Dream Cities

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From an acclaimed landscape designer and historian comes a lively cultural history of modern cities, encompassing suburbs, downtowns, exurban sprawl, shopping malls, and sustainable developments. This work allows readers to view cities as expressions of often conflicting ideas about living, working, and believing. It narrates the stories of architects and thinkers whose visions shaped urban landscapes worldwide, from Dubai to London. Beginning in the nineteenth century, visionary concepts—sometimes utopian or controversial—were gradually adopted and constructed on a massive scale. The author uses the lives of key dreamers, their followers, and critics to analyze urban environments, including houses, civic centers, and highways, revealing the ideals embedded within them. From Bertram Goodhue’s baroque fantasy villages to Le Corbusier’s superblocks and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, the book reinterprets our upscale suburbs, downtown skyscrapers, and eco-developments. Elegantly designed and illustrated, it uncovers the original plans of brilliant and often obsessive designers, providing insights into the foundations of contemporary municipalities. This work serves as a field guide to our modern urban world, featuring 59 black-and-white photos throughout the text.