PD Smith

Today, for the first time in his­to­ry more than half the pop­u­la­tion of the plan­et live in cities. Two hun­dred years ago, just three per cent were city dwellers, but by 2050, 75 per cent will be urban­ites. My new book City is a guide­book to our urban age, tak­ing the read­er on a jour­ney through the past, present and future of the world’s cities.

The expe­ri­ence of liv­ing in cities is uni­ver­sal. As one his­to­ri­an has writ­ten: ‘A town is always a town, wher­ev­er it is locat­ed, in time as well as space.’ The first cities were built in the fer­tile land between the rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates in the south of Mesopotamia, part of mod­ern Iraq.

When the first city builders set out on their urban exper­i­ment thou­sands of years ago, they cre­at­ed far more than a new man-made envi­ron­ment built of mud bricks. From them emerged the build­ing blocks of civil­i­sa­tion, includ­ing essen­tial skills such as writ­ing and math­e­mat­ics.

City dwellers cre­at­ed a new way of being. Human­i­ty was rein­vent­ed in these pio­neer­ing cities. Urban com­mu­ni­ties formed a rev­o­lu­tion­ary social and moral order that broke free from the rigid struc­tures – tribes and clans – of the rur­al world. Accord­ing to a medieval Ger­man say­ing, ‘Stadtluft macht frei’, city air sets you free. You can be what­ev­er you want to be in a city.

Above all, what moti­vat­ed me to write City was a desire to explore and cel­e­brate what is undoubt­ed­ly humankind’s great­est achieve­ment. They are com­plex and increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­no­log­i­cal envi­ron­ments that (pace Win­ston Churchill) shape us as we shape them.

When you have spent all your life in cities, it is easy to for­get the exhil­a­rat­ing sense of awe felt by those who encounter the city for the first time. The Ger­man poet Hein­rich Heine expe­ri­enced this in 1827: ‘I have seen the great­est won­der which the world can show to the aston­ished spir­it; I have seen it, and am more aston­ished than ever – and still there remains fixed in my mem­o­ry that stone for­est of hous­es, and amid them the rush­ing stream of faces, of liv­ing human faces, with all their mot­ley pas­sions, all their ter­ri­ble impuls­es of love, of hunger, and of hate – I am speak­ing of Lon­don.’

Heine’s words speak pow­er­ful­ly of the poten­tial­i­ty and sheer con­cen­trat­ed ener­gy of the city: intense, over­whelm­ing, excit­ing, chaot­ic, and some­times more than a lit­tle scary.

Poets like Heine make the world anew through their work, so that we see it as if for the first time. They make the stone stony, in Vik­tor Shklovsky’s mem­o­rable phrase. I hope my book will reawak­en in you, the read­er, some­thing of the sense of won­der that Heine felt on see­ing Lon­don for the first time.

Iain Sin­clair is right when he says that ‘walking is the best way to explore and exploit the city’. To real­ly under­stand a city, you need to walk its streets, read­ing its geog­ra­phy and his­to­ry through the soles of your feet. My book is designed with this in mind, as a guide­book to an imag­i­nary ‘Everycity’. It will accom­pa­ny you on your way around those many fea­tures of urban life and geog­ra­phy that have been present in cities since the begin­ning and have become part of our urban genet­ic code.

City is divid­ed into eight sec­tions – Arrival, His­to­ry, Cus­toms, Where To Stay, Get­ting Around, Mon­ey, Time Out, and Beyond the City. Each sec­tion con­tains between three and five essays. In Cus­toms, for exam­ple, you will find essays on writ­ing, street lan­guage, graf­fi­ti, demon­stra­tions and car­ni­vals. Each of these also con­tains a mini essay explor­ing one aspect in more detail, such as the momen­tous events in Tahrir Square, which is part of the essay on demon­stra­tions.

