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Urbanism: Books and Documentaries

Books

Ricky Burdett, Deyan Sudjic [eds.]: The Endless City (2008). The result of a series of conferences organized by the Urban Age project an initiative of the London School of Economics in association with Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society. It is tempting to just browse through books such as these, but while the images illustrate the texts and the texts comment upon the images.

Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, Mitra Khoubrou [eds.]: Al Manakh (2007). An excellent survey of the Gulf region.

Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, Sanford Kwinter, Nadia Tazi and Hans Ulrich Obrist: Mutations (2001). One of the first books to address the global city. The format has been copied by almost every subsequent exhibition and publication. It's a shame about the plastic cover.

Francesca Ferguson & urban drift [eds.]: Talking Cities. The Micropolitics of Urban Space (2006). Published to accompany the opening exhibition of the same title at the Zeche Zollverein in Essen, Germany.

Jiang Jin [ed.]: Informal China (2006). Special issue of the magazine Urban China for the China contemporary exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute. Excellent visual dictionary of the informal Chinese city.

AMOMA/Rem Koolhaas: Content (2004). Primarily a survey of recent work by OMA and AMO. The design mirrors the visual chaos of the contemporary metropolis. Look beyond the layout and there are some interesting, thought-provoking essays as well.

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown and Steven Izenour: Learning from Las Vegas (1977). A classic and still relevant.

Momoyo Kaijima, Junzo Kuroda and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto: Made in Tokyo (2001). An overview of hybrid structures in Tokyo.

Alan Bryman: The Disneyization of Society (2004). Argues that cities in the developed world are increasingly becoming "disneyfied".

Neil Brenner and Roger Keil [eds.]: The Global Cities Reader (2006). Aimed at (undergraduate) students, but as such well worth it for anyone interested in academic research into urbanism and social geography as it used to be called.

Documentaries

Lagos Wide and Close. An Interactive Journey into an Exploding City (directed by Bregtje van der Haak, commentary by Rem Koolhaas). An essay with moving instead of static images. My favourite parts are the market scene, Rem Koolhaas telling about arriving alone in Lagos with several thousand dollar cash and missing the person who was supposed to pick him up and the scene in which he recounts being taking to a place to eat, sitting in complete darkness, not knowing where he is, who the other people are and what the food is.

Caracas. The Informal City (directed by Rob Schroeder). An interview with architects Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner who use their practice to finance projects in the slums of Caracas. One of my favourite parts is when they explain why water and food is most expensive in the highest and poorest areas.

Q2P (directed by Paromita Vohra). A documentary about (the lack of) public toilets, especially for women, in India. It is a global problem though.

Online Articles of Interest

Zygmunt Bauman: City of Fears. City of Hopes (2003)

Alan Bryman: The Disneyization of Society. The Sociological Review (1999).

Michael Storper: Beautiful Cities, Ugly Cities: Urban Form as Convention (1997)

Stewart Brand: City Planet (2006)