The cycle of production and consumption, artificially accelerated by advertising and marketing, has characterized our society for decades. This cycle has recently also taken hold of the architecture of the city, leading to a waste that is both economically and ecologically unacceptable. The destruction of buildings that are not actually obsolete is just as questionable as the production of extravagant architectures for which there is no real need. This book is a protest against the merciless globalization of the city and its dissolution into faceless, inhospitable peripheries. At the same time, it puts forward alternative strategies of urban design that can counteract this globalization and dissolution. It formulates a different approach to urbanism, one which views the city not as a carnivalesque display of vanities but as a sophisticated spatial construction that lays down the conditions for productive, peaceful, and gratifying lives.

The orthodox concept of the Modern, as it was passed down from the 1920s to the post-war era, has been in a state of crisis for quite some time. This is particularly visible in the fields of urban planning, architecture, and design. Theorists and practitioners have either fiercely defended it as a crowning historical achievement to be upheld and further cultivated, or dismissively rejected it as a short-lived and outdated episode that needs to be replaced with something different and new. Architectural theorist and practitioner Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani suggests a third option: that we reformulate our understanding of the Modern, continuing to pursue its original social and humanist ambitions while radically re-examining its ideological, political, social, technical, functional, economic, ecological, and aesthetic assumptions. Our world, which continues to be shaken by dreadful wars, is also being sapped and polluted by our thoughtlessness and our greed. The capitalist compulsion to turn everything into a commodity has led to needless production and consumption, and we are both victims and accomplices of this predicament. The consumerist frenzy has brought completely new forms of exploitation and exacerbated the unjust inequalities between different parts of our world. Starting from these premises, the author puts forward a new design approach that strives for - and is defined by - durability. This is an approach that rejects the frivolous waste of resources and superficial prolif eration of images that have become commonplace today. It offers an alternative to the contemporary fixation on spectacles, both hollow and dangerous, and instead calls for measured restraint and substantial simplicity.