Mussolini's Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City - Borden W. Painter, Jr.

Interesting look at how Mussolini changed the face of Rome and established from nothing many of the communities and suburbs that surround the historical city.  As you wander around central Rome, you don't realize how much of Mussolini's Rome you wander through.  Part of his presence is actually an absence, especially around many of the central historical monuments.  In these areas, he cleared away many encroaching houses and structures to make the historical architecture more visible, more present.  Many of the the longer, wide open boulevards in central Rome are also his work.  Scattered through much of the city just outside the old historical centre are more modern buildings, usually apartments - most of these date from this time and Mussolini's plans to both rebuild and increase the population of the city.   This would be true of much of the Ostiense area, significant parts of Testaccio and also the whole area south of the old Trastevere neighbourhood along Via Trastevere.  The Ostiense train station is also his work (Hitler arrived there for his visit prewar).  

The neighbourhood I would like to visit is the EUR neighbourhood - while there are other satellite towns that are wholly the creation of Mussolini's vision, this is the one most easily accessible from central Rome - next visit.

The book also contains a fair bit of the history of Fascism in Italy, but it is easy to skip these bits if you are already familiar with it.  Includes some photos, but reading in combination with Google Maps and photos is better.

Interestingly, one neighbourhood that seems to have been hardly touched is the old Trastevere neighbourhood - which may mean it stands as a record of what a fair bit of Rome looked like outside the historical centre.

There is also the theme of politics, dictatorship and how they use architecture as a means of self-aggrandizement and myth making.  There is also the element of social control:  many of the areas that were razed were poorer areas that tended to be communist or socialist.  These "undesirable" populations were relocated to areas far from the city centre where they were easier to control, also making it harder for them to both get to their work, and also to have a political presence in the central city.  (Untouched is the theme of enrichment through redevelopment of a Fascist insider business circle....)  (All of this reminds me of Erdoğan and his work in Istanbul...)

The Lonely City - Olivia Laing

A book that explores loneliness as an experience in NYC, one of the most densely populated places in the world.  She explores her theme through personal recollections, but also (more interesting) through an examination of the life and works of several NYC artists, from both the 60s and the 90s - Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Joseph Darger, Klaus Nomi.  Laing spends most of her time on Warhol and Wojnarowicz, who represent two distinct periods in the NYC art scene. 
An interesting read, though perhaps not for the reasons intended.
Some threads:
1)  All of these artists had difficult, traumatic early lives.  There work seems to be an attempt both to express their experience and overcome, or at least cope with, the effects these traumatic experiences had on their lives.  20th century art as coming out of deep trauma, social alienation.  Why now?  Is it because in the 20th C society (at least in the U.S.) has become so narrow, so limited in what it demands to belong?  Is it because, tradition having been devalued, we are left only with our own lives to work with, and the most traumatized is simply the most interesting?

2)  Warhol as an early discoverer of how technology serves both to engage you and yet at the same time create a distancing, a separateness, as part of the medium itself.  Think of how much technology now buffers our engagement with what passes for real.  It both connects and alienates at the same time.

3)  Through Wojnarowicz, Laing explores the sexual scene in NYC in the 90s, pre-AIDS, the fetish scene but mostly the gay scene.  She spends some time discussing the whole derelict docklands cruising scene.  Interesting that so many of the artists that came out of NYC at that time were gay, or explored the whole fetish idea in their art and concerts staging.  The 60s counterculture brought a kind of revolution to american society - blew up the suburban, nuclear family, work oriented, church on Sunday, Father Knows Best mythology (where did this myth come from?).  The 90s NYC gay art scene also seems to have had some kind of revolutionary effect on american society, but I am not sure how I would characterize that.  Pushing of boundaries?  Perhaps, the marginalized and "different" demanding to be seen, heard and accepted in society?  Through this, a further broadening of the idea of social norms?  If this is so, this revolution has definitely not completed its cycle yet.  In fact, we are in a major push-back stage right now, especially in the US.   Interesting ideas to explore more...

