Modern Cities

The 1920s, '30s, and '40s witnessed the construction of modern cities and districts in which architects and builders reconciled the spaces of the traditional Western city with modern typologies and International Style architecture and icons. In Modern Cities, the latest issue of The New City journal, Jean-Louis Cohen, Monique Eleb, Robert Davis, Alberto Ferlenga, Jean-Franois Lejeune, Neil Payton, and Alan Shulman analyze such cities as Casablanca, Algiers, Miami Beach, Guidonia, Villeurbanne, and Tel Aviv as unrecognized laboratories of the modern city.

Of critical relevance to both proponents and critics of "The New Urbanism," Modern Cities also features illustrations and critiques of contemporary projects that focus on the definition of public spaces in today's cities. Discussed by Alberto Ustarroz, Maurice Culot, and the architects themselves, these projects include works such as Giorgio Grassi's reconstruction of the Roman theater in Sagunto, a new urban block in Brussels by Liliam O'Connors, Javier Cenicacelaya, Jean-Philippe Garric & Co, Machado and Silvetti's Seaside town center, and projects in Miami Beach, Canada, Berlin, and Holland.

The New City is published by the University of Miami School of Architecture. The journal is dedicated to the history, theory, and practice of urbanism, with a general emphasis on the 20th century. Founded by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, it aims to be an instrument in the revival of town design.