The collage city by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter is an important contribution in understanding of contemporary cities. This book takes the position against the modernist manifesto as well as utopian ideals on urban planning and cities. The book also attempts to build the argument that the modern planning paradigm has dis-integrated the cities and there is a need for pluralistic imagination in urban planning. The argument is built around three large themes.
Crisis of the Object: Predicament of Texture
•why are we compelled to prefer a nostalgia for the future to that of the past? •could the imagined ideal city reflect /allow for our psychological constitution? •could this ideal city behave as theatres of memory (conservative) and theatres of prophecy – (radicals)?
Utopia | Decline and Fall
The problem of contemporary urban thinking and utopian ideals is that they create binary oppositions, contradictory positions, paradox, i:e let Science build the cities or Let people build the cities. Impoverished banalities of public housing which stand around like the undernourished symbols of a new world which refused to be born.
Collision City and the Politics of “Bricolage”
•One big idea vs several small ideas and imagination i:e hedgehog vs fox.
•The bricoleur is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks. the urban experience can be taken towards plural, diverse, theatrical and spectacle experiences.
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