Experience Of Place, The
- Book Review,
by TONY HISS
Amazon.com
Tony Hiss's lively book takes a considered look at a variety of landscapes, from New York's Central Park to the Great Plains, and points out why the design of some places gives us the creeps, while that of others liberates our senses. Hiss suggests how cities and suburbs can be shaped to keep (or rediscover) their connection to the natural landscape, and, more important, how--for once--our expansion into a place need not mean its destruction. There's much food for thought in The Experience of Place, and a dozen starting points for the reinhabitation our lands require.
From Publishers Weekly
Spanning the fields of environmentalism and urban and regional planning, this primer's basic premise is simple: the places where we spend our time--homes, offices, train stations, parks, stores, etc.--affect who we are. New Yorker staff writer Hiss begins by minutely examining his on-site responses to Manhattan's Grand Central Station, Times Square and Central Park. He then ranges further afield: from downtown San Francisco to towns in Maine's north woods, from protected landscapes in England and Wales to Frankfurt's public open spaces. His revelatory odyssey is an invitation to stop, look, linger--and preserve what is life-enhancing in the environment. Hiss hails planning tools of the emergent science of place, including environmental simulations, satellite photographs, experimental watchdog groups and other regionalist projects that link city to countryside. His humane essay, originally published in the New Yorker , offers much food for thought. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Hiss, a writer for The New Yorker (where portions of this will appear), passionately believes that "the places where we spend our time affect the people we are and can become." Here he explores psychological attitudes toward physical environments--parks, farms, and cities. Concerned about the debilitating effects of overdevelopment and urban sprawl on both the individual and collective psyche, he draws on innovative thinkers like Frederick Law Olmsted and Benton MacKaye to find practical suggestions for rethinking current environmental problems. This ambitious and caring essay speaks to a generation of Americans who hunger not only to save but enhance the Earth. For all but the smallest libraries. --Kenneth F. Kister, Tampa, Fla.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review
"Should be required reading for all planners, developers, and city administrators."
Review
"A significant new book...has awesome implications for the future of real-estate development, land-use planning, architecture and health...Tony Hiss illuminates the real nitty-gritty meaning of the dawning environmental era." -- Boston Globe
Why do some places -- the concourse of Grand Central Terminal or a small farm or even the corner of a skyscraper -- affect us so mysteriously and yet so forcefully? What tiny changes in our everyday environments can radically alter the quality of our daily lives? The Experience of Place offers an innovative and delightfully readable proposal for new ways of planning, building, and managing our most immediate and overlooked surroundings.
"Tony Hiss...describes subtle but practical ways to improve mediocre places and transform even some unpleasant ones. Hiss's book itself is like a splendid place-experience: it draws one in, surprises and charms, and enhances the landscapes of the mind." -- Jane Jacobs
"To read [The Experience of Place]...is to come away convinced not only that things can be put right, but that the job is well underway."
-- Newsweek
From the Publisher
"Should be required reading for all planners, developers, and city administrators."--The New York Times Book Review
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