The Living City - by Des Fitzgerald (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Everywhere you look, cities are getting greener. From London to New York and beyond, city governments are investing billions in planting trees, installing green roofs, and building micro-parks. The innovations get even bolder, from a "forest city" in China covered entirely by trees to a program in Melbourne that connects citizens, by email, to their local flora. All of these programs, as sociologist Des Fitzgerald points out, are founded on the same general assumption: there is something innately wrong or unhealthy with urban life today, and that nature holds the cure. In The Living City, he argues that this assumption is fundamentally flawed. Talking to the eclectic group of policymakers, urban planners, and dreamers who are building the city of the future, Fitzgerald explores the real roots of our desire to connect cities to nature. The Living City takes us on a tour of the green city movement, from healing forests of South-East Asia to the cognitive architecture of Southern California, through a lab examining the neuroscientific effects of our surroundings to a start-up that's crowd-mapping hidden nature in East London. Along the way, Fitzgerald untangles the often-centuries old ideas undergirding what, exactly, we mean when we think of "nature" - and why we see it as so irrevocably distant from city life. He argues that many urban design programs stem from a Romantic - and misguided -- view of nature. While he isn't opposed to green spaces, Fitzgerald wants to probe the efficacy of attempts to build them into cities. He argues that they aren't the ultimate panacea that many futurists think: after all, how can a line of trees, or an intrusive app designed to show you where those trees are located, truly improve physical and psychological health on a massive scale? At their most useless, green spaces can end up as flowery decorations, "healing" ways of pushing up house prices. Instead of using green space as a band-aid, Fitzgerald proposes that we examine and fix the root issues, like labor rights and work conditions, contributing to urban unease. Ultimately, he makes an argument for celebrating our cities as they are, not as we'd like them to be - in all of their noisy, constructed, artificial glory"--

Book Synopsis

A sociologist explores why "green cities" won't fix everything--and urges us to celebrate urban life as it is

Everywhere you look, cities are getting greener. The general assumption is clear: if something is unhealthy or bad about urban life today, then nature holds the cure. However, argues sociologist Des Fitzgerald, green spaces are not the panacea that people think.

In The Living City, Fitzgerald tours the international green city movement that has flourished across the world and discovers the deep, sometimes troubling, roots of our desire to connect cities to nature. Talking to policy makers, planners, scientists, and architects, Fitzgerald suggests that underneath the wish to turn future cities green is another wish: to make the modern city, and perhaps the modern world, disappear altogether. Ultimately, he makes an argument for celebrating the contemporary city as it is--in all its noisy, constructed, artificial glory.  

Review Quotes

"Counterintuitive, funny, and provocative."--The Financial Times

"An amusing, skeptical and refreshing journey through the past and future of urban life."--The Telegraph

"Fitzgerald surveys a rich array of ideas about nature and analyses the power dynamics at play in urban planning."--The Irish Independent

"A vivid look at a key controversy in city planning... readers will relish many of Fitzgerald's interesting arguments in favor of traditional city structure." --Kirkus

"An incendiary repudiation of the resurgent fantasy that nature can cure the maladies of contemporary cities and societies. Des Fitzgerald is a sharp critic and a stone-cold realist. His stimulating book is a reminder that there are no simple solutions to global climate change."--Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People

"It reads like Jon Ronson let loose on city planners: endlessly funny, outrageously caustic, and seriously smart."--John Grindrod, author of Iconicon

"Our messy, gritty, unequal, and sometimes dysfunctional cities are pretty good as they are. And often better than the utopian alternatives that are foisted on us these days. This opinionated, outspoken, insightful book champions the city that we have against the utopian city that architects and urbanists keep wanting to build."--Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class

About the Author

Des Fitzgerald is professor of medical humanities and social sciences at University College Cork. He has been named a "New Generation Thinker" by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He lives in Cork, Ireland.