After each sec­tion there is a longer essay on a more con­crete fea­ture of the urban land­scape, typ­i­cal­ly a struc­ture or space com­mon to most, if not all, cities. They explore the Cen­tral Sta­tion, the City Wall, the House of God, the Hotel, the Sky­scraper, the Depart­ment Store, the Park, and the Ruins. All the essays are illus­trat­ed.

If you want, you can start on page one and read all the way through to the end. But I have tried to cre­ate a book in which you can wan­der and drift. The ele­ments of sur­prise and dis­cov­ery are impor­tant, just as they are when you explore a real city. Open the book any­where and begin – there are no set routes.

From the Cen­tral Sta­tion you could strike out to Chi­na­town or the House of God. Then you could grab some Street Food to eat in the Park before mak­ing your way to the Depart­ment Store. In the evening you could explore the City and the Stage, or stroll through the Red-Light Dis­trict, and then head back to your Hotel or Down­town apart­ment for the night. As in a real city, you can fol­low any num­ber of path­ways through the book. And don’t wor­ry about get­ting lost. Some say it’s the only way real­ly to expe­ri­ence a city.

A book such as City takes quite a while to write. (I’ve been work­ing on it since 2007.) It’s a rich field for research and new mate­r­i­al is appear­ing prac­ti­cal­ly every day as cities evolve and grow. While writ­ing City I came across many fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics, quo­ta­tions and images that could have been includ­ed in the book. In an alter­na­tive, Bor­ge­sian uni­verse, City might morph into a nev­erend­ing ency­clopae­dia of urban won­ders. But in what we choose to call the real world, I lim­it­ed the book to 120,000 or so words.

I’m always inter­est­ed in news about cities. If you have some­thing to share, Twit­ter is a good way to get in touch. I use the hash­tag ♯cities for urban top­ics.

If you want to read some of my reviews and arti­cles on urban themes you can find them by click­ing here.

You can find pho­tos of some of my favourite cities on my Flickr page.

City was pub­lished by Blooms­bury on 24 May 2012 in the UK and on 19 June in the US. I hope you like it. You can read an edit­ed extract from the essay on urban infra­struc­ture, “The Wired City”, on the web­site of the Aus­tralian Design Review.

The audio­book is avail­able from Audi­ble in the UK and the US.

In 2014, Col­in Mar­shall inter­viewed me for his excel­lent series of pod­casts, Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. We talked for about an hour about our expe­ri­ences of cities and about my writ­ing. You can down­load the pod­cast from his web­site. I also had a wide-rang­ing dis­cus­sion with Rob Fer­rett at Wis­con­sin Pub­lic Radio about cities and you can down­load the pro­gramme (about an hour long) here.

You can read the fol­low­ing inter­views with me about cities and my book -

Design Observ­er

Atlantic Cities

Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine

The Casu­al Opti­mist

Stim­u­lus Respond (Omen issue)

3:AM Mag­a­zine

Future Cities: PD Smith & Dar­ran Ander­son in Con­ver­sa­tion

Kirkus Reviews

What people are saying about City

“…thank you for inspir­ing me to try hard­er to inspire my kids.”
— Neville Gibbs, Wait­akere Col­lege

“The author’s ideas are orig­i­nal and inven­tive enough to war­rant his descrip­tion of the book as ‘a guide­book to an imag­i­nary Everyc­i­ty.’ It’s a great thinker whose mus­ings run the gamut from the Aztec cap­i­tal of Tenochti­t­lan to Tahrir Square, graf­fi­ti to glad­i­a­tors, who can quote the Old Tes­ta­ment and Baude­laire, and throw in an info­graph­ic enti­tled, ‘When sky­scrap­ers rise, do mar­kets fall?’”
— Alli­son Ari­eff, “Read­ing the City”, New York Times, 17 Decem­ber 2012

“A mag­nif­i­cent achieve­ment.”
— Mark Lam­ster, Design Observ­er, 3 July 2012

“The city is a big sub­ject but this is read­able, con­cise and extreme­ly enter­tain­ing. Smith spans the emer­gence of the first Mid­dle East­ern cities – places with no streets, so inhab­i­tants need­ed to walk on roofs and descend lad­ders to reach their homes – up to infor­mal set­tle­ments and high-tech hubs today. Well-researched, well-writ­ten and clear.”
— Edwin Heath­cote, Best Books of 2012, Finan­cial Times, 30 Novem­ber 2012

