List Price:$40.00 Buy New:$14.96 You Save: $25.04 (63%) Buy New/Used from $14.96
Avg. Customer Rating:(based on 11 reviews) Sales Rank: 648812 Category: Book
Author:Peter Hall Publisher:Pantheon Studio:Pantheon Manufacturer:Pantheon Label:Pantheon Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published) Media: Hardcover Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 1184 Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.2 Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 7 x 2.3
Product Description Ranging over 2,500 years, Cities in Civilization is a tribute to the city as the birthplace of Western civilization. Drawing on the contributions of economists and geographers, of cultural, technological, and social historians, Sir Peter Hall examines twenty-one cities at their greatest moments. Hall describes the achievements of these golden ages and outlines the precise combinations of forces -- both universal and local -- that led to each city's belle epoque.
Hall identifies four distinct expressions of civic innovation: artistic growth, technological progress, the marriage of culture and technology, and solutions to evolving problems. Descriptions of Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Elizabethan London, and nineteenth-century Vienna bring to life those seedbeds of artistic and intellectual creativity. Explorations of Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, of Henry Ford's Detroit, and of Palo Alto at the dawn of the computer age highlight centers of technological advances. Tales of the creation of Los Angeles' movie industry and the birth of the blues and rock 'n' roll in Memphis depict the marriage of culture and technology.
Finally, Hall celebrates cities that have been forced to solve problems created by their very size. With Imperial Rome came the apartment block and aqueduct; nineteenth-century London introduced policing, prisons, and sewers; twentieth-century New York developed the skyscraper; and Los Angeles became the first city without a center, a city ruled instead by the car. And in a fascinating conclusion, Hall speculates on urban creativity in the twenty-first century.
This penetrating study reveals not only the lives of cities but also the lives of the people who built them and created the civilizations within them. A decade in the making, Cities in Civilization is the definitive account of the culture of cities.
Amazon.com Review Every golden age has been an urban age; throughout history, cities have provided a crucible for creativity. How do such belles epoquescome about? Why should the creative flame burn so uniquely in cities and not in the countryside, and why does the creative and innovative spirit of one city inevitably yield to another? Cities in Civilization explores these issues and others related to the central role of cities, past and present, in the fostering of artistic, philosophical, scientific, and technological genius.
Peter Hall devoted 15 years of his life conceptualizing, researching, and writing Cities in Civilization. His extraordinary efforts are apparent in the analytical scope, historical depth, and sheer length of the book, which, including photographs and a bibliography, is well over 1,000 pages. Supporting his argument with ample reference to dates, historical figures, and citations of leading urban scholars, the book does not lend itself to casual, cover-to-cover reading. Despite the book's length, though, it remains easy to navigate through the case studies of individual cities. Hall systematically divides the text into five thematic chapters, further subdividing each chapter chronologically by city. The chapters explore themes of cultural creativity, technological and economic innovation, the urban fusion of art and technology, urban innovation, and the partnership of the private and public sector to promote urban development and regeneration.
Breaking from other leading scholars in the field, Hall does not consider the great city doomed. Instead, Cities in Civilization testifies to his confidence that cities of the 21st century, like the great cities of the past, will successfully work to solve their own problems and ameliorate their own ills. --Bertina Loeffler
Very detailed and long! January 16, 2007 0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was a textbook to me. It's a huge work with lots of details. You won't just read "This was a city in this region where these people lived and did this kind of work." You will read how the city got started, how it rose and fells, and the repercussions of what went on there. You will heard specific names and dates, and all kinds of complex information. Unless you are a history major, this book may seem very daunting, but if you want to know everything, here you go! Okay, it doesn't cover every single city ever, but it is a great companion to other books. If your interest is American history, then I also recommend Ronald Takaki's 'A Different Mirror."
