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Throughout history architects and planners have dreamed of “better” and different cities – more controllable, more defensible, more efficient, more monumental, more organic, taller, denser, sparser, or greener. Today, with the failure of the suburban experiment and the looming end-of-the world predictions – from global warming and waste to post-peak oil energy crises and uncontrolled world urbanization – architects and urbanists find themselves once more at a crossroads, fertile for visionary thinking.

49 Cities is a call to re-engage cities as the site of radical thinking and experimentation, moving beyond “green building” toward an embrace of ideas, scale, vision, and common sense combined with delirious imagination in the pursuit of empowering questioning and re-invention.

Now in its third edition, the book illustrates and compares 49 visionary city plans from different eras and places. The drawings and statistics are published alongside a discussion between Amale Andraos, Dan Wood, Joseph Grima, and Archigram’s Michael Webb, an essay by Sam Jacob (founder of FAT Architecture), and interviews with visionary architects Chip Lord (of Ant Farm) and Yona Friedman.

Exhibited at Storefront, New York; SPUR, San Francisco; Lisbon Triennial, Portugal
2009
Project Team: Michael Alexander, Jenny Lie Andersen, Willem Boning, Sam Dufaux, Jose Esparza, Thiago Maso, Alexander Maymind, Anne Menke, Yasmin Vobis, Hilary Zaic
Graphic Design: Project Projects