Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers

(Paperback)

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Description

Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world. Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground. In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below. Starting at the edge of earths atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers.

Reviews

Roll over Jane Jacobs: heres urban geography as it looks like through the eye of a Predator at 25,000 feet. A fundamental and very scary report from the global red zone. -- Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
Look, youre just going to have to read this book After a while, you begin to wonder whether books like this will be allowed to be published for much longer. -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian *
Superb Graham builds on the writings of Mike Davis and Naomi Klein who have attempted to expose the hidden corporate and military structures behind everyday life. -- Edwin Heathcote * Financial Times *
A detailed and intense forensics of new urban frontiers, laboratories of the extreme where experiments with new urban conditions are currently being undertaken. -- Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land
A rigorously researched, pioneering book packed with disturbing and at times astonishing information. * Icon *
In this panoramic, at times jaw-dropping book, Stephen Graham describes how in recent years the built environment around the world, both above and below ground, has become dramatically more vertical and more unequal sharp and memorable dizzyingly restless Cities feel different once youve read it -- Andy Beckett * Guardian *

Author Bio

Stephen Graham is Professor of Cities and Society at the Global Urban Research Unit, based in Newcastle Universitys School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. He is the author or editor of several books, including Telecommunications and the City and Splintering Urbanism (both with Simon Marvin), Cities, War and Terrorism, Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructures Fail, and Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism.