Bedside Essays for Lovers (of Cities)

By Daniel Solomon

In this provocative collection of essays, renowned architect Daniel Solomon delves into the complexities of what makes a city vibrant. Acknowledging that a city is not a static thing, he argues we need to pay more attention to nurturing what he calls “continuous cities.” In such a city, he says, “new buildings, new institutions, and new technologies don’t rip apart the old and wreck it. They accommodate, they act with respect, and they add vibrant new chapters to history without eradicating it.”

Continuity, he explains, is the way to promote sustainability— and contrary to what the advocates of “modern architecture” claim, he insists that honoring the traditional ways of city building still provides a solid foundation for places to grow, evolve, be modern. 

However fond you are of your city, or however much you feel it needs improvement, this short collection of essays offers an enticing vision of the future. All of our cities have a past worth examining, a richness of experience that can shape the future in wonderful, surprising ways. Solomon’s prose is thought-provoking and inspiring, well worth keeping close by wherever you do your reading—be it your bedside, couch, a park, or on the metro.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Jun 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781597263337

Daniel Solomon

Daniel Solomon is an accomplished author that writes both in English and Amharic, the vernacular official language of the Federal Democratic Republic. He was born and raised in Ethiopia. Hence, the majority of his works are portraits of his motherland, a country of ancient civilization, a home of hospitality, and a symbol of freedom. That being said, Daniel is currently a citizen of the United States of America, where he has lived and worked for years now. Literature is very much near and dear to the heart of Daniel Solomon. He spends a significant amount of his time reading and writing books. His work across multiple disciplines largely discourses narratives of human experience from all walks of life. Some of his exemplary books include titles lie Africa Distracted: Collection of Poems (2000) text in English, Abeshatay (2000) Novel text in Amharic, Tachyon (2016) Novel Text in Amharic, Blue Wave (2020) Novel text in English, The Sold Nation (2021) Novel, text in English, and The War of Two Brothers : collection of Poems (2019) text in English. He has also written academic books such as English for Grade 11 (2003), English for Pre-University and College Students (2005), and The Impact of Identity Politics for the Spread of Digital Marketing, the Case of Ethiopia (2021). He has also published various articles on in anemic and scientific journals such as the Journal of Engineering Computer Science, the Advanced Journal of Social Science and Humanities, and the Research Gate. His academic publications concentrate on his areas of study which embrace literature, technology, leadership, and project management. At present, the majority of his works are available online at

Book preview

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Daniel Solomon

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Washington | Covelo | London

Contents

Prologue

The Continuous City

Buildings of the Third Kind

Italy Is a Strange Place

Whatever Happened to Modernity

Three Giants and a Midget

P.S.

© 2012 Daniel Solomon

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, Suite 300, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009

ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.

Cover design by Maureen Gately

Cover photos: Perfume Bottle by Vernon Lix, copyright 2012; Ground map by Daniel Solomon Design Partners

Island Press E-ssentials Program

Since 1984, Island Press has been working with innovative thinkers to stimulate, shape, and communicate essential ideas. As a nonprofit organization committed to advancing sustainability, we publish widely in the fields of ecosystem conservation and management, urban design and community development, energy, economics, environmental policy, and health. The Island Press E-ssentials Program is a series of electronic-only works that complement our book program. These timely examinations of important issues are intended to be readable in a couple of hours yet illuminate genuine complexity, and inspire readers to take action to foster a healthy planet. Learn more about Island Press E-ssentials at www.islandpress.org/essentials.

Prologue

This collection of essays is about the Darwinian epic now being enacted to determine the dominant life form in the twenty-first century. For most of human existence, the planet has been taken for granted as an eternal and not particularly fragile verity. Things are different now.

For the first time in the long story of our species, people are aware that life on earth is intertwined with how we choose to live, what we eat, and how we move around. For what appear to be good reasons, the way we go about building cities is due for some big changes. Although cities have always been the seats of human culture, trade, and enterprise, only recently have they figured so prominently in a calculus of survival. Global population was 1.5 billion in 1910, 7 billion in 2010, and will be 12 billion in 2075. Of that, 10 percent was urban in 1910, 50 percent in 2010, and 75 percent will be in 2075—staggering, abrupt, unprecedented change.

There is a sense of palpable threat to our way of life, perhaps to our very survival. The explosion of urban populations joins with the dual crises of peak oil and climate change, all mixed together and headed toward us like a pestilent whirlwind. The whirlwind is now roaring in the middle landscape, not far off, and some still manage to ignore it. But this newly defined triple threat—urbanization, peak oil, climate change—has seized the imagination of many, in the way that syphilis and the plague did at other times. All manner of people have come forth with suggestions for our salvation: cyclists and recyclists, train buffs, dietary revolutionaries, spiritual expeditionaries, agrarian reactionaries, bio-politicians, solar technicians; everyone with an idea wants a piece of the action.

In this atmosphere of widespread unease, some aspects of city building have generated a cascade of new thinking. We have begun a new era with regard to the sources and uses of energy and material. We have begun to think in new ways about transportation, water infrastructure, and waste. We now have contending systems of evaluation and reward in all these areas. In America and around the world, cities are on people’s minds, and quite rightly. How do we prevent our buildings and transportation from frying the planet? How do we keep burgeoning urban places fed and watered, their air breathable, their effluents sweetened, life within them tolerable, or better yet, enjoyable, interesting, amusing? There is no lack of attention to these matters, so much so that one hesitates to add to the clamor, and become yet another crisis opportunist, fanning the coals of career with the hot wind of looming calamity.

Most likely, The Sustainable City, under the constant crush of urbanization, is an ever-receding chimera, a rainbow. Perhaps it is the elusiveness of this receding goal that fuels the urgency of the search. Environmentalists for the most part are an urgent bunch, with much to be urgent about. All around the world, the search is on for the Bonanza, the Holy Grail, God’s Kingdom, whatever it is that will allow our new millennium to at last breathe easy and say, we are sustainable, not spiraling into Malthusian doom. There are earthly rewards and pleasures to be bestowed on those lucky or clever seekers who help point the way. Like the fifteenth-century’s great voyages of discovery, the twenty-first century’s path to sustainability is a highly competitive sport.

But when it comes to the form of the post-oil city—the actual arrangement of buildings, highways, streets, and public places—the cascade of new thinking comes to an end. There do not appear to be new choices, though there are new issues of unprecedented scale and import. There are fresh slogans for old ideas, but the contenders for the form of the next generation of human settlements are actually the same foes who have been duking it out for ninety years or more. Their battles are like those one finds on late-night cable channels with high numbers—classic fights, always the same fights over and over: Frazier versus Ali, Ali versus Foreman, Basilio versus Robinson, any number of stiffs versus Evander Holyfield—he with the countenance of Othello and body by Michelangelo, perfectly ripped forever, thanks to cable.

There is, however, no late-night cable station to memorialize and etch in our memories the heroes and great battles of urbanism, hence the need for books. There seems to be a collective amnesia about urbanism, as if the subject had no history, and the ideas of the moment never had a previous life. While the contenders in the realm of city form are the same as they have been for nearly a century, the prize is new, and the new champion