luisanath3ef1

I love books like this, even though they are meant to depress, or at least anger us at our own stupidity. It seems you can compare any country to the U.S. infrastructure wise, and we will fall short. We like to build things quickly and cheaply, then tear it down in about 30 years cause its wore out, then build it the exact same way again. Mr. Rudolfsky wants us to learn that quality of life is directly affected by the quality we put into our surroundings. His focus here is on the public realm of the streets. I understand he has another book on architecture that is pretty good. We tend to think of a street as being for vehicles only and only as a means of getting from point A to B, but there is a huge variety of what a street can be. It can serve as an open market(though most of the streets used as markets are covered in some way). It can be something that the community identifies with and actually takes pride in. A place of social or commercial interaction. Whatever specific function it serves, it is first a place for the public, and the public usually decides its function. Here, the street is a place for cars, end of story. One interesting point that comes up throughout the book is the reactions that Americans have when they encounter these old world pedestrian thouroughfares. Some involve awe and appreciation, but most decide that any culture that would live so lavishly will never amount to anything. It's almost as though they can't put a dollar amount to such a thing, so it must not be worth anything. I will say that Mr. Rudolfsky tends to preach about our culture at large beyond our infrastructure. You get the feeling he wants us all to become Italian, breakfasting at cafes each morning and attending operas at night. He's not even happy with the way we have block parties, though if it were to happen in Italy it would probably be another story. In the end though, this book is kind of depressing, since most of us would have to actually go to Italy to find anything close to what is described in this book.

2023-06-14 04:49