Instant Cities

Instant Cities is richly illustrated and explores contemporary urbanism and metropolitan development. As the book says, "the term 'instant city' itself should not be taken too literally". Rather, the term acts as an umbrella for several dichotomous themes: Growth/Masterplan, Utopia/Dystopia, Fantasy/Reality, Nuclear/Distributed, Nomadic/Rooted, Global/Local, Humanity/Environment. Through these themes, many diverse topics are explored including, Dubai, Thames Town (in China), Second Life (the online game), architecture in film, and refugees in Nairobi, to name a few.
It is not necessary to read the book start to finish as you can easily read one section as a stand alone. The images selected are fascinating and survey some of the most show more cutting edge architecture, as well as notable plans and designs from the past.
Given the diversity of the topics, it is not surprising that the writing is to the point and mostly summary. The terminology and lack of embellishment put the discussion a bit beyond the average reader who is unfamiliar with architecture and planning concepts. That said, accompanying illustrations go a long way in explaining things.
One complaint: despite the high quality of production, the text was very small compared to the page size (coffee table book sized), and got even smaller in some of the subsections. Perhaps this was done for visual reasons but it did not make reading it any easier.
Overall a beautiful book that provides interesting examples of contemporary urban development around the world. show less