Seldom does a book make me actively angry, but Living in the Endless City did. When it arrived with the heft and size of a concrete block, I thought it was an architectural sample. Actually, it is a collection of essays by 38 contributors from conferences on world cities held by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank‘s Alfred Herrhausen Society. The book focuses on Mumbai, Sao Paolo and Istanbul. As such, it is a companion piece to an earlier effort published by the same sponsors called The Endless City, which focused on New York, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg, and Berlin.
The Introduction alone is 65 pages long, comprised of a forward and three essays. I bristled at the third sentence of the Forward when Wolfgang Novak posited that, “In cities, all of the world’s problems are crowded together in one place.” This assertion immediately brought to mind the issue of water rights on the Nile and the border disputes in Kashmir—both far from any urban center. Already I was plodding ahead with a jaundiced eye.
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