Capital - Rana Dasgupta

A look at the rapacious capitalism of Delhi, and the dysfunctional, inhumane society it has created.  A look at capitalism and private sector services and where they end up without government regulation with a corrupt power elite.  You can see how government and private capital work hand in hand to disenfranchise and exploit citizens for their endless greed and profit.  Book is well-structured into specific sectors - property, health care, infrastructure etc. 
Built around research and interviews with people involved in the various sectors examined. 
Kind of an examination of the pure capitalist model carried to an extreme.

Lot in there.  Worth rereading.

The Other Paris - Luc Sante

A history of Paris over the past few hundred years, though mostly focused on the 19th and early 20th centuries, because this period has much richer information sources.  The book looks at various aspects of the city (Ghosts, Zone, Canaille, Le Business) in each chapter, with an historical view of that aspect.  Very much a history of the people - which for most of this period implies poor people.  What I see underlined in this book is the fact that so much of what we consider picturesque or essential to our view of "Paris" is based on poverty and misery.  The idealized street life is in part a life of poor people with no other place to be, except a miserable hole to sleep in.   Or trying to cobble together some kind of sustenance scrambling after opportunities in the street.  There is some kind of dissonance between this idealized view of free, wide open Paris (or New York) and the poverty and misery that underlies it.  Free and wide open because so many of the inhabitants have nothing to lose and nothing to look forward to?  No future?
On the other hand, you can see how buckled down, narrow and safe life has become as western societies have become wealthier across the board, and have accumulated more things that can be lost. There has been some kind of taming of humanity, a hollowing out in some way, a domestication.  In a sense we have become farm animals - safe, secure but oh so dull.  Trade it for uncertainty, instability but ever so much excitement and stimulation?  Hmmm.  No society has made this reverse choice yet. This is what is happening in Istanbul right now actually.  As the middle class grows, the society becomes more enclosed and more homogeneous.
Hard choices.

This book also underlines how Vanishing New York by J. Moss is a bit naive in its complaint.  There is still a whiff of the white middle class tourist on a slumming run (though a small whiff, as the author has his reasons for searching out the freedom and openness of New York City).

I suppose, in a sense, there  are two types of people in this swirling mass of humanity that gave New York and Paris their character and flavour.  One, the people who are genuinely different somehow, who don't fit in - for them, the jumble and mishmash of the city represents some kind of freedom to be.  The other type are the poor and miserable for whatever reason - drugs, lack of education, generational poverty, psychological problems.  They live on the margins, not by choice, but by necessity, or through inevitability.  These are the people who are ignored when you romanticize this older time period.

The one thing that is radically different though, is the way rich and poor mixed in Paris - at the theatre, in the street, in cafes and bals.  This does not happen in Toronto (or New York any more) by the sound of things.  Probably not in Paris either, as lower income people are pushed further and further out from the centre.

This book also touches on art and its role in gentrification.  This may have actually started in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century.  Before then, artists were in the orbit of the rich and the wealthy (theory) but when art moved away from representation and tradition, (and buyers) artists ended up in the poorer areas like Montmartre.  As the artists get discovered (and also establish centres in cafes and restaurants), their milieu gets discovered, and seems so much more exciting than the run-of-the-mill.  This draws money, draws moneyed people, and we go on from there.

Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul - Jeremiah Moss

Brilliant look at gentrification - causes, specifics, effects.  Told through the changes that have happened in different New York neighbourhoods.  He looks at specific longtime businesses, at the politics and policy behind changes, at the effects on lower income families, at the disaster that sometimes follows high rent gentrification.  He also adds comments and analysis from the literature on gentrification and its effects - these are good sources for followup.  There is also some discussion of the social changes that are behind this gentrification and suburbanization of the city.
I like his view of the historical role and importance of cities - essentially an environment of freedom and tolerance.
Reading this book brings back a lot of memories from my trips to New York in the late 70s.  Also, early days in Toronto.  The process of urban change has been similar in Toronto, though not so extreme or so rapid.  But the result, the "same-ification", the whitewashing, the commodification has been the same.
Interesting to read someone writing about the same questions and complaints I have had about Toronto over the past few years.  A subject to pursue.

The real question though, is what next?  If the city has lost its place and role as a home for diversity and difference, where do you go?  Scattered and down your own rabbit hole?