Hall's scholarship sustains this thousand pages August 7, 2006 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Hall's study of the rise and fall of cities may be thick, but his pages sparkle with insights that frequently seem applicable to one's neighborhood and sometimes even one's self. If the vastness of Hall intimidates, read the introductions and conclusions to each section first, as a way of showing yourself what's coming and why it matters. This technique can flesh out the importance of the fine details of his chapters. (Similarly, the separate "books" within this one can be read separately.)
For anyone with an interest in urban issues, Hall presents worlds within worlds. For instance, his study of Paris in 1905 shows brilliantly how Picasso's genius was more likely to flower there than anywhere else at the time, and his industrial storytelling shows why Glasgow was uniquely poised to move the shipping of the world from sail to steam. This is a vast book, but it weaves so many threads together that it has to be. One reading, even of so large a book, will not be enough.
Golden numbing August 30, 2005 1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Just because Sir Peter is one of the world's three most tiresome polymaths doesn't mean that we should read this book. Other than that I loved it.
Wonderfully researched, flowing prose October 28, 2002 7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Peter Hall's magnum opus is essential for any armchair urban historian... His writing flows with an almost breezy style, making the book compusively readable. The scope is impressive, and Hall delivers in his monumental task, the wide breadth of knowledge being nothing short of remarkable. Even after reading it, I use the book often for reference in my studies; it was well worth adding to my collection.
The Jacques Barzun of the city April 1, 2002 14 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book reminds me very much of Jacques Barzun's FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE both in size and scope. Barzun looked at 500 years of Western cultural life and Sir Peter Hall has much the same interests, although he goes back some 2500 years and is more narrowly focused on urban culture. The title CITIES IN CIVILIZATION could be the other way around as Hall is interested in the Golden Ages that seem to have been a feature of all the great cities in history. "The Renaissance" he says "was an urban phenomenon; so was every great burst of creativity in human history." Hall then is seeking the civilization in cities.
Two other books that this one could be (should be, has been) compared with are THE CULTURE OF CITIES and THE CITY IN HISTORY, both by Lewis Mumford. Hall knows this and quickly dispatches the comparisons. "I do not at all share the Mumfordian view that the great city is doomed." Fair enough but his work remains valuable to urban historians and Hall's comment that "Mumford was fundamentally a brilliant polemical journalist, not a scholar" is uncalled for and irrelevant. I'm glad Hall got his academic tetchiness out of the way early and didn't bring it up again, because being subjected to such jibes and digs over the course of the 1000 pages of this book would have been unpleasant. And Hall doesn't need to resort to that anyway.
This book is a detailed, well researched exploration of the unique nature of the city as "a crucible of creativity". The first section of the book looks at artistic creativity - the most recognizable type of Golden Age and most closely associated with the foundation cities of Western civilization - Athens, Vienna, Florence, Paris, London and Berlin. Other themes are innovation and its technological and economic manifestation in urban settings. Here we visit Manchester, Glasgow, Detroit, San Francisco (more accurately Palo Alto and "Silicon Valley") and Tokyo. Hall then looks at two cities - Memphis and Los Angeles that he says offer a mix of artistic, technological, and economic exuberance. He is referring to the music and film industries. In his final section he acknowledges the emergence of regional urban areas and global cities and while recognizing the challenges they pose, he is not daunted and remains optimistic about the future of urban life. His coming Golden Age of a new urban order faces three challenges. That of transport technology and sustainable urbanism, an unequal urban world (the megacities of the Third World) and the threats to economic, family, and civic life.
If persons with interest in any aspect of urbanism don't find some mention of their pet subject in this vast sweep of urban life over the last two millennia, it's simply because they haven't waded through. And that's the only caveat about Hall's work. In the best traditions of old English learning this book is dense and it's not written in the snappiest of prose either. Cities are a testament to the slow processes of humanity. You'll have to rely on one of those tendencies - patience - when working your way through this book. In the end it's well worth it.
All rights reserved. Amazon.com is a trademark of Amazon.com Information about prices, products, services and merchants is provided by third parties and is for informational purposes only. Caribbean Travel Books does not represent or warrant the accuracy or reliability of the information, and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use.
