ride_4ever

I picked up "The Living City" by Des Fitzgerald at the bookstore a few weeks ago because it sounded interesting - the book's core premise is that trying to make cities "greener" (in the sense of more trees, more connection to nature, more intentional planning of green spaces within urban spaces, etc) is antithetical to the purpose of a city. So I wanted to see what he had to say about that.

The answer is: very little. This is essentially a book-length manifesto about how the entire concept of a green city is rooted in early-20th-century racism and fascism. There are some interesting ideas in here, but for a book whose entire premise is that trying to change cities into something else is wrong, bad, and also fascist, there's a surprising lack of actual positivity about cities as they currently exist. He just doesn't like the concept of planned cities, and especially city planning with the intent of introducing more nature into cities, based on the idea that green spaces are a more natural human environment. But he rarely brings up existing cities except to talk about how much he hates them, specifically. Paris? Awful. Copenhagen? Worst city he's ever been in. New York? Soulless grid. There's one chapter that opens with several pages dissing on Melbourne, Australia, for wanting to preserve its self-image as "a genteel outpost of European colonialism" because the residents are upset about all their trees dying in a drought. He doesn't seem to hate London as a whole (I GUESS) but mostly talks about it in the context of "fuck these specific neighborhoods in particular."

In case you're thinking this is because he'd rather be in the country - definitely not! He also hates the country. The worst thing about making cities greener is that it makes them more like the country. He refers to the part of Ireland he grew up in as "a bog" which he was glad to escape. The country is also terrible and the last thing cities want to do is be more like the country.

The truly baffling thing about this book is that it contains exactly zero content about the main thing I picked it up for: to find out what alternative he's proposing. Trees and other green spaces have obvious benefits that even he makes a nod to every now and then (cooling things down, trapping water, supporting wildlife, beneficial effects on the mental health of their residents, etc), plus most people who live in cities like them, and I was wondering what he was going to propose as an alternative, and he just - doesn't! What I knew from reading the blurb on the back of the book - that he feels cities are meant to be chaotic, grimy, full of machines and people but lacking in plants - is exactly as much as I know after reading 2/3 of the book. I guess I was expecting a paean to how cities in their modern chaos are flawed but great, and instead I got a book about how cities are almost uniformly terrible, but planned, green cities and the country are even worse, and also planting trees is a fascist tool to pacify the working class.

I didn't really DNF on purpose, so much as I put it down because I was reading other things and just never picked it back up again because the more time that went by without dealing with this guy's relentless negativity, the less I wanted to go back to it. So I guess it's a DNF.