A Strangeness in My Mind - Orhan Pamuk

The most beautiful ode to a city I have ever read.  Rich in details of the streets and the lives of ordinary people.  He also weaves the social and political history of Turkey and Istanbul into the background of the story.  It is a sad story, though, a lament for a lost city and a lost way of life, essentially the death of community and human warmth and the triumph of greed and materialism.
Mevlut is a beautiful character, sufi-like.

Well-written as well, with a narrator as well as characters that pop in and give their view of events or other characters in the story.

Happy City - Charles Montgomery

A book filled with fascinating observations and research about the crazy way we have come to see and live in our cities.  Too many to list here.  One:  inhabitants of Toronto and Vancouver express less satisfaction with life than people living in small towns and backwaters such as Sherbrooke and Brantford (!!!!!)

He looks at many of the unhealthy, unhappy trends in modern urban design and living.  He explores the negative outcomes of our obsessions with suburban sprawl.  He looks at the politics of power and inequality in modern urban environments, from the domination of the car to gentrification.

Throughout the book I met explanations for many of the things I disliked about my suburban living experience and also that I dislike in the changes in Toronto. Why walking is so unpleasant in the suburbs.  Why parks are often so uninviting.  Why the ROM addition is such an abomination.  Why areas like Harboufront, with their endless condos and planned recreational areas, remain lifeless and uninviting.  Why I was compelled to give up riding the subway this winter (the growing stress caused by repeated unreliability combined with a lack of power to circumvent the problem).

It also filled with inspirational stories of change for the better, like Bogata, Copenhagen, neighbourhoods and local movements around the world.

Definitely worth a reread.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia - Mohsin Hamid

A fast read but it operates on many levels.  Set in Pakistan, it follows the life journey of a boy from a village who moves to the city and makes it big.  It is  his story, divided into chapters based on the author's overriding concept of a self-help book for becoming rich (as the title says...) with each chapter devoted to a particular piece of advice or strategy, such as "Get and Education", "Don't Fall in Love", "Be Prepared to Use Violence", etc.  Each chapter is an illustration of the importance of each self-help principal.
It is all set amidst a rather tongue-in-cheek introduction to the perils and curiosities of the self-help genre.  Interwoven is a wistful mostly unrequited love story that remains somehow sad.  The story of the main character's lives is the Chase, followed by Loss.
Interspersed are witty little comments and asides that provide glimpses of the frustrations, craziness, and pressures of life in modern Pakistan.
An heavy book recounted in a light and traipsing town.
Worth a reread.

Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga

This is the same author who wrote The White Tiger.

An excellent read - well-written, the characters are wonderfully developed and explored, the descriptive writing is very evocative.  The book is based around an aging co-op building in Mumbai and what happens when a real estate developer decides he wants to buy out the owners for a project.  Adiga does a wonderful job of charting the the path of the people in the coop from a group of rather ordinary people to a group of murderers driven by greed.  The underlying theme would seem to be how the corruption and greed of the developers creates a situation that destroys communities and families, and brings out the worst in people.  It is like an unmasking of the livable surface of people's lives, the ordinary small kindnesses and grudging acceptance of foibles that make a life, a community  - unmasked to reveal the ability for evil beneath that surface.
Not the first time that story has been told in the 20th or 21st century...

There are no heroes in the book.  One man, Masterji, holds that role at first in the book, but he too has his mask pulled away, in part at least.

Depressing, but an excellent read.

The Big Disconnect - Giles Slade 2012

Slade sums up the focus of the book in the Introduction:  "What you will read in the coming pages is a description of how we progressively sacrificed the quality of human life for our economic well-being.  If, currently, your best friend is your iPhone or iPad, after reading this book you will understand why that is so, and also you will finally understand the real cost of numbing the pangs of human loneliness with human-mehanical neo-friendships."

In the course of the book, Slade traces the development of this condition of substituting technology for real human activity and interaction.  To my surprise, he traces it back to the introduction of the radio.  And already at that time, you see the clever marketing trick of audience ratiocination - the cosy image of the family huddled together around the radio apparently only lasted 3 or 4 years.  Radio manufacturers quickly saw their sales taper off as most families soon had a radio.  What to do? Create target audience specific programming, encourage tribal identities, so everyone in the family soon needs their own radio so they can confirm their new identity by listening to the shows targeted at them.  Brilliant marketing... not so brilliant social phenomenon, according to Slade.

