Boundaries of the City - 9781442655041

Boundaries of the CityThe Architecture of Western Urbanism\nAuthor(s): Alan Waterhouse\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of Toronto Press, Canada\nImprint: University of Toronto Press\nISBN-13: 9781442655041, 978-1442655041\nSynopsis\nIn this study Alan Waterhouse draws on anthropological, social and cultural history, literature, and philosophy to reach an understanding of the roots of Western architecture and city building. He explores the illusion that cities are constructed to impose rational order, an order articulated through urban boundaries. These boundaries, he finds, are shaped around our instinctive fears and insecurities about crime, insurrection, and the violent disruption of everyday life. At the same time, contrary instincts aspire to create a unified domain, to proclaim the interdependence of things through constructed work. Cities are shaped less by rational design than by a recurring dialectic of boundary formation.\n\n These impulses underlie the formal voca.