world. I also drove home how important the role of architecture and urban design in addressing social problems is. McGuirk visited Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Medellin and Santiago de Chile, among others, to reflect not only on these solutions, but also on the role of activists and the unhelpful tendency to describe as “informal” all those places and structures that do not conform to our ideas of modern urban capitalist life.
To take a step back, and to realize how deep our urban problems run, particularly in the developing world’s slums, no book is better than Mike Davis’s classic “Planet of Slums” (2006). It was a prophetic look at how (megacity) growth reproduces and increases unprecedented inequalities. Urbanization today is delinked from industrialization and creates a new class of urban poor. To Davis, the slum is not a place of opportunity but one of destitution. He leaned against the prevailing narrative at the time that (neoliberal) capitalism, in particular property rights and access to finance, might prove the panacea to eliminating urban poverty.
To avoid this thread from becoming an anti-urban manifesto, what then, are the benefits of urban agglomeration to begin with? Edward Glaeser’s “Triumph of the City” makes a fascinating read. While urban poverty and slums are real, it is still better to be poor in a city than in the countryside. The benefits of living in cities are manifold, not least for a sustainable future. To many conservatives, texts like Glaeser’s are the radical bibles of a liberal, urban elite and antithesis to a more private, suburban vision of the future.
Another text which was radical at the time is Jane Jacob’s beautifully written “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”. It gives us an idea how social capital is woven into the brick and mortar of mixed-use, low to medium-rise and walkable neighborhoods. She wrote her influential manifesto in the wake of large-scale urban redevelopment in 1960s New York, and it is still–rightfully–considered one of the best eruditions on why density is good–if done well.
Perhaps the truly radical approaches in the urban field today are represented by activists who understand the city as created by its “users”. Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, whose work has been hugely influential for my work on Tokyo, have now finally written up their wisdom from more than 20 years of grassroots work in “The Homegrown City”. The book will come out in April only, and I can’t wait to read it.
As the persistence of slums in the Global South and gentrification in the Global North attest, our urban system also requires systemic political change. Marxist theorist David Harvey lays out such a reclaiming of the urban space in his “Rebel Cities”. Cities are the arena of class struggle. However, “horizontal”, i.e. small-scale and human interaction-focused activism, misses the challenge of scaling solutions up to address the planetary challenge that we face.
Perhaps not as politically radical, but nonetheless pivotal in understanding our current urban struggles in the developed world, are books like “Yes to the City” by Michael Holleran, one of the foundational texts of the YIMBY phenomenon. As the housing crisis hits increasingly affluent young professionals in urban centers, they have begun advocating for relaxed building regulations to encourage more building supply.
Finishing up with a Verso title in this thread, I really enjoyed Samuel Stein’s “Capital City”. It beautifully articulated the notion of the “real estate state” that I have felt lingering in me for a long time now. It focuses on New York and shows that radical acts to reclaim the city must come from urban planners, who have long enough been usurped by landlords and private capital but who possess the tools to effect meaningful change.
What are the books that radically changed your ideas of cities?
