The Elusive City: Five Centuries of Design, Ambition and Miscalculation

From Library Journal
This book, aimed at the general public and design professionals (primarily architects and planners), encapsulates 500 years of urban planning. It offers a fresh outlook and original observations in a crisp, eminently readable style. Barnett, an experienced urban designer, is skeptical about the possibility of successful urban design, given the matrix of powerful social and economic forces within which the profession must operate. As a keen student of Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities , he is unafraid of the street, and he knows the pitfalls of unbridled idealism as well. This is neither a textbook nor a social and architectural history, but rather, uniquely, a survey of design strategies, pithy and provocative. Peter Kaufman, Suffolk Community Coll. Libs., Selden, N.Y.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.