Designing the City of Reason: Foundations and Frameworks
Published by Routledge, 2007
342pp
ISBN 978-0415420921
Review by Oliver Spratley
Ali Madanipour draws on his wealth of knowledge and on broad bibliographic source to elucidate "connected thought and connected action" that has come to shape the 'city of reason'. Human quest for understanding and association with phenomena has established the 'cities of reason' and those beliefs that have legitimised the decision making process for the built environment the world over.
Reason is explained in terms of its established societal truths and the desire to 'construct a narrative' and build a form to connect with a 'higher order' is tracked from supernatural alignment with cosmological and religious frameworks through to post medieval development, where new technologies and methods of doing business started to emerge which led to a new production of space that through the industrial revolution led to the division of space. The resultant fragmentation presents the host of problems that today's urban designers face - that is to reverse the effect of fragmentation and reintegrate with a complexity at a human and ecological scale.
Ali Madanipour's new book, 'Whose Public Space? International case studies in urban design and development' will be published by Routledge in early 2010.
