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City life witold rybczynski5/13/2023 With its opening excursion to Paris, the narrative continues to push us toward a future in which American cities might improve on their own terms, rather than on those of the European past. Always with an eye toward architecture and urban planning, Rybczynski also situates his observations in a strong narrative about the rise of industrialism and consumer culture. City Life’s historical narrative is a valuable resource: it provides a quick, fairly detailed account of the environmental, social, economic, and technological factors that have contributed to the development of American towns and cities from colonial times to the present day. The hygienic notion of Parisian safety and beauty hovers over the rest of the book, which is by and large a fast-paced, informative history of the American city, told with occasional personal musings from the point of view of a Canadian who has recently moved to Philadelphia. The comparison instructs us at the outset to consider why American cities are not more like Paris, with its “aesthetic vision” (p. Near the beginning of City Life, Witold Rybczynski informs the reader that the ratio of police to citizens in Paris is 15:1,000 in New York City, it is 4:1,000 and in Los Angeles, 2:1,000.
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