A City for Everyone: A Beginner’s Guide to Urbanism

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How do we relate to something as huge and complex as a city? How do we read a city? Increasing problems of space in urban environments have forced us to realise that solving small-scale building problems does little to improve the quality of life in a city. Czech / Japanese architect Osamu Okamura and Manijeh Verghese, Co-curator of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021, provide a crash course in urban planning discussing many pressing issues facing current cities from suburbanisation and neglect of public space to the shrinking cities phenomenon, environmental degradation and the absence of political direction. Inspired by Okamura’s book City for Everyone, and using their respective experiences from Prague and London, Okamura and Verghese share examples of good practice to help us understand what complicated, tightly packed and fragile organisms cities are and how to make them equitable and liveable.