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Why Cities Look the Way They Do
When we think about how cities look, we tend to focus on architecture and design. But the character of a city is not just the result of planners and designers: it is also the result of the many ways in which people use, appropriate and repurpose its spaces in the everyday life of the city. The city is not built; it is lived.
Architectural criticism invariably stops at the moment construction is completed. Richard Williams instead takes that moment not as the end but the beginning, tracing the social and cultural processes that produce the look of contemporary global cities. It is the story of how financial capital spawns empty towering skyscrapers and hollowed-out ghettoes; how the zoning of once-illicit sexual practices in marginal areas of the city result in the reinvention of culturally vibrant gay villages; how abandoned factories are repurposed as creative hubs in an increasingly precarious post-industrial economy. It is also a story of how popular urban clich�s and the portrayal of cities in films and other media powerfully shape how we read and see the bricks, concrete and glass that surround us.
Thought-provoking and original, this book will appeal to anyone interested in urban spaces and will shed new light on one of humanity's greatest collective inventions.
Architectural criticism invariably stops at the moment construction is completed. Richard Williams instead takes that moment not as the end but the beginning, tracing the social and cultural processes that produce the look of contemporary global cities. It is the story of how financial capital spawns empty towering skyscrapers and hollowed-out ghettoes; how the zoning of once-illicit sexual practices in marginal areas of the city result in the reinvention of culturally vibrant gay villages; how abandoned factories are repurposed as creative hubs in an increasingly precarious post-industrial economy. It is also a story of how popular urban clich�s and the portrayal of cities in films and other media powerfully shape how we read and see the bricks, concrete and glass that surround us.
Thought-provoking and original, this book will appeal to anyone interested in urban spaces and will shed new light on one of humanity's greatest collective inventions.
192 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2019
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228 people want to read
About the author
Richard J. Williams
33 books3 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 20, 2020
Professor Williams is Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures at the Edinburgh College of Art. He is interested in exploring the visualisation of the city - not just why cities look the way they do but how have artists, film makers, architects and place shapers envisioned the city. Originally an art historian, he is really more interested in the symbolism of activities shaping the city, and the representation of the city in pictures and film, than he is in the day-to-day reality of how people who aren’t architects or art historians experience the city.
He starts with a claimed interest in ‘function’ – and sets out his chapters in terms of the functions of money, power, sex, work, war and culture. These are fascinating opportunities to explore theory. But the list is fascinating also in what it misses out – Homes and family? Walking, movement and commuting? Density, high rise and access to green space? Shopping, food and eating? Community and neighbours? Pollution, litter and waste? All these things are fundamental to the way we experience living in the city. They are strongly affected by the way cities are shaped and the bigger private forces which shape cities, and individual and community preferences and climate shape the built form around these themes. But there is no comparison here of the different ways European cities have tackled these issues, only the occasional reference to Barcelona’s commitment to public space. You would not know having read this book for instance, that London is one of the least dense big cities in the world, with far less high rise, and you would not have been offered a view on why this was, and on the shifting balance of power between private and public money, and between the mass of small people’s decisions and the concentrated power of big money.
This is because the author is an art historian not a planner, sociologist, developer or economist. He grew up in Manchester, has wandered the world as an academic tourist, made his home in Edinburgh. He is naturally drawn to big buildings, big attempts by architects to shape the form of the city and the image of the city, zones of central power and regeneration of dereliction. He describes in meandering detail big projects and statement buildings like the Scottish Parliament, the Dundee V&A, the Great Court at the British Museum, Tate Modern, Washington DC, Tate Liverpool, the reinvention of Manchester’s warehouses and factories, the Centre Pompidou.
He is also drawn to wastelands because of their symbolic and sexual meaning to him – the dangerous concrete cottaging sites of abandoned piers and wharves in New York and the way they were taken over by the avant garde of conceptual artists. He is drawn to sites which mesh with his interest in theory, which he shares with his publisher, Polity. In the chapter on Culture he discusses the Culture Industry by Adorno and Horkheimer at length and amusingly, but not in a way which relates very much to buildings. In the chapter on Sex he is funny – these derelict pick-up sites ’functioned in effect as the research and development departments of sexual theory’. I think the implication is that you might have been picked up by Foucault. He says ‘One of the most visible urban processes in global cities since the end of the twentieth century has been the official cultivation of zones of sexual tolerance’ which were treated as a marker of globality – encouraged out of a sense that ‘the most successful global cities were those with a marked tolerance of sexual diversity’.
