You are here: Home : News : Endless Cities
12th May, 2008
One of our Network members, Peter Shirley, has just produced a book about nature conservation in Birmingham and the Black Country, called 'The Endless Village Revisited'. It will be reviewed on this website shortly. By coincidence two writers (Deyan Sudjic and Ricky Burdett) have recently published a 500 page book entitled 'The Endless City'. This is related to something called the Urban Age, described as 'a mobile think-tank set up by the London School of Economics Cities Programme and the Alfred Herrhausen Society.'
The Urban Age engaged with politicians and academics across the world. Participants in its events included the Mayors of Bogota and Washington, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and London Police Chief Ian Blair. The motiviation was the increase in the number and size of cities throughout the world, and the pace of change within them. It is said, for example, that the populations of Lagos and Mumbai are growing at the rate of 58 and 42 people per hour respectively. In Shanghai apparently there are now 10,000 buildings over ten stories high - in 1980 there were only 121.
'The Endless City' looks at the problems and the positive aspects of this profound change in the way that most people now live. When a copy has been obtained a full review will follow here.
The information for this note came from The Observer newspaper on 9 March 2008.
