360 REM KOOLHAAS

classic of the postmodern era, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las
Vegas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977) was an early recognition of the populist themes found in Everyday
Urbanism, although these authors do not allude to the term itself (see the selection by these authors in Part
Two: pp. 169–177). Other authors describing Everyday Urbanism include: John Chase, John Kaliski, and
Margaret Crawford (eds), Everyday Urbanism (New York: Monacelli Press, 1999) (excerpted in Part Three:
pp. 344–357); and Rahul Mehrotra (ed.), Everyday Urbanism: Michigan Debates on Urbanism (Ann Arbor,
MI: Taubman School, University of Michigan, 2005).
A second form of contemporary urbanism, Post Urbanism, has been directly associated with the built work
of Koolhaas and OMA, as well as designers such as Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi, Daniel Libeskind, Frank
Gehry, Lebbeus Woods, Herzog & de Meuron, and Peter Eisenman, among others. It is physically character-
ized by decontextualized design, stylistic sensationalism, dependent on “shock and awe,” with respect to its
use of non-contextual and overpowering forms. Post Urban design tends to be free-form, avant-garde archi-
tecture that is at times abstractly geometrical, frequently relying on surface detailing of a building’s skin, and
in most instances, personal expressions of the designer. Key texts in Post Urban literature include: Bernard
Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994); The State of Architecture at the
Beginning of the 21st Century, edited with Irene Cheng (New York: Monacelli Press, 2004), and Event Cities
1, 2 and 3 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, 2001, 2005); Charles Jencks, The Architecture of the Jumping
Universe – A Polemic: How Complexity Science is Changing Architecture and Culture (London: Academy
Editions, 1997); Lebbeus Woods, Anarchitecture: Architecture is a Political Act (Chichester, UK: John Wiley/
Architectural Monographs 22, 1992); Roy Strickland (ed.), Post Urbanism and Reurbanism: Michigan Debates
on Urbanism (Ann Arbor, MI: Taubman School, University of Michigan, 2005); and Gyan Prakash (ed.), Noir
Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). Written
before the introduction of landscape or ecological urbanism, Douglas Kelbaugh provides a very accessible
review of contemporary design theories dominating the literature, including both post and everyday urbanism,
in Three Urbanisms: New, Everyday and Post (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 2000).
These readings are indicative of a long line of Post Urban critiques and histories that suggest the traditional
monocentric city may be passing into obsolescence, often replaced by a new megapolitan or mega-region
urbanism. These authors acknowledge the rise of a new poststructuralist/metropolitan/polycentric/sub-
urban/non-place urban realm. Those describing this Post Urban zeitgeist include: Melvin Webber, “Order in
Diversity: Community without Propinquity,” in Lloyd Wingo Jr. (ed.), Cities and Space – The Future Use of
Urban Land (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963); Jean Gottmann, Megalopolis, The Urban-
ized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), The Urban
Place and Non-Place Urban Realm: Explorations into Urban Structure (Philadelphia, PA: University of Penn-
sylvania, 1964), and “The Post-City Age,” Daedalus (vol. 97, no. 4, pp. 1091–1110, 1968); Francoise Choay,
L’Histoire et la Methode en Urbanisme (Paris: Annales ESC, 1970); Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier:
The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Robert Fishman,
Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books and HarperCollins, 1987) and
“America’s New City: Megalopolis Unbound,” in The Wilson Quarterly (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, Winter 1990, pp. 25–45); Jean Gottmann and Robert Harper (eds), Since
Megalopolis: The Urban Writings of Jean Gottmann (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990);
Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday, 1992); Jon C. Teaford, The
Metropolitan Revolution: The Rise of Post-Urban America, The Columbia History of Urban Life (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2006); Peter Hall and Kathy Pain, The Polycentric Metropolis: Learning from
Mega-City Regions in Europe (London: Routledge, 2009); Catherine Ross (ed.), Megaregions: Planning for
Global Competitiveness (Washington DC: Island Press, 2009); and Arthur C. Nelson and Robert E. Lang,
Megapolitan America: A New Vision for Understanding America’s Metropolitan Geography (Chicago: APA/
Planner’s Press, 2011).

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