Summer Reading I

Keeping in the same spirit as last fall's recommended book list, here is the first of at least a couple upcoming posts about good books, new or otherwise, worth your time this summer:

- The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means For the World, by Thomas Campanella.

I knew Concrete Dragon would be fascinating from the first page of the first chapter, wherein Campanella explains the "theme song" of the Chinese city of Shenzhen, which has ballooned in population from a few thousand people in the 1970s to the millions that call it home today. The song is called "Story of Springtime:"

"In the spring of 1979/An old man drew a circle/On the southern coast of China/And city after city rose up like fairy tales/And mountains and mountains of gold/Gathered like a miracle."

The fact that such a song even exists, or is as popular as "Story of Springtime" is, speaks volumes about China's explosive economic growth; its attendant, mindblowingly large urban overhaul; its insatiable need for raw materials; the influence of its centralized political leadership; and the shared aspirations of the populace. As the international spotlight shifts to Beijing for the Summer Olympics, the book's subject matter is particularly pertinent.

Laden with statistics and images, and with extensive discussion of the myriad influences, risks, ideas and trends that are driving the full-tilt transformation of China's physical fabric as well as its society, Concrete Dragon is as informative as it is thrilling. It is made all the more so because the story it tells is happening right now.

- Large Parks, edited by Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves.

Large Parks is a collection of essays from leading academics and practitioners of landscape architecture, centering on not only the design of both existing and new large public parklands around the world, but also surveying the many parties who typically have a stake in their creation, and the process by which these important spaces are wrought.

Parks are not just "green lungs" of a place, and are more than just civic amenities: they are zones of immense cultural, ecological and economic value that enhance shared quality of life in multi-dimensional ways. They offer significant opportunities for urban redefinition (especially as global economic shifts continue to yield empty post-industrial zones in many cities), environmental remediation, building community, education, and recreation. James Corner explains in the foreword that the best large parks will always be more than the sum of their parts:

"Large parks will always exceed singular narratives. They are larger than the designer's will for authorship, they exceed over-regulation and contrivance, and they always evolve into more multifarious (and unpredictable formations than anyone could have envisaged at the outset. They are complex, dynamic systems. As such, the designer of large parks can only ever set out a highly specified physical base from which more open-ended processes can formations take root....If this staged groundwork is too constrained or too complicated or too mannered, it will eventually calcify under the weight of its own construction; if it is too loose or too open or too weak, it will eventually lose any form of legibility and order. The trick is to design a large park framework that is sufficiently robust to lend structure and identity while also having sufficient pliancy and 'give' to adapt to changing demands and ecologies over time."

The book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the ongoing creation and redefinition of the public realm, and the roles parklands play in the form and configuration of cities.

- A + T magazine.

Do you know A + T? You should. It is a beautiful bilingual periodical from Spain, refreshingly free of advertising, with abundant photography, drawings, and interpretive diagrams. Each issue is substantive, concise, and graphically powerful.

A + T's publications are organized thematically, in series of varying lengths, with 10-15 projects per volume. I have the "In Common" series, four volumes exploring the design of different kinds of new public spaces worldwide at multiple scales. Short essays accompany a broad range of work, mixing some projects that will be commonly familiar (the High Line, Madrid's Ecoboulevard, Melbourne's Federation Square) with many that are less well known, but no less intriguing (Kengo Kuma's glass facade for Shibuya Station in Tokyo; the "urban lounge" of St. Gallen, Switzerland; or Milwaukee's Marsupial Bridge, to name a few).

Actually, "In Common" dovetails nicely with the contents of Large Parks above, in that the book and the series both emphasize the enormous potentials of public space, as a venue that combines both architecture and landscape.

Equal parts great inspiration and invaluable resource, you will want to save each volume of A+T you can find.

- The Option of Urbanism, by Christopher Leinberger.

Leinberger is a pioneering developer whose career has combined understanding of real estate development with concern for social and environmental realities. He is also the head of the Graduate Real Estate program at Michigan and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. His new book outlines the "next American dream"--one that will undoubtedly be much different, and more efficient, than the autocentric, sprawling version everyone knows. This new American dream will be characterized by more compact communities, improved street life, and less dependence on the automobile.

Tracing the growth of the 20th-century autocentric suburb, the forces that shaped it, and its unforeseen consequences, Leinberger subsequently makes a powerful case for "walkable urbanism:" the radical notion that walking more and driving less enhances quality of life, while reinforcing the urban fabric. Clear and concise.

In this radio segment, Leinberger discusses how demographics and changing consumer preferences are bringing about this shift. Listen. And read! 

Comments

[Limo Hire]

Didn't even know that such a song even existed!

Good article.

Urban farms, anyone?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7468890.stm

[Marilyn Terrell]

Thanks for the tip on Concrete Dragon. It reminds me about this recent story by Amy Tan in National Geographic (special issue on China) about a rural ethnic village called Dimen where the language is not written, and the history and culture of this village and its people are preserved and passed down in long, complicated songs. There are songs for every occasion, but the young folks are getting too modernized to bother to learn them:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/china/guizhou/amy-tan-text