The urban condition /
This book will speak to the new human epoch, the Urban Age. A majority of humanity now lives for the first time in cities. The city, the highest invention of the modern age, is now the human heartland. And yet the same process that brought us the city and its wonders, modernisation, has also thrown...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Abingdon, Oxon ; New York :
Routledge,
2014.
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| Series: | Questioning cities series.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | This book will speak to the new human epoch, the Urban Age. A majority of humanity now lives for the first time in cities. The city, the highest invention of the modern age, is now the human heartland. And yet the same process that brought us the city and its wonders, modernisation, has also thrown up challenges and threats, especially climate change, resource depletion, social division and economic insecurity. This book will consider how these threats are to be encountered and countered in an urban age. It will focus on the issue of human knowledge and self-awareness, just as Hannah influential The Human Condition did half a century ago. The Human Condition is now The Urban Condition. And it is this condition that will define human prospects in an age of default and risk. The book will explore its subject through three main themes. The first is an exploration of what defines the current human condition, especially the expanding cities that are at the heart of an over-consumptive world economic order. The second exposes and reviews the reawakening of forms of knowledge ('naturalism') that are likely to worsen not improve our comprehension of the crisis. The new 'science of urbanism' in popular new literature exemplifies this dangerous trend. The third and last part of the book considers prospects for a new urban, and therefore human, dispensation, The Good City. We must first journey in our urban vessels through troubled times. But can we now start to plot the way to new shores, to a safer, more resilient city that provides for human flourishing? The Urban Age attempts this sketch, conceiving a new urbanism based on the old idea of self-limitation. |
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| Item Description: | Electronic resource. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (165 pages) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781136678486 (electronic bk.) 1136678484 (electronic bk.) 1306824737 (electronic bk.) 9781306824736 (electronic bk.) 9780203388174 |