Slow Burn City: London in the Twenty-First Century - Softcover

Moore knows London better than most. There is a great argument in this book - and an important one Sunday Times Rowan Moore's Slow Burn City: London in the Twenty-First Century is an architectural study in the noble tradition of Ian Nairn: a vivid, knowledgable, argumentative tour of a city changing perhaps faster than at any time in its history David Kynaston, Observer A political book in the best sense - helping us to imagine a better world, reminding us that ideas shape how we live and plotting a better future for London. It's also full of intriguing facts, always beautifully written and adventurously illustrated. Rowan Moore should be Mayor -- Alain De Botton Offers a tour of our streets that will make you look at London in a new light ... Moore's book is impressive for what he is saying, and the way he says it ... He gives the reader a new understanding of our metropolis Camden New Journal Moore can't be bettered ... brilliant Country Life Fun to read, packed with entertaining asides and spiced with waspish invective ... Oldie Review of Books Each chapter of Rowan Moore's book is a striking architectural set piece ... Moore writes persuasively on public spaces and the increasing, troubling tendency to keep the public out of them ... [he] is at his best examininig why certain public spaces have worked, why we flock to them and find them congenial and welcoming ... [his] portraits of individual buildings have great verve Times Literary Supplement Devastatingly funny if deeply disturbing ... No other newspaper architecture critic [is] as sharp an assessor of the built environment as Moore New York Review of Books An eloquent, sweeping history-cum polemic Literary Review One of the UK's most accomplished writers on the profession, he critiques the most important buildings and the people who masterminded them with a style that is both entertaining and cuts through the crap Observer A subtle, often eccentric but always entertaining guide Literary Review Moore decrypts the ideological narratives of buildings with the same fluency he brings to bear on materials, forms and spaces: today's architectural criticism rarely seems so humane or intelligent Daily Telegraph Moore has a lot to offer those who like verbal flexibility and thought-provoking aphorisms. There is also a sense of mischief ... if famous architects were a coconut shy, Moore would go home with the giant teddy Sunday Telegraph Moore writes with economy, clarity and wit -- Will Wiles Building Design

With a new introduction for the paperback. London is a supreme achievement of civilization. It offers fulfilments of body and soul, encourages discovery and invention. It is a place of freedom, multiplicity and co-existence. It is a Liberal city, which means it stands for values now in peril. London has also become its own worst enemy, testing to destruction the idea that the free market alone can build a city, a fantastical wealth machine that denies too many of its citizens a decent home or living. In this thought-provoking, fearless, funny and subversive book, Rowan Moore shows how London's strength depends on the creative and mutual interplay of three forces: people, business and state. To find responses to the challenges of the twenty-first century, London must rediscover its genius for popular action and bold public intervention. The global city above all others, London is the best place to understand the way the world's cities are changing. It could also be, in the shape of a living, churning city of more than eight million people, the most powerful counter-argument to the extremist politics of the present.