“For every urban cof­fee table.”
—Metro, 16 May 2012

“The book…is a rich kalei­do­scope cel­e­brat­ing urban life in all its aspects… Smith’s approach is to take the read­er on a series of tours, which are con­sis­tent­ly well-writ­ten and researched — and impres­sive­ly eclec­tic — that reveal his sub­ject mat­ter in myr­i­ad small glimpses… Smith’s book is at once a huge­ly enjoy­able read and an inspir­ing vision to aim for.”
— James Math­er, Spec­ta­tor, 7 July 2012 (PDF here)

“It’s a remark­able book. Enjoy­able and enlight­en­ing, City is easy to read but also ency­clopaedic in its mul­ti-dimen­sion­al jour­ney through urban life.”
— Julian Woodford, His­to­ry­Lon­don, 13 Jan­u­ary 2013

“It is a love song to cities, large and small.”
— Tish Wells, Kansas City Star / McClatchy News­pa­pers, 6 June 2012

“Smith packs the blood, guts, under­bel­ly and dri­ving forces of the arche­typ­al city into chap­ters as dense­ly packed as the streetscapes of Man­hat­tan or Hong Kong. […] The sor­cery of cities should not be lost; Smith’s ebul­lient guide­book helps to remind us why.”
— Jonathan Glancey, Guardian, 9 June 2012

“an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to the city, and should be on every stu­den­t’s read­ing list”.
— Richard Cole, Urban Design, issue 126 (Spring 2013), 56–7

“[T]he book’s hodge­podge struc­ture excit­ing­ly mir­rors the impro­vised order of cities them­selves, and Smith encour­ages his read­ers to ‘wan­der and drift,’ a strat­e­gy liable to gen­er­ate sur­pris­ing jux­ta­po­si­tions – as between urban birds, which sing at a high­er pitch than birds in the coun­try, and the police drones that fly above the streets of Liv­er­pool.”
— The New York­er, 6 August 2012, p 73

“[O]ne of the best books on the city yet…”
— Bosco K. Ho, Boscoh.com

“A one-vol­ume overview of a poten­tial­ly daunt­ing sub­ject, made read­able, and even grip­ping, through fine writ­ing and mag­a­zine-like side­bars… Effort­less­ly flit­ting from the sur­pris­ing­ly mod­ern grid plans of ancient Chi­nese cities to the haunt­ing­ly time­less-look­ing ruins of con­tem­po­rary Detroit, City rep­re­sents a pain-free – in fact, joy­ful – sur­vey course on nine mil­len­nia (at least) of urban his­to­ry.”
— Taras Grescoe, Globe and Mail, 30 Novem­ber 2012

“City is one of the best books we have laid eyes on this year.”
— Easy Voy­age, May

“Half a cen­tu­ry ago, Lewis Mum­ford pub­lished The City in His­to­ry, a huge­ly influ­en­tial and in some ways con­tro­ver­sial book that has been the Bible for stu­dents and lovers of city life… A new look at this great sub­ject has for some time been need­ed, and in City: A Guide­book for the Urban Age, P.D. Smith pro­vides it. A British schol­ar con­nect­ed to Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, Smith is less philo­soph­i­cal and more empir­i­cal than Mum­ford, but if any­thing this is wel­come, as City is whol­ly acces­si­ble to the seri­ous gen­er­al read­er. […] If there’s any­thing of con­se­quence about cities that Smith fails to dis­cuss or at least men­tion, I don’t know what it is.”
— Jonathan Yard­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post, 8 June 2012

“High­ly rec­om­mend­ed for any­body who can appre­ci­ate cities as more than just the place they com­mute to.”
— Michael Gross, Prose and Pas­sion