Here is another quote he includes in the book from William Deresiewicz:  "We have given our hearts to machines, and now we are turning into machines."  Faux Friendships, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2012  This is another interesting point, and I see it connect to that other elusive subject I am interested in - the essence or zeitgeist of the corporate structure/mindset/organizing principle.  You can see this trend from early on in the mass production revolution - humans become extensions or servicers of the machine.  Corporate hiring practices now are like this too.  Instead of submitting a carefully thought out, creative resume, you go through their on-line process, responding to a set collection of questions in categories.  The questions and categories are determined by the software, the algorithm, the computer process they use for screening applications.  You, the prospective employee, are no longer yourself, you are an extension of the machine.  Efficient, yes, but also completely dehumanizing.  This is maybe one of the key points of the corporate Way - everything is reduced to a cog of the larger machine, a process dictated by efficiency, profit (for a few), and technology.  This has been said before, and has been true for a while now, but this corporate ethos is invading more and more areas of our life.  (Which is what Rukhoff talks about in this book, Life Inc.)

Another point Slade brings up is the origin of a materialistic society in the U.S.  He place that origin right at the end of the second world war.  Social leaders were worried about the returning soldiers willingness to return to the narrow confines of the poor worker's life after experiencing their strength during the war, and making so many sacrifices in defence of "free" society.  The strategy that was hit upon was to increase availability of material goods and create the possibility of acquiring ever more bigger and better material goods.  (This increase in availability is also tied to the mass-production corporate structure itself.)  This is an interesting point worth exploring further.

Yet another area of interest is his discussion of trust in modern society.  In smaller, agrarian society trust is based on directly knowing people.  In large urban, industrial societies, you don't really know anyone -society is anonymous and distanced.  The need for trust was then extended to the "expert" and we see a growth in the importance and role of experts.  Unfortunately, these days even this trust in experts is waning, as it becomes more and more obvious that the main concern of experts is to protect their position and interests (or the interests of who is paying them).

An important book - a few sections are a bit of a slog, but well worth reading.  I wish he had included a bibliography.

Cities Are Good For You - Leo Hollis

Cities Are Good For You - The Genius of the Metropolis

Not sure that this book lives up to its name.  In the beginning, from a historical perspective Hollis makes his point - cities are what drove the innovation and change starting with the Renaissance and moving up to modern times.  As he wanders through his other chapters though, it's not clear even from his own narrative that cities are still proving good for us.  In chapters looking at some of the modern metropolises, mostly located in the developing world, despite his positive spin,  some of the problems with infrastructure, services, pollution, overcrowding, social and economic exclusion,  and transportation start to look pretty overwhelming and not particularly good for you or anyone else.  It's not clear that we can actually get the better of many of these problems.

His chapter on Dharavi, the large slum in Mumbai, is interesting.  Some of the people he interviews suggest the problem is not the slum itself, but the fact that it doesn't conform to western notions of what a city is.  Interesting point.  The other perspective is to see the slum as the place where the growing problems of large metropolises have already fully manifested themselves.  I suppose you could redefine "slum" to make it a more positive or differentiated concept but if this is the future of the redefined city, I'm not sure it's one I'm interested in, or that I would define as "good for you."

The other topic Hollis seems to avoid is the effect of global corporate culture on cities and their decline. Where global corporate culture appears is in his discussion of Dharavi and the fact that it is wedged between a modern international airport and a new global corporate business development.  He does make the point that the corporate citizens can come in and out of Mumbai without ever having contact with the Dharavi India, but he doesn't explore the link between those two universes and how the one feeds of the other.  Another place he mentions corporate culture is in the Korean free trade zone developed on an island off their cost, a planned community built by and for large global corporations - his only critique is that he's not sure if this top down model of city design will really make people happy.

He does have some interesting sources to follow up on though:

Geoffrey West - complexity theory and its relation to cities
William H. Whyte - The Organization Man - the rise of corporate culture from the 50s on
                              - The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
                              - City:  Rediscovering the Centre
Robert Putnam - Bowling Alone
Henri Lefebvre - Existentialism (a philosopher who gave it up to become a cabby, but still wrote books)
                         - La Droit de la ville
Jane Jacobs - Dark Ages Ahead