Manifestoes and Transformations in the Early Modernist City

Historians, architects, social scientists, urban planners, and other scholars of the city look at the conceptions of ideal cities articulated in late-18th-century Europe, as industrialization and urbanization were ushering in the modern period. They also describe and analyze the massive urban projects during the latter half of the 19th century that derived--be it through many hands and transformations--from some of these early notions. Their topics include William Morris' News from Nowhere as a utopian dream, the idea of modernity in Cerda's Teoria General de la Urbanizacion, Camillo Sitte's City Planning According to Artistic Principles in Vienna of 1889, Ebenezer Howard and the garden city as a plain man's guide to the future, making London's modernity, the significance and impact of Vienna's Ringstrasse, Berlin 1900, and Harald Hals' general plan for Oslo in 1929. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Christian Hermansen Cordua is Professor and Head of the Institute of Architecture, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway