Every morning, the architect and writer Michael Sorkin walks downtown from his Greenwich Village apartment through Washington Square to his Tribeca office. Sorkin isn't in a hurry, and he never ignores his surroundings. Instead, he pays careful, close attention. And in "Twenty""Minutes in Manhattan," he explains what he sees, what he imagines, what he knows--giving us extraordinary access to the layers of history, the feats of engineering and artistry, and the intense social drama that take place along a simple twenty-minute walk.

It is all worse than we think. It is even worse than Mike Davis, for whom "every day is judgment day" (The Nation), could have imagined. The contributions to this volume are explorations of what Davis-in typical wry fashion-once referred to as the field of "disaster studies." Collectively, they show how our "disaster imaginary" has been rendered inadequate by the existing order's ability to feed off and coopt our resistance to it. Contemporary mass protests are now subsumed as instances of an established, profitable politics of rage. Geopolitical conflict poses not as a threat to hegemonic power but rather serves the interests of a global market which capitalizes on lucrative, permanent war. Climate change itself, if it was ever thought to be a universalizing phenomenon, is now treated as an extensive market opportunity by global risk insurance conglomerates and predatory lenders who bet against any rescue of the planet. Such catastrophic developments resist the language we use to describe and deconstruct them. The contributions to this volume seek to reimagine our understanding of disaster, and, following the example of Davis himself, to refuse outdated models of political transcendence as vigorously as they reject narratives of resignation.

Showing how the upswell of paranoia and growing demand for security in the post-9/11 world has paradoxically created widespread insecurity, these varied essays examine how this anxiety-laden mindset erodes spaces both architectural and personal, encroaching on all aspects of everyday life. Starting from the most literal levela "barricades and barriers in front of buildings, beefed up border patrols, gated communities, "safe rooms,"a "to more abstract levelsa "enhanced surveillance at public spaces such as airports, increasing worries about contagion, the psychological predilection for fortified spacea "the contributors cover the full gamut of securitized public life that is defining the zeitgeist of twenty-first century America

Showing how the upswell of paranoia and growing demand for security in the post-9/11 world has paradoxically created widespread insecurity, these varied essays examine how this anxiety-laden mindset erodes spaces both architectural and personal, encroaching on all aspects of everyday life. Starting from the most literal levela "barricades and barriers in front of buildings, beefed up border patrols, gated communities, "safe rooms,"a "to more abstract levelsa "enhanced surveillance at public spaces such as airports, increasing worries about contagion, the psychological predilection for fortified spacea "the contributors cover the full gamut of securitized public life that is defining the zeitgeist of twenty-first century America

The September 11th attack on the global landmark twin towers of the World Trade Centre, transformed all of New York City, not just the historic financial district of lower Manhattan. In After the World Trade Center, the highly regarded social critics Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin call on nineteen of New York's best urbanists to consider the attack and its aftermath in the broadest context. While the city still digs through the debris, contrary forces shaping its future are at work. Developers jockey to control the right to rebuild "ground zero". Financial firms line up for sweetheart deals. Architects and planners debate surveillance schemes over New York's boisterous public life, and proposals for memorials are gaining in appeal. Though these processes are taking form, none has achieved a political consensus. Through a multitude of perspectives on the emerging city, This incredible book provides alternative visions to the expected landscape of power. These essays provide a social portrait of the city at a new crossroads, one that both reflects New York's pre-eminent role as a financial and cultural capital and reveals the fault lines under the last few years of rapid growth. Considering issues such as who will control rebuilding the city, what the new landscape will look like and whose vision of the future will prevail, these essays point to a manifesto for a democratically planned New York, where all the city's communities - from Tribeca to Chinatown and Jackson Heights will actually count.

Michael Sorkin's iconic list is now in a handsome printed package, a perfect gift for any architect, student of architecture, or design-savvy urbanist. By turns poetic and humorous, practical and wise, this book is a joyful celebration of the craft of architecture. A posthumous book by critic, architect, urban theorist, and educator, Michael Sorkin (1948-2020), 250 Things An Architect Should Know is filled with details that architects love to obsess over, from the expected (golden ratio and the seismic code) to the unexpected (the heights of folly and the prismatic charms of Greek islands.)

'Exquisite Corpse' was a game played by the surrealists in which someone drew on a piece of paper, folded it and passed it to the next person to draw on until, finally, the sheet was opened to reveal a calculated yet random composition. In this entertaining and provocative book, Michael Sorkin suggests that cities are similarly assembled by many players acting with varying autonomy in a complicit framework. As unfolding terrain of invention, the city is also a means of accommodating disparity, of contextualizing sometimes startling juxtapositions. Sorkin's aim is to widen the debate about the creation of buildings beyond the immediate issues of technology and design. He discusses the politics and culture of architecture with daring, often devastating, observations about the institutions and personalities who have dominated the profession over the past decade. Their preoccupation with the empty style of 'beach houses and Disneyland' has consistently trivialized the full constructive scope of contemporary architecture's possibilities. Sorkin's intervetions range from the development scandals of New York where 'skyscrapers stand at the intersection between grid and greed', through the deconstructivist architectural culture of Los Angeles, to the work and ideas of architects, developers and critics such as Alvar Aalto, Norman Foster, Paul Goldberger, Michael Graves, Coop Himmelblau, Philip Johnson, Leon Krier, Frank Llyod Wright, Richard Rogers, Carlo Scarpa, James Stirling, Donald Trump, Tom Wolfe and Lebbeus Woods. Throughout Sorkin combines stinging polemic with a powerful call for a rebirth of architecture that is visionary and experimental-a recuperated 'dreamy science'.

All Over the Map is an urgent response to the radical changes in contemporary architecture and the built environment witnessed in the twenty-first century. Characteristically polemic, incisive and energetic, these essays explore pressing questions of architectural and urban design, and critical issues of public space and participation. From New York to New Orleans, the Amazon to Jerusalem, Sorkin brings a critical eye to bear on a sweeping range of subjects. Whether castigating the sorry performance of the architectural avant-garde, considering the nature of place in globalized culture, or providing mock instructions for entering a high-security environment, these writings make a powerful and provocative case for architecture and urban design to re-engage with the lives and societies from which they have become increasingly detached.

"Giving Ground" is prompted by two phenomena whose paradoxical convergence is currently altering our experience and conception of urban relations and city planning. On the one hand, forces of globalisation push towards conditions of homogenisation and deterritorialisation, while, on the other, a surging politics of identity barricades various groups behind particular claims and ignites violent persecutions. The covert relation between these phenomena, wherby territory/ground is both disavowed or abstracted "and" jealously reclaimed, is the focus of the essays in this volume, at the heart of these investigations are the notions of propinquity and neighbourliness whose redefinitions and redeployments serve widely divergent ends: from the fortification of the 'new urbanist' fantasy about the possibility of re-creating small towns, to the validation of the exclusionary tactics of 'sanitization' that guide zoning decisions, to assisting in the reimagination of an ethical and reasonable urbanism. Directed against the contracting limits of tolerance, this volume attempts to reinvent the troubled notion of the 'right to the city'.
The individual contributions range from examinations of the crises in specific cities--Jerusalem, New York, and the network of 'global cities' throughout the world--to considerations of specific urban issues, such as the physical instrumentalities by which people a brought into physical proximity and the implementation of 'new urbanist' projects; and reworkings of physical concepts, such as Levina's notion of the face-to-face, Lacan's notion of sublimation, in urbanist terms. Several focus on the relation between cities and sexuality, which figures, for different reasons, as the 'eternal irony' of urbanity.