Ebook: Paradoxical Urbanism: Anti-Urban Currents in Modern Urbanism
Author: Malcolm Miles
- Tags: Geography, Urban Geography / Urbanism (inc. megacities cities towns), Urbanism, Human Geography
- Year: 2021
- Publisher: Springer Singapore
- Edition: 1st ed.
- Language: English
- pdf
Modernist urbanism seems progressive, even Utopian: design for a better world through a democratic and humane built environment. But two currents undermine this vision from within: an Arcadianism which turns to a rural idyll as retreat from change and the effects of industrialization; and an instrumentalism by which the humane vision becomes prescriptive and anti-democratic. Malcolm Miles argues that these two currents undermine modernism’s progressive vision. This book examines the roots of modernist urbanism in the seamless, self-contained systems of Cartesian space; and identifies contradictions within modernist urbanism in its instrumentalism and reliance on de-politicised professional expertise. Miles adroitly reviews the postmodern culture of industrial ruinscapes; and posits that if cities are to be places of proximity, diversity, mobility and agency, this will require a move from modernist instrumentalism to a creative and radically democratic co-production of the built environment.