Publications7.7.2015

Variations on a Theme Park
The New American City and the End of Public Space
Michael Sorkin
America’s cities are being rapidly transformed by a sinister and homogenous design. A new Kind of urbanism–manipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditional public space–is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and psuedo-historic marketplaces. If anything can be described as a paradigm for these places,