As a survey text in visual form, Gary Hustwit’s Urbanized
is a frank introduction to the buzz about cities in our age of
right-minded sustainability. Lurking amid the narration and vignettes
is a scalable world view where the car is no longer king, and community
priorities rather than government mandates often set the agenda for
change.
Seattle had the chance to view Hustwit’s new release last
night, and in my estimation, the audience saw local issues reflected
back from the screen, as will city-dwellers everywhere who attend an Urbanized
presentation. Hustwit clearly succeeds in highlighting a universal
cast of diverse and sometimes conflicting stakeholders who must balance
and integrate ideas, technology and economic forces characteristic of an
urbanizing world.
Other articles about Urbanized have set the stage well, among them a Hustwit interview in TheCityFix, a review by Christopher Hawthorne in the Los Angeles Times (who notes Southern California is missing in Hustwit’s lexicon) and a concise entry by Nate Berg on the new Atlantic Cities site.
In
short, Hustwit, while not an architect or urban planner, aptly
synthesizes the hottest urban issues—from carbon neutrality to safety to
human-scale transportation. He employs voices of the well known, the
lesser known, and fast-moving urban imagery, which guides the film from
Mumbai to Santiagp, to Brasila, Bogota and around the world.
I’ve written lately about the value of imagery in conveying the messages of cities. In this context, Urbanized gives rich meaning to street scenes, infrastructure, and the single building as part of an urban framework.
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