Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space

America's cities are being rapidly transformed by a sinister and homogenous design. A new Kind of urbanism--manipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditional public space--is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and psuedo-historic marketplaces. If anything can be described as a paradigm for these places, it's the theme park, an apparently benign environment in which all is structured to achieve maximum control and in which the idea of authentic interaction among citizens has been thoroughly purged. In this bold collection, eight of our leading urbanists and architectural critics explore the emblematic sites of this new cityscape--from Silicon Valley to Epcot Center, South Street Seaport to downtown Los Angeles--and reveal their disturbing implications for American public life.

Author: Michael Sorkin
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
Published: 03/01/1992
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780374523145

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 02/15/1992 pg. 1073
Library Journal 02/01/1992
Publishers Weekly 12/20/1991

About the Author

Michael Sorkin, an architect and writer, teaches at Cooper Union and Yale, and is the author of The Exquisite Corpse. For ten years, he was the archtecture critic of The Village Voice.

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