Welcome To The Urban Revolution
How Cities Are Changing The World
By: Jeb Brugmann
Published: May 12, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
ISBN 9780670068050
Publisher: Penguin/Viking Canada
"We are organizing the planet itself into a City: into a single, complex, connected, and still very unstable urban system", writes urban strategy consultant Jeb Brugmann in his groundbreaking and visionary book Welcome To The Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing The World. The author considers the philosophical and practical issues surrounding the explosive growth of what he calls the global City, and its implications for the future of humanity.
Jeb Bruggman understands the importance of the world City as an instrument of change that represents a revolution. The author takes the issue of globalization to its very roots in the form of global urbanization. Seemingly minor activities and events in one city can affect events worldwide because of the deeply interconnected nature of global cities. Major global changes are occurring at the most local levels, despite the efforts of governments to control them. Individual activities that change the very foundation of cities, happening block by block, create the base for the new urban revolution that is sweeping the world. The new urbanism is changing the very nature of societies in ways never before imagined, presenting new and difficult challenges in their wake.
Jeb Brugmann (photo left) takes the reader on a street level tour of cities across the globe. From the earth shaking changes in the slums of Mumbai to new developments in South America to the crumbling city of Detroit, the author demonstrates how cities can succeed or they can fail. The reader is presented with the wasted opportunities of cities like Toronto and Miami, where city planners have failed to deliver on their promises. Jeb Brugmann also describes the success of community organizers in Chicago. and how block by block, they changed the course of Chicago from a failed city to one with a renewed vibrancy and sense of purpose. Along the way, the author shares his ideas for developing an new urban strategy, to replace traditional urban planning.
For me, the power of the book is the author's recognition of the transformational power of the new global urbanism, and the unique challenges and opportunities they present for the future. Jeb Brugmann takes a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to his concept of urban strategy. He points out correctly, that for too long, the urban revolution has been ignored, and the importance of where people live, and the value they gain from an urban environment were left unnoticed. The author points out how top down city planning has been imposed on the urban residents, often with disastrous results, while grassroots actions by the people themselves, have achieved far greater returns.
I highly recommend the very important urban strategy book Welcome To The Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing The World by Jeb Brugmann, to anyone seeking to understand the importance of shaping the world's cities, to meet the challenge of global problems, and to support the great ambitions of the people who reside within them. The author's grand urban strategy begins with local change, and then expands to the build the entire city, and outward to the interconnected global City.
Read the essential city building handbook Welcome To The Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing The World by Jeb Brugmann, and prepare yourself for to address the issues of building productive, equitable, and sustainable cities that work for everyone. The new urban revolution is taking place at this very moment. This must read book will help you to understand it and to build urbanism in the new expanding, and interlinked global City of the future.