“Read­ing it is like being seat­ed next to the most-informed, and most charm­ing guest at your dream din­ner par­ty, some­one with an end­less font of facts enlivened by quirky and often hilar­i­ous anec­dotes.”
— Mark Lam­ster, Notable Books of 2012, Design­ers & Books

“Mr Smith has writ­ten an unapolo­getic paean, not to any par­tic­u­lar city but to the urban idea in general…The result is a sort of high-qual­i­ty, unusu­al­ly rig­or­ous cof­fee-table book, designed to be dipped into rather than read from begin­ning to end…an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to a vast sub­ject”.
— The Econ­o­mist, 28 July 2012

“Migra­tion, food secu­ri­ty, glob­al tourism, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, eco­nom­ic expan­sion, and war: these are all peren­ni­al influ­ences on urban form—and urban futures—and Smith works hard to show their role in shap­ing the life of what he calls ‘the ape that shapes [its] envi­ron­ment, the city builders.’ ”
— Geoff Man­augh, BLDGBLOG, 1 June 2012

“It’s a won­der­ful book: BLDGBLOG meets Ita­lo Calvi­no. Gor­geous, smart, fun, and full of sur­pris­es, like wan­der­ing all the world’s great cities at once … Irre­sistible”
— David Dobbs, Wired.com

“A com­pen­dious and lav­ish­ly illus­trat­ed guide to real cities and the ideas they embody”.
— Bri­an Dil­lon, Irish Times, 14 July 2012

“The over­all effect is an ener­getic trib­ute to the city rather than a guide or aca­d­e­m­ic study — a cel­e­bra­tion of city-ness itself. Smith…writes plain­ly and with aston­ish­ing scope, per­sis­tent­ly glob­al and seem­ing­ly at home with every­thing from Mar­dok to Mas­dar. The lit­tle the­mat­ic essays are a joy… With even lit­tler texts boxed in colour and scat­tered hith­er and yon, City is a tremen­dous­ly jazzy, rest­less book.”
— Will Wiles, Icon 111 (Sep­tem­ber 2012), 87

“From mega­lopo­lis to small urban spaces, we can­not deny that the pow­er and influ­ence of cities is tru­ly glob­al, as Smith argues. This book is a per­fect way to under­stand the glob­alised phe­nom­e­na hid­den behind the word ‘city’.”
— Ethel Baraona Pohl, Domus, 29 June 2012

“I love it… a selec­tion of insane­ly fas­ci­nat­ing sec­tions about cities and how they came to be what they are, what they are and may become, the forces at play inside them and how those forces show them­selves in archi­tec­ture and soci­ety. In many ways the per­fect brain­food for a writer, and a book you can dip into and imme­di­ate­ly get lost in.”
— Nick Hark­away, Goodreads, April 2012

“…hand­some and well-written…the great strength of City is that it gath­ers in one place myr­i­ad themes and angles, pro­vid­ing gen­er­al­ists with a high­ly read­able, pithy resumé of cen­turies of city-relat­ed hap­pen­ings and trends. Authors such as Alain de Bot­ton and Iain Sin­clair have cov­ered sim­i­lar ter­ri­to­ry else­where, but Smith is less pre­ten­tious and and less opaque than either…”
— Chris Moss, Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment, 15 June 2012

“Wit­ty, elo­quent and telling­ly con­cise”
— Annick Labeca, Urban Lab Glob­al Cities, 18 Sep­tem­ber 2012

“Smith deft­ly inte­grates the nar­ra­tives of far-flung places across cen­turies. Dis­cussing sports with­in city bounds, he draws a con­nec­tion between the Roman Colos­se­um and skate­board­ers in Venice Beach. In this con­tin­u­um, he cre­ates an uber-city, a grand por­trait of what urban­i­ty is and might become.”
— Car­olyn Kel­logg, Los Ange­les Times, 9 Decem­ber 2012

“The range of mate­r­i­al is breath­tak­ing, but Smith wears his eru­di­tion light­ly. The prose of City is smart and fast-paced, with a nice bal­ance between big pic­ture his­to­ry and close-up details. The book is full of “aha” moments and occa­sion­al humor. This one’s a must read for his­to­ry geeks.”
— Pamela Tol­er, Shelf Aware­ness, 29 June 2012. Starred review.

