The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women

Elizabeth Wilson's elegant, provocative, and scholarly study uses fiction, essays, film, and art, as well as history and sociology, to look at some of the world's greatest cities—London, Paris, Moscow, New York, Chicago, Lusaka, and São Paulo—and presents a powerful critique of utopian planning, anti-urbanism, postmodernism, and traditional architecture. For women the city offers freedom, including sexual freedom, but also new dangers. Planners and reformers have repeatedly attempted to reg...