The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life

Rose, an urban planner and developer, takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the evolution of cities, from antiquity to the “well-tempered” cities of the future—those that exist in harmony with their dynamic environments, constantly adapting to change. He argues that the next great shift in urban planning must combine the well-regulated planning championed by mid-20th-century systems thinking with the vitality and messiness identified by Jane Jacobs as integral to creating true urban communities. Central to this vision is the metaphor of city as natural organism: living, breathing, creating waste, and undergoing cyclical change. Rose’s tone can be simultaneously overinflated and banal (as is fitting for a book that takes its title from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier), but his conclusions about the future of urban civilization are hard to disagree with; who, after all, would seriously dispute the need for cleaner, greener, more equitable, more efficient, happier, more resilient cities? Rose is clearly passionate about urban development, and the reader who can look past his attempts to connect the notion of the well-tempered city to Buddhist concepts or the structure of a Baroque fugue will be rewarded with a thought-provoking introduction to the future of cities. (Sept.)