This is a book of contradictions. It spends most of its time and attention on statement buildings, those where architects have attempted to control space and how it is seen, but then it about-faces in its conclusion. In the author’s words: “This has been a book largely describing a landscape made by power in its own image, focused on the most self-conscious and self-reflexive images of that power… an account, with few exceptions, of largely rich, largely northern hemisphere cities…” But it ends in downmarket Leicester, “the St Matthews area of the inner city, and the Burleys Flyover built in 1976.. Just below the flyover to the north sits the fluorescent green Yours supermarket, a vast store catering to pan Asian tastes, and the heart of the place; scattered about are small factories still producing clothes and even shoes, 1960s walk up flats, warehouses, nightclubs… It is to my eyes the most intensively lived part of the city… the most intensively connected to global trade… but it is not the kind of urbanism that you could or would want to reproduce.” This after all, is the kind of urbanism that we have heard a lot more about during the Covid epidemic.
Williams acknowledges the multiplicity of influences that shape a place like this. He acknowledges that “These .. simple, pragmatic, sometimes bodged appropriations of place are better representations of the way cities develop than the centres of global capitals.” He makes no attempts to explain what really shapes the parts of cities like these, interviews no one about how these parts of cities function, deploys no hard-economic data or conversations with the people who live or work there. He simply wanders through and breathes the dirty air. In the end, he does not resolve the contradictions between his focus in this book and the real cities many of us live in.
He starts with a claimed interest in ‘function’ – and sets out his chapters in terms of the functions of money, power, sex, work, war and culture. These are fascinating opportunities to explore theory. But the list is fascinating also in what it misses out – Homes and family? Walking, movement and commuting? Density, high rise and access to green space? Shopping, food and eating? Community and neighbours? Pollution, litter and waste? All these things are fundamental to the way we experience living in the city. They are strongly affected by the way cities are shaped and the bigger private forces which shape cities, and individual and community preferences and climate shape the built form around these themes. But there is no comparison here of the different ways European cities have tackled these issues, only the occasional reference to Barcelona’s commitment to public space. You would not know having read this book for instance, that London is one of the least dense big cities in the world, with far less high rise, and you would not have been offered a view on why this was, and on the shifting balance of power between private and public money, and between the mass of small people’s decisions and the concentrated power of big money.
This is because the author is an art historian not a planner, sociologist, developer or economist. He grew up in Manchester, has wandered the world as an academic tourist, made his home in Edinburgh. He is naturally drawn to big buildings, big attempts by architects to shape the form of the city and the image of the city, zones of central power and regeneration of dereliction. He describes in meandering detail big projects and statement buildings like the Scottish Parliament, the Dundee V&A, the Great Court at the British Museum, Tate Modern, Washington DC, Tate Liverpool, the reinvention of Manchester’s warehouses and factories, the Centre Pompidou.
He is also drawn to wastelands because of their symbolic and sexual meaning to him – the dangerous concrete cottaging sites of abandoned piers and wharves in New York and the way they were taken over by the avant garde of conceptual artists. He is drawn to sites which mesh with his interest in theory, which he shares with his publisher, Polity. In the chapter on Culture he discusses the Culture Industry by Adorno and Horkheimer at length and amusingly, but not in a way which relates very much to buildings. In the chapter on Sex he is funny – these derelict pick-up sites ’functioned in effect as the research and development departments of sexual theory’. I think the implication is that you might have been picked up by Foucault. He says ‘One of the most visible urban processes in global cities since the end of the twentieth century has been the official cultivation of zones of sexual tolerance’ which were treated as a marker of globality – encouraged out of a sense that ‘the most successful global cities were those with a marked tolerance of sexual diversity’.
This is a book of contradictions. It spends most of its time and attention on statement buildings, those where architects have attempted to control space and how it is seen, but then it about-faces in its conclusion. In the author’s words: “This has been a book largely describing a landscape made by power in its own image, focused on the most self-conscious and self-reflexive images of that power… an account, with few exceptions, of largely rich, largely northern hemisphere cities…” But it ends in downmarket Leicester, “the St Matthews area of the inner city, and the Burleys Flyover built in 1976.. Just below the flyover to the north sits the fluorescent green Yours supermarket, a vast store catering to pan Asian tastes, and the heart of the place; scattered about are small factories still producing clothes and even shoes, 1960s walk up flats, warehouses, nightclubs… It is to my eyes the most intensively lived part of the city… the most intensively connected to global trade… but it is not the kind of urbanism that you could or would want to reproduce.” This after all, is the kind of urbanism that we have heard a lot more about during the Covid epidemic.
Williams acknowledges the multiplicity of influences that shape a place like this. He acknowledges that “These .. simple, pragmatic, sometimes bodged appropriations of place are better representations of the way cities develop than the centres of global capitals.” He makes no attempts to explain what really shapes the parts of cities like these, interviews no one about how these parts of cities function, deploys no hard-economic data or conversations with the people who live or work there. He simply wanders through and breathes the dirty air. In the end, he does not resolve the contradictions between his focus in this book and the real cities many of us live in.
January 22, 2022
This was a fun read. It offers a great survey of several important processes that affect the image of global cities. The book takes a broad overview of many global Western cities, so those looking for more nuanced analysis might be disappointed. I think the book's overall strength is its ability to teach the reader how to look at and appreciate the physical forms of cities as contextual and historically contingent results of many, often global, processes. It's weakness is that it says nothing of local processes which arguably have far greater influence over the form of non-global cities (outside the book's scope, of course). However, ironically pointed out in the conclusion, it is these ordinary cities (largely ignored by foundational urban studies texts), that more accurately represent processes of urbanization.
October 9, 2021
Average book: it has some really important and brilliant insights and descriptions, but often more than not it slides into mere descriptiveness that doesn't really explain how "process X" shapes the city, but how "process X" takes place in different and queer forms in cities (mainly speaking about the chapters on sex, work, and culture).
The book features a lot of comments, opinions, and theories of architects, historians, theorists, and sociologists that relate to the way cities form and how the contemporary city looks like and functions; featuring Rowan Moore, Reyner Banham, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, and Adorno and Horkheimer- their theories and critiques generally add a firm backbone that connects chapter ideas together. Without this theoretical backbone though, the author usually slips into banal narratives of strange/unique urban experiences that relate to his chapter titles.
Some of the main arguments that I'd like to point out:
"We're habituated to think of design and intention. ... Instead, this book argues, cities are the result of processes that may have spectacular visual effects, but which are in themselves generally unconscious. ... Cities, and the way cities look, are largely the result of processes that design doesn't, and can't, control." p.xiii
"[This] is certainly true now of the global cities of the world, which is to say those cities that understand themselves to be part of the global economy, or which aspire to be part of that economy. 'Global' means not only financial and informational networks, but also, importantly, the projection of "global-ness" to the rest of the world, a promotional process by which the way a city looks matters a great deal." p.xiv - referring to Saskia Sassen's work on The Global City.
"Process implies time, and it also tends to imply some kind of circulation." p.4
"Spectacle is capital accumulated until it becomes an image" - Guy Debord; p.7
"cities around the world have made themselves visible by constructing buildings that are made primarily to demand attention ... The logic of the icon has always motivated architecture ... The logic of the icon is the logic of the brand." p.11
"In the 1960's the sociologist R s wrote of an ess adolescent desire of urban designers to control space - and tha the best urban spaces were, by contrast, those that were the result of interaction of a number of actors, none of whom is powerful enough to control the outcome." p.183
The book features a lot of comments, opinions, and theories of architects, historians, theorists, and sociologists that relate to the way cities form and how the contemporary city looks like and functions; featuring Rowan Moore, Reyner Banham, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, and Adorno and Horkheimer- their theories and critiques generally add a firm backbone that connects chapter ideas together. Without this theoretical backbone though, the author usually slips into banal narratives of strange/unique urban experiences that relate to his chapter titles.
Some of the main arguments that I'd like to point out:
"We're habituated to think of design and intention. ... Instead, this book argues, cities are the result of processes that may have spectacular visual effects, but which are in themselves generally unconscious. ... Cities, and the way cities look, are largely the result of processes that design doesn't, and can't, control." p.xiii
"[This] is certainly true now of the global cities of the world, which is to say those cities that understand themselves to be part of the global economy, or which aspire to be part of that economy. 'Global' means not only financial and informational networks, but also, importantly, the projection of "global-ness" to the rest of the world, a promotional process by which the way a city looks matters a great deal." p.xiv - referring to Saskia Sassen's work on The Global City.
"Process implies time, and it also tends to imply some kind of circulation." p.4
"Spectacle is capital accumulated until it becomes an image" - Guy Debord; p.7
"cities around the world have made themselves visible by constructing buildings that are made primarily to demand attention ... The logic of the icon has always motivated architecture ... The logic of the icon is the logic of the brand." p.11
"In the 1960's the sociologist R s wrote of an ess adolescent desire of urban designers to control space - and tha the best urban spaces were, by contrast, those that were the result of interaction of a number of actors, none of whom is powerful enough to control the outcome." p.183
January 5, 2020
Richard J Williams is Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures at Edinburgh University. In this fascinating book he builds the argument that global cities look the way they do due to different, interacting processes operating on them. He focuses on the impact of money, power, sex, work, war and culture (specifically creative industries) predominantly on western cities, and I came away with a different way of thinking and looking at places.
Review copy from the Amazon Vine Programme.
Review copy from the Amazon Vine Programme.
December 29, 2023
Venice is only shaped by tourism. process.
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