The interest is, instead, in the porosity of borders between its neighbourhoods, the contact between rich and poor, native and immigrant. His concrete proposals are, perhaps, less clear than his written analysis. But then again, he quotes the architect Robert Venturi, who called for a 'richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning'. That is almost a book review in a single sentence.
Despite a few uncomfortable instances of 'outside the box', 'world class city' and 'tipping point' ... Building and Dwelling is pretty much jargon free, quite an achievement given the milieu the author evidently frequents. It is, too, far from clueless ... This ineptly edited but constantly stimulating book is a lateish-life appraisal of what Sennett has read, written and, most vitally, witnessed on the street or in the marketplace in the tradition of the sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed flâneur taking in every sensation ... This tireless self-publicist enchants slow learners with his precious gift of stating the blindingly obvious yet making it seem original. Sennett is unimpressed by his highly unoriginal aperçu that city quarters where 'creatives' settle will invariably become attractive to heavy money. 'Creatives' in this context is a grossly flattering epithet for brainstormtroop, multiplatform contortionists, important synergy gurus nuking an outmoded logo from the face of a polo shirt. What it does not signify are actual makers, writers and artists, who in London increasingly have the choice of being forced out to zones 5 or 6 or leaving the metropolis altogether, an ever more enticing prospect given the curious instance of the ville becoming inimical to the cité because swaths of it are underpopulated hence largely deserted, thus dangerous. There is more security in density than in isolated gated 'communities'.
Building and Dwelling is exhilarating and readable, but it is also demanding. Sennett seems to assume the reader knows what or whom he is citing and forces the reader to fill in transitions to keep track of the ways that his ideas weave together ... What Sennett does do — probably better than any other scholar could — is pull urban planners out of the daily grind of pragmatism. He offers the sort of intellectual provocation that can make inquisitive planners question just about everything they do and everything they think about cities. That’s not to say that Building and Dwelling will cause anyone to abandon their principles. Rather, it presents a time-out for the reassessment of principles and a reminder that city-building is, to invoke another duality, as much an intellectual endeavor as it is a pragmatic one.
Richard Sennett entertainingly translates his lifetime of experience as an academic, traveler and city planner into a winding narrative about how cities are and how they should be. While the book meanders and occasionally loses rhetorical focus, it remains an enjoyable and enriching read ... Building and Dwelling can be a frustrating read. Its dozens of tangential jaunts are interesting, but ultimately do not build up to anything more substantial. In spite of this, the book is worthwhile, given Sennett’s lifetime of knowledge about cities, his expert eye for design and his knack for storytelling.
... Sennett is as passionate as ever about the richness and complexity of public life, by which he means urban life. In Building and Dwelling, he rejects the comforts of clearly defined communities, of anything that smacks too strongly of 'we' ... This points to one of the book’s peculiarities, which is its elision of the political. Sennett is brilliant on cities with established histories but less convincing on more emergent states of urbanity ... Typically idealistic, typically urbane, it’s a sentiment that’s well-timed for the disputes of our day.
The ostensible aim of this demanding, richly argued book is to defend the 'open city,' a place of ambiguity, complexity, and possibility, against the forces of standardization and regimentation. But this synopsis does little justice to Sennett’s layered analysis, which spans literature, social mores, infrastructure, and community life ... In the city, Sennett writes, 'Complexity enriches experience; clarity thins it.' The same might be said of this evocative work, in the best sense. A timely, challenging, and edifying book that beckons the reader to return.
The sociologist and urbanist Richard Sennett is a thoughtful writer with far-ranging interests and a keen eye for hidden patterns and complex processes that may escape the casual observer. He has always been a pleasure to read ... In Building and Dwelling he explores the possibility and, for him, the moral necessity of humans crafting and forging the cities they live in rather than passively inhabiting them ... Using some successful real-world examples, however anecdotal and small in scale, Mr. Sennett seeks to convince us that his vision of the open city shows us a hopeful, practical way forward as we try to think through the challenges confronting our cities today ... It is a cause for worry, therefore, that he does not address or mention the strongest counterexample to his vision ... In short, the open city model proposed and elaborated upon in Building and Dwelling, though highly attractive to all those who cherish the freedom to shape their lives, is now dysfunctional.
As a writer and thinker, Sennett is as comfortable discussing Balzac and Stendhal as he is plumbing the depths of theorists like Gaston Bachelard and Louis Althusser. A wide-ranging and learned work that celebrates the city as rich, engaged, tolerant, and alive.
The book provides a lucid history of the major currents of urbanism, drawing different moments in planning history together around a series of problems that bear directly on contemporary debates. Later sections on building the ethical city are less successful, a ponderous mash-up of observations about “street-smarts” and philosophical musings that fail to illuminate the “open city” of the future. The book is a learned study of city life in the past but is less convincing about what the future might hold.