Book reviews

Book reviews

Kevin Lynch. The Image Of The City

Kevin Lynch’s “The Image of the City” is a seminal work in urban design that founded in practice a new field of work and study such as the geography of perception -or behavioural geography-. In his work, Kevin Lynch tries to comprehend and design the visible layer of the city through the image it projects …...

Read More

Book reviews, Talks and interviews

Daniel Kahneman. Thinking Fast and Slow: some thoughts from Córdoba

Kahneman shows that if potential earnings are bigger than potential losses then the most rational strategy is to take the risks even in 50% gambles (this, of course, does not exclude adopting risk mitigation policies). In cases where the probabilities of winning are greater than 50% and the reward in case of earning is greater than the loss in case of failing, not adopting innovative policies may cost public institutions large amounts of tax dollars.

Read More

Book reviews, Technology

Marshall McLuhan. Understanding media (and cities)

McLuhan explains why the rise of urban middle classes are more effective to defeat dictatorships than embargos or weapons, why revolts come from cities, and why cities are are where social and political changes are baked. In this sense, cities are also liberating tools or, as McLuhan puts it “the work of cities is the translation of people to a more suitable form than of his ancestors “.

Read More

Book reviews, Smart Cities

William Mitchell “E-topia…”: smart, green and lean cities

The book by William Mitchell “E-topia. Urban life, Jim – but not as we know it” was one of the first works containing the concept of Smart Cities. Mitchell, who was the Dean of the M.I.T. School of Architecture and Planning from 1992 until his death in 2010, analyzes the changes that sensors, software, mobile devices, computing and telecommunications bring to our daily life, social behavior and economics.

Read More

Book reviews, urban planning

Jane Jacobs: Death and Life of Cities

Jane Jacobs’s “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, her main book published in 1961, still remains a surprising source of ideas covering a multitude of aspects that guide life in cities: the economy, security, habitat, traffic, governance, planning, participation…

Read More

Book reviews, urban innovation

The art of city making. Charles Landry

“The art of city making”, by Charles Landry, is a brilliant attempt to understand cities with the declared and simple objective of making them better. In its pages, the reader should not expect to find a step-by-step recipe of how to make cities from scratch, but a detailed narrative of how cities can be permanently reconfigured to find its unique spot while keeping its essence.

Read More
Close