Overview

Can messiness make our cities more liveable, lively, and inclusive? Crowded streets, sidewalk vendors, jumbled architecture, constant clamour, graffitied walls, parks gone wild: are these signs of a poorly managed city or indicators of urban vitality? Messy Cities: Why We Can't Plan Everything argues that spontaneity and urban workarounds are not liabilities but essential elements in all thriving cities. Forty-three essays by a range of writers from around the world illuminate the role of messy urbanism in enabling creativity, enterprise, and grassroots initiatives to flourish within dense modern cities. With pieces on guerrilla beaches, desire lines, urban interruptions, and the inner lives of unlovely buildings written by experts from all walks of life, Messy Cities makes the case for embracing disorder while not shying away from confronting its challenges.

Full Product Details

Author:   Zahra Ebrahim ,  John Lorinc ,  Dylan Reid ,  Leslie Woo
Publisher:   Coach House Books
Imprint:   Coach House Books
Dimensions:   Width: 13.90cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 21.50cm
Weight:   0.498kg
ISBN:  

9781552455036

ISBN 10:   1552455033
Pages:   300
Publication Date:   17 July 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Contents & Contributors Introduction – Dylan Reid Dixie Road – Fadi Masoud These Walls, These Roads – Ameer Idreis Designing out Disorder – Cara Chellew From Loud to Lively – Leslie Woo Mexico City's Jumbled Apartment Buildings – Daniel Gordon Flexible Streets – Dylan Reid Satisfying Our Thirst for Agency – Colin Ellard The Collective Effervence of Messy Parks – Jake Tobin Garrett Industrial Land's Secret Sauce – Karen Chapple A Food Map of Toronto – Karon Lui A Beach Like No Other – Shari Kasman Sports and Spaces – Perry King Leave the Leaves – Lorraine Johnson Interruptions – Zahra Ebrahim The Readable City – Shawn Micallef  Beyond the Lawn: Meadow or Mess? – Nina-Marie Lister Planning for an Unplanned City – Jason Thorne A Farewell to El Gran Burritov – John Kamp and James Rojas Banquet Halls and Belonging – Sneha Mandhan Tokyo: The Quintessentially Messy City? – Andre Sorensen The Ballet of the Parking Lot – Brendan Stewart and Daniel Rotsztain We Can Live With That – Leslie Woo Tower Communities Are What We Make Them – Ajeev Bhatia The Case Against Controlling Infrastructure – Andrés Borthagaray An Argument Worth Having – Chiyi Tam Everything is Everything But The Details Matter – Alexandra Lambropoulos and Sami Ferwati  Hidden Struggles – Eileen De Villa Cities for Women and Girls – Elsa Marie D'Silva Non-humans (Heard and Unheard) – Suzanne Kite and Robbie Wing Cape Town's Rastafarians – Kofi Hope Conjay's First Walk Home – Tura Cousins Wilson and Shane Laptiste Another Fine Mess on Regionalism – Sabine Matheson The Palimpset of Heritage Streetscapes – Tatum Taylor Chaubal  Protecting a Queer Beach – Wesley Reibeling Public Health in the Post-COVID Era – Andrew Boozary Why Can't We Sell Stuff Anyplace? – John Lorinc The Messy Culture of Graffiti – Dylan Reid An Indigenous Take on the 15 Minute City – Carolynne Crawley Thinking Twice about Consultation – Lorne Cappe What is safety?  – Kimahli Powell Conclusion – Dylan Reid, Leslie Woo, Zahra Ebrahim, and John Lorinc

Reviews

""With examples from Toronto and around the world (Mexico City, Cape Town, Los Angeles, Tokyo and points beyond), it’s a book that takes an intentionally scattered – one could say messy –approach to considering the value and the complications of spontaneous and unplanned city building."" – Edward Keenan, The Toronto Star

""This anthology of (mostly) brief essays celebrates what’s now known as “messy urbanism” – the serendipitous, unplanned ways people shape urban environments, from graffiti to street vending. Appropriately polyphonic, its diverse contributors include urban planners, artists, physicians and geographers."" – Emily Donalson, Globe and Mail ""With examples from Toronto and around the world (Mexico City, Cape Town, Los Angeles, Tokyo and points beyond), it’s a book that takes an intentionally scattered – one could say messy –approach to considering the value and the complications of spontaneous and unplanned city building."" – Edward Keenan, The Toronto Star

Author Information

Zahra Ebrahim is an urbanist, educator, and strategist. Her award-winning work focuses on building bridges between institutions and their public, working with communities to co-design towards better social outcomes and leading some of Canada's most ambitious participatory infrastructure and policy programs. She currently co-leads Monumental, a national organization focused on projects that advance fair, just, and culturally competent citybuilding, with previous experience leading organizations across multiple sectors. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Daniels School of Architecture and Urbanist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto's School of Cities. She currently lives in Toronto with her partner, and their whippet, Zada. John Lorinc is a Toronto-based journalist and editor. He writes about cities, climate, and cleantech for a range of publications, including the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Corporate Knights and Spacing, where he is senior editor. John is also the Toronto non-fiction editor for Coach House Books, and has edited or co-edited several uTOpia anthologies, including The Ward, Any Other Way, and House Divided. He is the author of five books, including Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias, which won the 2023 Writer's Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy. John's latest book is a family memoir entitled No Jews Live Here (Coach House, 2024). Dylan Reid is a co-founder and now the executive editor of Spacing magazine, an award-winning print quarterly about Toronto urbanism and public space that recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. He is the author of the Toronto Public Etiquette Guide and co-editor of other books about Toronto. He was co-chair of the city government's Toronto Pedestrian Committee and later co-founder of the advocacy group Walk Toronto. He is also a fellow at the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies at the University of Toronto, and author of several scholarly articles about the history of cities in Renaissance France. Leslie Woo is a dynamic tri-sector athlete known for her expertise in uniting public, private, and not-for-profit leaders to co-create innovative urban policy solutions. With over 30 years of experience as an urban planner, architect, and community activator, she has been central to shaping urban development in Canada's largest metropolis. Leslie serves on the boards of Waterfront Toronto and the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care and is a trustee of the Urban Land Institute. A Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Leslie champions women city builders on her blog.

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