The Modern Urban Landscape

The Modern Urban Landscape (1987)
By Edward Relph

Synopsis: The purpose of this book is "to give an account of the development of the appearance of cities over the last 100 years in order to explain how they have come to look as they do" (2). Hence, the focus of his book is on appearance. Four factors account for the look of twentieth-century cities: 1) architecture, 2) technological innovations, 3) planning, and 4) social developments (7). Begins by detailing the rise of electricity and new technologies in the late 19th-century and the utopian hopes they inspired; moves to various planning movements such as the City Beautiful Movement and Garden City Movement, and the rise of planning and zoning which led cities to be seen as "efficient factories;" the First Machine Age (1900-40s) and the impact of the car on the landscape; Modernism and the International Style (1920s); the Second Machine Age (1940s-50s) and the rise of nuclear imagery; the rise of postwar planning which sought the separation of functions; corporatization/commodification of cities via themed spaces, etc.; late-Modernist glass boxes; the rise of postmodern architecture and urban design. This book is not argument-driven, but rather is explanatory. A simple overview of basic urban design.

Interacts With:
Is ultra-mild, non-Marxist. More explanatory than anything else.
For a more politicized take on some aspects, see:
Landscapes of Power, Brave New Neighborhoods
Building Suburbia