Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City

Description

'Constantly stimulating ideas from a veteran of urban thinking' Jonathan Meades, Guardian In Building and Dwelling, Richard Sennett distils a lifetime's thinking and practical experience to explore the relationship between the good built environment and the good life. He argues for, and describes in rich detail, the idea of an open city, one in which people learn to manage complexity. The book ranges widely - from London, Paris and Barcelona to Shanghai, Mumbai and Medellin in Colombia - and draws on classic thinkers such as Tocqueville, Heidegger, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. It also draws on Sennett's many decades as a practical planner himself, testing what works, what doesn't, and why. He shows what works ethically is often the most practical solution for cities' problems. This is a humane and thrilling book, which allows us to think freshly about how we live in cities.

Richard Sennett's previous books include The Fall of Public Man, Flesh and Stone and Respect, as well as two previous volumes in his Homo Faber trilogy, The Craftsman and Together. For decades he has advised urban programmes for the United Nations, and has also worked as a planner for poor communities; he now teaches urban studies at the London School of Economics and at Harvard University. He has been awarded the Hegel and Spinoza prizes, as well as an honorary doctorate by Cambridge University. His private passions are playing the cello, fairly well, and cooking, fairly badly.

A lateish-life appraisal of what Richard Sennett has read, written and, most vitally, witnessed on the street or in the marketplace in the tradition of the sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed flaneur taking in every sensation -- Jonathan Meades * Guardian * Sennett leavens the big ideas with snapshots of real life. ... It reads like a summation of a life lived in cities and is, ultimately, a paean to their unpredictability, a call for tolerance and a celebration of difference. -- Edwin Heathcote * Financial Times * He has brought to the study of urban life a perception that includes literature, philosophy, art, sociology and economics, as well as his personal experiences -- Rowan Moore * Observer * Distils into a single volume his thoughts on how urban design shapes the ways in which we relate to one another ... Typically idealistic, typically urbane, it is well-timed for the disputes of our day -- Justin McGuirk * New Yorker *