Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Published to overwhelming critical acclaim, this classic study of cities explains how and why cities - among the most enduring and remarkable of all human artefacts - took the shape they did.

Professor Kostof focuses on a number of themes - organic patterns, the grid, the city as diagram, the grand manner, and the skyline - and interprets the hidden order of urban patterns.

Photographs, historical views and specially commissioned drawings vividly depict a global mosaic of citybuilding: the shaping of medieval Siena; the creation of New Delhi as the crown of the Raj, the remodelling of Moscow as the self-styled capital of world socialism and the transformation of the skyline as religious and civic symbols yield to the towers of corporate business. This is an enthralling book, of vital interest to architects, planners and social historians.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Kostof has done it again; in prolific fashion he has produced another standard textbook. This time his subject is cities rather than architecture, which he covered in A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals ( LJ 6/1/85). This book will appeal especially to designers, architects, and planners, as it organizes its subject matter according to what form it takes (grids, diagrams, skylines, etc.) rather than chronologically, topically, or typologically, as do other surveys of urbanism. Kostof is a master tour guide, blessed with an easy writing style, a piquant, welcoming mind, and a worldwide mastery of his subject matter. This book is certain to become a classic in its field comparable to Lewis Mumford's Culture of Cities (1933) and Mark Girouard's Cit ies and People ( LJ 10/15/85).-- Peter Kaufman, Boston Coll. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

This thoughtful, lavishly illustrated study of the "universal experience of making cities" belongs in most if not all urban history and geography and architectural history collections. Kostof, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, is author of the standard text A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (1985) and of America by Design (1987), the companion volume to the five-part television series of the same name. Here Kostof focuses on "patterns and elements of urban form seen in a historical perspective" and on the process of change in cities over time. After a brief introduction that defines the book's approach and its notion of just what a city is, The City Shaped considers "organic" patterns, such as the grid, the city as diagram, the grand manner, and the urban skyline. Emblematic of its enormous historical and geographical scope is the fact that more than 40 cities on five continents are listed under the letter A in the index. The book includes detailed notes and a bibliography and is a selection of several special-interest book clubs. It will, however, fascinate nonprofessionals as much as it enlightens scholars. ~--Mary Carroll