The Imperfect City

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic, a marvelous tour of the way the modern city—from Paris to New York to Brasilia—thrives when planning leaves room for happy accidents and innovations

“I have a few ideas about why I respond to certain cities more than others, but the ones I like best have little in common except, perhaps, a tendency to be large, complicated, and inconsistent,” Paul Goldberger writes. “I like cities that are difficult to understand, or at least take time to know, and that are complex and dynamic enough so that you can never fully get to the bottom of them.”

And with that, The Imperfect City takes off on a rollicking adventure of history, ethnography, architecture, and urban planning, united by the sage wisdom and descriptive voice of Goldberger, a seasoned architectural critic and reporter whose keen eye and insights shed new light on cities across the globe. From the eco-friendly innovations of Singapore’s skyscrapers, to the collision and coexistence of old and new in Rome, to the sprawling greenscapes of San Francisco and Chicago, to Brasilia’s rigid inner city slowly being overwhelmed by the messy outskirts, and of course, to the jagged slash of Broadway down Manhattan’s torso, no element of the city—no street corner, canal, nor neighborhood layout—is too small for Goldberger’s clear-eyed scrutiny and poetic appreciation.

What emerges is a sweeping portrait of not just the flaws and efficiencies of cities worldwide, of the haphazard, half-thought-through layouts that lend character and charm to each place, but also of the people who designed them and those who populate them. With “a sense of all cities as living things, always changing, often in unexpected ways,” Goldberger is a knowledgeable and lively guide.