The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities

Item arrived wrapped but there were dirty smudges on the back cover that are difficult to clean. I think this item may be used and repackaged. Pretty pictures and insightful essays, but deceptive tactics not cool.

Great content, great images. Definitely recommending this book to everyone interested in cities and how to make them a better place to live, work and play. Monocle did a great job (again).

This large size book, which no doubt aims at a general audience, deals with how to improve cities, no less. It is “structured” like a magazine, with multiple thematic sections, each presenting many remarkably short texts. Contributors are numerous, many of whom with a journalistic background. No topic is covered in any depth and the articles often appear more a collage of notes than any thoughtful attempt at discussing a specific subject in an organized manner. There is no conclusion to the book, just a two-page spread on other Monocle offerings. Photographs are abundant and often full-page but sadly not of particularly good quality, neither esthetically nor in terms of significance. Indeed, it looks as if many were shot by non-professionals, somewhat haphazardly. Most have no captions. Illustrations also include vintage-like drawings but, strangely, there is not a single map in the whole book. Fact-checking seems to have been deficient and there are glaring errors. A few examples include: • Thailand was never any other country’s colony and there are therefore no “colonial-era buildings” in Bangkok (page 50); • Sao Paulo is 90 km from the ocean and its site could thus not first have been seen by a shipwrecked sailor as he washed up the Atlantic coast (page 94); • Bern, 120 km from Zurich, is not “nearby” and it is doubtful that politicians commute daily by train (page 100); • there were no “colossal stadiums” in Ancient Greece and neither were there “grisly games” in that culture (page 152). Overall, this expensive book sadly comes out as shallow and pretentious.

This book was a present for my husband and he absolutely loved it. I would defo recommend.

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