Gordon Cullen's Townscape in USA

What makes a city alive? What did 20th-century design dreams leave behind?

Along with a series of critical commentaries, this book unveils for the first time Townscape in USA, a previously unpublished manuscript written by Gordon Cullen in the early 1960s.

Best known for Townscape (1961), Cullen brings his incisive, visually attuned, and often wry perspective to six American cities – New York, Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. – providing splendid, semi-prophetic visions of the cities’ destinies, and foreshadowing the inevitable consequences of uncontrolled building development. Cullen constantly reminds us of how urban designers should focus on people and creating a sense of place, and critiquing the rigid visual codes of Beaux-Arts planning and offering a counter-vision rooted in texture, contrast and surprise. Through expressive sketches and spatial observations, he reveals how cities could, and should, offer not only efficiency but delight, not only order but encounter. These visions are supported by a series of drawings, notes and photos taken from Cullen’s archives.

This book is an essential read for architects, planners, and dreamers alike. Addressing today’s debates about human-centred design, the – until now – forgotten manuscript Townscape in USA is a passionate plea to rethink what a city is, and whom it is for.

Thomas Gordon Cullen (1914–1994) was an architect, illustrator, urban designer, and editor of The Architectural Review. One of the most significant figures in the urban design panorama of the 20th century, Cullen developed numerous urban regeneration projects during his long career and was a key thinker of the Townscape movement.

Carla Molinari is Senior Lecturer in Architecture and BArch Programme Director at Anglia Ruskin University.

Marco Spada is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Suffolk.