The City After The Automobile: An Architect's Vision

by Moshe Safdie, Wendy Kohn

In an age of virtual offices, urban flight, and planned gated communities, are cities becoming obsolete? In this passionate manifesto, Moshe Safdie argues that as crucibles for creative, social, and political interaction, vital cities are an organic and necessary part of human civilization. If we are to rescue them from dispersal and decay, we must first revise our definition of what constitutes a city.Unlike many who believe that we must choose between cities and suburbs, between mass transit and highways, between monolithic highrises and panoramic vistas, Safdie envisions a way to have it all. Effortless mobility throughout a region of diverse centers, residential communities, and natural open spaces is the key to restoring the rich public life that cities once provided while honoring our profound desire for privacy, flexibility, and freedom. With innovations such as transportation nodes, elevated moving sidewalks, public utility cars, and buildings designed to maximize daylight, views, and personal interaction, Safdie's proposal challenges us all to create a more satisfying and humanistic environment.

Genres: Urban Planning, Architecture, Design, Art, Cities, Urban Studies

198 pages, Paperback

First published May 29, 1997

About the author

Moshe Safdie was born in Haifa, Israel to a Syrian Jewish family. His family moved to Montreal, Canada, in 1953. In 1959, Safdie married Nina Nusynowicz. The couple had two children, a daughter and a son. His son Oren Safdie is a playwright who has written several plays about architecture including Private Jokes, Public Places.[2] His daughter Taal is an architect in San Diego, a partner of the firm Safdie Rabines Architects.[3]

In 1961, Safdie graduated from McGill University with a degree in architecture. In 1981, Safdie married Michal Ronnen, a photographer, with whom he has two daughters, Carmelle and Yasmin. Carmelle Safdie is an artist, and Yasmin Safdie is a social worker. Safdie is the uncle of Dov Charney, founder and former CEO of American Apparel.

Reviews

[Bex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this perspective, while valuable, only provides part of the story. It’s clear that Safdie largely only considers Western nations when conceptualizing his ideas for the future — which is unsustainable in the long run. His “Urbana,” in the way he describes examples in the epilogue, can only exist at the expense of developing nations via resource extraction. I’d recommend reading this book alongside books that discuss the impacts of displacement, neocolonialism, and capitalism/individualization in order to gain a more holistic idea of a car-free world.

[kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Safdie has the kind of imagination needed to confront our automobile addiction. Safdie is an architect, and so a creative who dreams up all kinds of solutions - some highly practical and others wholly impractical. Also, he starts from the assumption that we'll never abolish the car, and argues that manage our car problems (pollution, space, mortality), we have to accept that.

[Marc Caswell · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first 1/2 is good for orienting yourself in the pedestrian realm, but the latter 1/2 is basically a pitch for car-sharing or the pod-people of PRT. The word 'bike' appears twice, and isn't really thinking of the car post-auto, but post-privately owned auto. Too bad they wasted such a good title on a mediocre book.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise and well-rounded summary of the problems facing our cities and towns due to their organization around the movement and storage of cars. The outline of the problems is the strength of the book. Some solutions for reorganizing our public places are offered near the end of the book, but many of those ideas seem incongruent to the the problems outlined earlier, or are simply infeasible.