Reviews

What brings a city to its golden age? Hall (Cities of Tomorrow)‘a distinguished professor of urban planning‘applies this question to cities ranging from Rome and Athens to Glasgow, Memphis and Palo Alto in his new survey. His conclusions, like the book itself, are diffuse. Examining cultural belle époques, Hall contends that it was, ironically, the restrictiveness of the official artistic culture in turn-of-the-century Paris and Vienna that fueled startling innovations, as new artists were forced outside the mainstream. Looking at technology, Hall argues that an unfettered market is a great stimulant to invention‘as in the heydays of Glasgow's shipbuilding trade and Manchester's cotton textile manufacturing‘but, as both cases show, it also leaves cities vulnerable to the losses that result from other cities improving on their initial innovations. Turning to the fusion of cultural and industrial innovation‘using L.A.'s film industry and Memphis's pop music scene as examples‘Hall asserts that the success of both rests on recognizing a "society in flux" and catering to "the deepest emotional needs" of an important, untapped market. Hall next examines the great successes‘and boondoggles‘of urban planning over the last two centuries (as well as in imperial Rome) before ending with a coda in which he applies his accumulated insights to the future cities. Hall's broadmindedness allows him to draw useful insights from thinkers as diverse as Joseph Schumpeter and Michel Foucault. While it may not come as a great surprise that neither entirely unregulated markets nor rigid central planning, but a little of each‘with a pinch of kismet‘will bring a metropolis to its peak, Hall must be commended for making this case with unusual thoroughness. (Dec.)

Like Braudel's and Holmes's, Hall's thesis here is that "the biggest and most cosmopolitan cities...have throughout history been the places that ignited the sacred flame of the human intelligence and the human imagination." Case studies illustrate themes such as the city as cultural crucible, the milieu for innovation, etc. Other recent larger studies of historically important cities include Robert Hughes's Barcelona (LJ 10/1/91) and Roy Porter's London: A Social History (Harvard Univ., 1995). (LJ 12/98). Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.