Cosmopolis Ii

Sandercock (community and regional planning, U. of British Columbia) describes with fondness our "mongrel cities" and the powers behind them. She begins with an examination of modernist planning, how it succeeded and failed at its aims, and why so many planners and lay people found it objectionable in that it did not take into consideration the realities of cities as living beings. She then examines those realities in light of community, fear, and integration, and argues for a new planning imagination that includes playfulness, storylines and honest considerations of power, spirit, and the rigors of living together. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Library Journal

Sandercock (urban planning & social policy, Univ. of British Columbia) has written another passionate book critiquing value-neutral, empirically based planning. Though billed as a textbook, this is not a how-to guide for city planning. Originally intended as a new edition of Towards Cosmopolis, it contains eight new chapters and introduces enough new and updated information to make it worth reading. Sandercock is unapologetically postmodern in approach. She pays little attention to the built environment, design, or the urban-suburban divide. Nor is she much interested in statistics; even economics is downplayed. Instead, she repeatedly calls for a new planning theory that adequately accounts for the world's increasingly multicultur al cities and their diverse, often marginalized, inhabitants, whose stories are emphasized throughout. Sandercock argues that the cities of the future must take the concerns of these groups into consideration. Interesting reading, if hardly proscriptive, this work will be of interest to academic libraries that support city planning and urban studies programs.-David A. Timko, U.S. Census Bureau Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.