“Like any great city, this is a book to get lost in, to try out new areas, to sam­ple to savor, to enjoy…VERDICT: A won­der­ful and reveal­ing look at cities in all their glo­ry from view­points through­out his­to­ry. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed for read­ers across many sub­ject cat­e­gories, includ­ing urban stud­ies, cul­tur­al his­to­ry, and trav­el.”
— Library Jour­nal, 137, no 6 (1 April 2012): 86–87. Starred review.

“The plea­sure in read­ing City comes from mov­ing quick­ly from sub­ject to sub­ject, skip­ping one moment from a para­graph on urban ceme­ter­ies to anoth­er on graf­fi­ti, and link­ing a chap­ter on hotels to anoth­er one on cof­fee shops…If you have ever loved a city and felt that you belong down­town some­where, whether in the hot, fra­grant roads of Bangkok or the buzzing streets of New York, there’s some­thing in PD Smith’s City for you…[A] fun, opti­mistic read that is also high­ly infor­ma­tive and one that I’ll return to as both a ref­er­ence and for the plea­sure of its pho­tographs and curi­ous anec­dotes.”
— Eliz­a­beth Whit­more Funk, Bookbrowse.com

“Huge­ly enjoyed @PD_Smith’s City, a deep and author­i­ta­tive anatomi­sa­tion of the place where most of us now live.”
— Paul McAuley on Twit­ter

“[A]n impres­sive­ly com­pre­hen­sive look at this very broad topic…the kind of book that will be of inter­est both to the gen­er­al read­er and the avowed urban­ist.”
— Nate Berg, Atlantic Cities, 22 June 2012

“Smith’s prose is clear-cut and con­fi­dent, and the book fea­tures stun­ning illus­tra­tions, most of them in colour…Smith is espe­cial­ly adept at cap­tur­ing the inces­sant human inter­ac­tion which char­ac­ter­izes city life, from car­ni­vals to street demon­stra­tions and graf­fi­ti. Read­ers can vir­tu­al­ly smell the pho sold by a street ven­dor in Hanoi, or mar­vel at acro­bat­ics of skate­board­ers along the Thames. An absorb­ing and time­ly book.”
— Marc Vin­cent, Cleve­land Plain Deal­er, 24 June 2012

“A thor­ough and often engag­ing account of urban life, from the Uruk in Sumer and the Aztec capi­tol Tenochitlán to Tokyo, cur­rent­ly the planet’s largest burg with 35 mil­lion peo­ple”.
— David Hola­han, Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, 12 July 2012

“Smith com­pos­es a poly­phon­ic paean to our urban past, present and future… As excit­ing, sprawl­ing and mul­ti­far­i­ous as a shin­ing city on a hill.”
— Kirkus Reviews, 15 March 2012. Starred review. Eric Liebe­trau, edi­tor of Kirkus Reviews, also includ­ed City among his Best Non­fic­tion of 2012.

“Whether evok­ing the slums of Mum­bai, a 1905 din­ner par­ty at London’s Savoy Hotel, or the Aztec cap­i­tal of Tenochtitlán before Cortés con­quered it in 1521, Smith proves a live­ly, learned nar­ra­tor with a strong syn­thet­ic sense. Dis­cur­sive, imag­i­na­tive, and com­pre­hen­sive, his analy­sis of every­thing from the Hang­ing Gar­dens of Baby­lon to skate­board­ing and graf­fi­ti should be savored. Read in parts or whole, read­ers can wan­der and drift, and enjoy the ele­ment of sur­prise, just as in the explo­ration of a real city.”
— Pub­lish­ers Week­ly, 13 Feb­ru­ary 2012. Starred review.

 

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