{"product_id":"dream-cities-9780062196323","title":"Dream Cities","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the acclaimed landscape designer, historian and author of \u003cem\u003eAmerican Eden\u003c\/em\u003e, a lively, unique, and accessible cultural history of modern cities--from suburbs, downtown districts, and exurban sprawl, to shopping malls and \"sustainable\" developments--that allows us to view them through the planning, design, architects, and movements that inspired, created, and shaped them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDream Cities\u003c\/em\u003e explores our cities in a new way--as expressions of ideas, often conflicting, about how we should live, work, play, make, buy, and believe. It tells the stories of the real architects and thinkers whose imagined cities became the blueprints for the world we live in.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the nineteenth century to today, what began as visionary concepts--sometimes utopian, sometimes outlandish, always controversial--were gradually adopted and constructed on a massive scale in cities around the world, from Dubai to Ulan Bator to London to Los Angeles. Wade Graham uses the lives of the pivotal dreamers behind these concepts, as well as their acolytes and antagonists, to deconstruct our urban landscapes--the houses, towers, civic centers, condominiums, shopping malls, boulevards, highways, and spaces in between--exposing the ideals and ideas embodied in each.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the baroque fantasy villages of Bertram Goodhue to the superblocks of Le Corbusier's Radiant City to the pseudo-agrarian dispersal of Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City, our upscale leafy suburbs, downtown skyscraper districts, infotainment-driven shopping malls, and \"sustainable\" eco-developments are seen as never before. In this elegantly designed and illustrated book, Graham uncovers the original plans of brilliant, obsessed, and sometimes megalomaniacal designers, revealing the foundations of today's varied municipalities. \u003cem\u003eDream Cities\u003c\/em\u003e is nothing less than a field guide to our modern urban world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIllustrated with 59 black-and-white photos throughout the text.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eGraham, Wade:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cp\u003eWade Graham is a Los Angeles-based garden designer, historian, and writer whose work on the environment, landscape, urbanism, and the arts has appeared in the \u003cem\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eHarper's\u003c\/em\u003e, the \u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eOutside\u003c\/em\u003e, and other publications. An adjunct professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, he is the author of \u003cem\u003eAmerican Eden: From Monticello to Central Park to Our Backyards: What Our Gardens Tell Us About Who We Are\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50641352950034,"sku":"9780062196323","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_96cfa16c-f560-4a1e-a857-113fe775d303.jpg?v=1733012645","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/dream-cities-9780062196323","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}