Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities

by Leonie Sandercock

From Polis to Metropolis, men and women have continued to struggle to perfect our cities. Urban history presents a picture of grand ideals and devastating failures. Towards Cosmopolis explores why we have failed, and how we could succeed, in building an urban Utopia - with a difference.

Globalization, civil society, feminism and post-colonialism are the forces, ever shifting and changing our cities. We need a new vision to face such change. Sandercock pulls down the pillars of modernist city planning and raises in their place a new post-modern planning, a planning sensitive to community, environment and cultural diversity.

Towards Cosmopolis is illustrated with case material from around the world - which present 'a thousand tiny empowerments' of current planning practice - and with a superb range of specially commissioned images. This bold critique cuts to the heart of current debates about the future of our cities. It deserves a place on every citizen's shelf.

Genres: Urban Planning

268 pages, Paperback

First published November 27, 1997

About the author

Leonie Sandercock (born 1949) is an urban planner and academic focusing on community planning and multiculturalism. She has been teaching at the School of Community & Regional Planning at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, since 2001.

Reviews

[Derek Ouyang · Rating 2 out of 5]

While occasionally right on point, too often the author is confused, throwing the baby out with the bathwater or letting the snake in with the firewood.