Cities Are Good for You : The Genius of the Metropolis

At The Beginning Of The Century, We Became 50% Urban As A Global Population, And By 2050 We're Going To Be Up To 70% Urban. Cities Could Either Be Our Coffin Or Our Ark. Hollis Presents Evidence That Cities Can Deliver A Better Life, And Investigates How Cities All Over The World Are Tackling Climate Change, Population Growth, Poverty, Shifting Work Patterns And The Maintenance Of The Fragile Trust Of Their Citizens. Preface: On The High Line -- 1. What Is A City? -- 2. Inside The Beehive -- 3. Buildings Between Buildings -- 4. A Creative Place -- 5. Rebooting The Community -- 6. Trust In The City -- 7. Walking In Dharavi -- 8. Maximum City -- 9. Moving Ariound -- 10. How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take To Change A City? -- 11. A Place Called Home -- Epilogue: After Hudson Street. Leo Hollis. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [384]-394) And Index.
Cities are where the twenty-first century is really going to happen. Already at the beginning of the century, we became 50% urban as a global population, and by 2050 we're going to be up to 70% urban. So cities could either be our coffin or our ark.

Leo Hollis presents evidence that cities can deliver a better life and a better world in the future. From exploring what slime mold can tell us about traffic flow, to looking at how traditional civic power structures are being overturned by Twitter, to investigating how cities all over the world are tackling climate change, population growth, poverty, shifting work patterns and the maintenance of the fragile trust of their citizens, Cities Are Good for You offers a new perspective on the city.

Combining anecdote, scientific studies, historical portraits, first-hand interviews and observations of some of the most exciting world cities, Hollis upends long-held assumptions with new questions: Where do cities come from? Can we build a city from scratch? Does living in the city make you happier or fitter? Is the metropolis of the future female? What is the relationship between cities and creativity? And are slums really all that bad?

Cities Are Good for You introduces us to dreamers, planners, revolutionaries, writers, scientists, architects, slum-dwellers and kings. Ranging globally and through time in search of answers--from the archive to the laboratory, from City Hall to the architect's desk--it is above all driven by the idea that cities are for people and by people.

The 21st century will be the age of the city. Already over 50% of the world population live in urban centres and over the coming decades this percentage will increase - with consequences for us all. But this does not mean that things will only get worse. In fact our urban future might just be something to look forward to. Blending anecdote, fact and first hand encounters - from exploring the slums of Mumbai, to visiting roof-top farms in Brooklyn and attending secret dinner parties in Paris, to riding the bus in Latin America - Leo Hollis reveals that we have misunderstood how cities work for too long. Upending long-held assumptions and challenging accepted wisdom, he explores: why cities can never be rational, organised places; how we can walk in a crowd without bumping into people, and if we can design places that make people want to kiss; whether we have the right solution to the problem of the slums; how ants, slime mould and traffic jams can make us rethink congestion