PD Smith

For the last few days I’ve been in Ams­ter­dam, tak­ing a break from writ­ing and talk­ing about City. I’d for­got­ten how beau­ti­ful Ams­ter­dam is.

For the first time I vis­it­ed the Muse­um Geelvinck-Hin­lopen, a late sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry man­sion fac­ing the Heren­gracht.

With its seclud­ed gar­den and lux­u­ri­ous rooms, it pro­vid­ed a mem­o­rable glimpse into a time when Ams­ter­dam was one of the wealth­i­est cities on the plan­et. But as I was walk­ing round, I noticed a small white plaque on a piano in the Blue Room. In won­der­ful­ly ornate script, it pro­claimed that the mak­ers of that piano were John Broad­wood & Sons, who were based in Great Pul­teney Street, near Gold­en Square, Lon­don — the city that would soon take over the role as the com­mer­cial cap­i­tal of the world.

If you’re plan­ning a trip to Ams­ter­dam, I would rec­om­mend Proev­er­ij 274 as a great place to eat (thanks to Matt Muir for that tip), and for a real­ly superb cup of cof­fee, Scream­ing Beans. They sell deli­cious almond cook­ies too.

I for­got to men­tion before I went away that the Guardian pub­lished my review of Taras Grescoe’s Straphang­er, an excel­lent whis­tle-stop tour of world cities and their trans­port sys­tems. Appar­ent­ly, Amer­i­cans now spend nine years of their lives sit­ting in their cars, and the pol­lu­tion they pro­duce kills 30,000 US cit­i­zens each year. You can read the review here.

When I got back from Ams­ter­dam, a very nice review of City was wait­ing for me, by Annick Labeca on Urban Lab Glob­al Cities. In it she admits to hav­ing read the book four times! I’m impressed… Also on City, I did a Q & A with Sherin Wing for Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine. That was post­ed online yes­ter­day and you can read it here. There’s also a slideshow of some of my urban pho­tos at the end.

Oh, and here are some of my pho­tos of Ams­ter­dam on Flickr. Enjoy…

Like much of our often invis­i­ble urban infra­struc­ture, mod­ern city dwellers take street light­ing for grant­ed. At least, they do until they walk down an unlit and unfa­mil­iar street. While I was research­ing City, I came across the rather sad sto­ry of one of the pio­neers of gas light­ing, a man who was tru­ly ahead of his time. There wasn’t room to include it in the book, so I thought I’d share it with you now.

Con­tin­ue read­ing…

Dan Wagstaff has inter­viewed me for his won­der­ful blog The Casu­al Opti­mist. We cov­ered a lot of ground, from cities (of course) and dystopias, to my ear­li­est expe­ri­ence of writ­ing (as well as read­er feed­back) and my favourite book (Titus Groan). You can read it here.

City was reviewed by Will Wiles in this mon­th’s Icon mag­a­zine. It’s an urban-themed issue, includ­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing piece on fer­al cities by Geoff Man­augh and some of Michael Wolf’s superb pho­tos of Hong Kong sky­scrap­ers. Well worth buy­ing! The review is not online, but here’s a taster of what he thought about the book:

“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.”

“Arrival frames many of our expe­ri­ences of the city: the rou­tine arrival of the com­muter each day, the excite­ment of the tourist at that first glimpse of the metrop­o­lis, the anx­i­ety of the migrant – a stranger in a strange city. Sam Thompson’s Com­mu­nion Town begins with an appeal to a migrant, Ulya, from a face­less offi­cial who has been secret­ly observ­ing her and her hus­band, ever since they arrived in the city. He tells Ulya that he just wants her to open up, to con­fess her true feel­ings. Think of it as your “true arrival in the city,” he says. But the words of this sin­is­ter, Kafkaesque nar­ra­tor ring false. It smells like a trap.”

My review of Sam Thomp­son’s nov­el Com­mu­nion Town: A City in Ten Chap­ters, which has been long-list­ed for the Book­er Prize, appeared in the TLS last week. You can read it here.

The Aus­tralian Design Review has pub­lished an edit­ed extract from “The Wired City” essay in my new book City. It’s about urban infra­struc­ture. Here’s the first para­graph:

Dur­ing the 1870s time was pumped beneath the streets of Paris. Spread out under the city was a net­work of pipes filled with com­pressed air from indus­tri­al steam plants. The pipes emerged into homes and com­mer­cial premis­es, where they were con­nect­ed to clocks. From a con­trol room in the rue du Télégraphe, a pres­sure pulse peri­od­i­cal­ly rip­pled through the sys­tem of pipes beneath the streets, pneu­mat­i­cal­ly syn­chro­nis­ing the clocks of the French cap­i­tal to the stan­dard time of the Paris Obser­va­to­ry.

You can read the rest here.