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Overview""The city comes into existence . . . for the sake of the good life."" So wrote Aristotle nearly 2,400 years ago, articulating an idea that prevailed throughout most of Western culture and the world until the environmental consequences of the Industrial Revolution called into question the goodness of traditional urban life. Urban history ever since--from England's early-nineteenth-century hygiene laws to mid-twentieth-century modernist architecture and planning to today's New Urbanism--has consisted of efforts to ameliorate the consequences of the industrial city by either embracing or challenging the idealization of nature that has followed it. Architect Philip Bess's Till We Have Built Jerusalem puts forth fresh arguments for traditional architecture and urbanism, their relationship to human flourishing, and the kind of culture required to create and sustain traditional towns and city neighborhoods. Bess not only dissects the questionable intellectual assumptions of contemporary architecture, he also shows how the individualist ethos of modern societies finds physical expression in contemporary suburban sprawl, making traditional urbanism difficult to sustain. He concludes by considering the role of both the natural law tradition and communal religion in providing intellectual and spiritual depth to contemporary attempts to build new--and revive existing--traditional towns and cities, attempts that, at their best, help fulfill our natural human desires for order, beauty, and community. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Philip BessPublisher: ISI Books Imprint: ISI Books Dimensions: Width: 18.20cm , Height: 2.70cm , Length: 23.60cm Weight: 0.708kg ISBN: 9781932236965ISBN 10: 1932236961 Pages: 325 Publication Date: 01 March 2007 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Out of Print Availability: In Print Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock. Table of ContentsReviewsAuthor InformationPhilip Bess is a Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, and the principal of Thursday Associates in Chicago, a research and consulting office committed to rethinking American architecture and urbanism. The author of two previous books, his essays have appeared in Civitas, First Things, the ChristianCentury, the Classicist, and the Humanist Art Review, among many other periodicals. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |