Adrian Franklin’s book is a well-crafted, and often loving, homage to the urban form. A welcome palliative for at times anthropocentric and ahistoric urban studies, Franklin traces the development of the lived city. In doing so, he draws together insights from sociology, urban planning, anthropology, architecture, and history (not to mention some fairly specific botanic history). The book itself is separated into two distinct but self-consciously interrelated sections: the first tracing the historical trajectory of cities; the second approaching the city thematically within the notion of “liquid modernity.” This lends to Franklin something of a framework for approaching his major thematic consideration – the city as a fluid and developmental ecology.

For Franklin, the city both reflects and supersedes; it is, in this sense, more than the sum of its social and ideational shifts. To this extent, he re-appropriates from the Chicago School the metaphor of city as ecology: as system interacting with and acting upon its environment. This is in many ways the raison d’être of the first section (Becoming Cities) in which Franklin uses particular cities to exemplify a relationship between it and its architectural and social history. Thus, ‘Traditional,’ ‘Machinic,’and ‘Solid Modern’ correspond respectively to Canterbury as a city of ritual, Bristol in all its industrial glory, and latterly Paris and the growth of the London garden suburb. Yet these are all taken within their respective contextual developments – intellectual, political, economic and social – which fed into the city, from authoritarian politics supporting Haussman’s ability to rethink Paris, to discourses on gardening’s civilising effect. Indeed, Franklin must be commended for the thorough way in which the wealth of examples is structured to understand the mutual interactivity between the city and society.

Franklin’s intellectual debt to Bauman (2000) in the concept of liquid modernity undergirds much of his argument, moving on the analysis from historical trajectory to the contemporaneous lived city of difference and freedom to choose. Chapter Five on “The Dysfunctional City?” represents something of a turning point, allowing for the critique of the modernist planning prerogatives of the master-architects as contextual misunderstanding of the city. The value of considering the city as multiple and the move beyond the singular planning prerogative is raised, and thus City Life neatly segues into its second half which deals thematically with the lived city of liquid modernity: from the perceived rise in the ethics of living (City Lifestyle); through post-humanist developments, refocusing urban studies on human-nonhuman interaction (City Natures); to the rise of jazz and understanding what gives cities ‘buzz’ (Cities of Spectacle and Carnival).

There is much to offer in this approach to the city as a lived ecology. Franklin’s approach gives the city a greater depth and potency as an actor in itself, beyond being merely a space of interaction. Furthermore, in overcoming the human-nature and city-nature dichotomies, Franklin’s engagement with post-humanism opens up avenues for an understanding of the city as part of nature, including the space this creates for urban gardens and wildlife as valued in the inner city. It further offers him a more optimistic appraisal of the environmental problems facing humanity, and new ways of thinking of such issues as the destruction of habitats, by countering with the creation of new ones.

Conceptually, in “Cities of Spectacle and Carnival” (Chapter Eight) Franklin attempts to untangle what can be seen as the issue of creativity by tracing its trajectory, criticising urban studies for failing to see modernity as repressive of this trajectory. Tracing this through the more ludic aspects of seaside towns back to pilgrimage, and particularly the anthropology of ritual, he can argue that notions of performed artistic lifestyles as giving “buzz” to a city and the creativity that is thought to underpin such (drawing on Florida’s [2003] creative classes) is not spontaneous, but rather a renaissance of the carnivalesque as a mode of human expression. Nevertheless, whilst this approach allows the carnival a more central aspect within human life, and despite a light engagement with Bakhtin (1984), there is a sense in which the book would have benefited from a greater theoretical consideration of both spectacle and carnival, neither of which are developed in any depth. It may ground the idea of a city vibe in a longer trajectory, but this cannot be seen to constitute explanation. The account is further plagued by the use of slightly dubious illustrations. It is not entirely clear why the number of Google hits for “festival” can be taken as evidence for a growth in its relevance. Either this is poorly explained regarding its context within other Google statistics, or it has failed to account for a more internet based culture. Either way, it remains unpersuasive and detracts from the otherwise novel approach to creativity within the city.

Furthermore, Franklin wishes to counteract the recent problematization of the city in urban studies as the site of dysfunction and exclusion, in order to argue for it as necessarily embodying narratives of both success and failure. Yet, Franklin appears to preclude the strengths of urban studies in its critical vein. That is not to say that Franklin does not admit exclusion or is blind to the ways in which the city may embody it, but his focus on the creative and liberating prospects within the city seems at times forced, or worse polarized. This is perhaps highlighted by the mild tension between the city in literature, largely conceived in poetics and dark metaphors (drawing on James Joyce amongst others), and his portrayal of the city as a site of human “efflorescence.”

Nevertheless, in this interdisciplinary romp, Franklin offers a two-part guide for the urban studies scholar that pushes the literature in new directions. His pursuit of a less anthropocentric urban studies benefits from a wide ranging understanding of city development and attention to pre-modern human settlements in order to understand recent creativity within the city. If nothing else, the re-appropriation of city ecologies and the work towards greater historical context is a welcome addition to thinking about cities, and Franklin’s infectious and affectionate enthusiasm for cities would do well to remind urban scholars that cities are much more than merely sites of disadvantage. 

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References

Bakhtin M (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Caryl Emerson (Ed and trans) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bauman Z (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge:Polity Press.

Florida R (2003) The Rise of the Creative Class. London: Pluto.