Urbanized
(2011)
Urbanized Blu-ray delivers great video and solid audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
Documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns.
For more about
Urbanized and the Urbanized Blu-ray release, see the
Urbanized Blu-ray ReviewDirector:
Gary Hustwit
Urbanized Blu-ray Review
Livin' just enough for the city.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, February 10, 2012
Have you ever taken a road trip to a less populated area of our country and been surprised when suddenly, seemingly out
of nowhere, there appears a small village or even a single household? Perhaps the question flits through your mind, "How
did these people ever end up here?" In the vast expanses of not just the United States, but indeed the entire globe,
there are so many nooks and crannies tucked away here and there that it can be a literal voyage of discovery to ferret out
these hidden gems. Ironically, few people ever seem to really give much thought to how major cities got to be where they
are, or indeed how they ended up looking like they do.
Urbanized tackles that dearth of recognition with an
interesting look at urban planning, courtesy of documentarian Gary Hustwit, who envisioned
Urbanized as the final
installment of a Design Trilogy which included his two previous, and widely acclaimed, documentaries,
Helvetica and
Objectified. The fact that Hustwit would include everything from
a typeface to industrial design to the look of and intent behind major metropolises gives some indication of how wide
ranging Hustwit's approach really is. Urban planning might seem like a dry subject for a documentary, but it's to Hustwit's
credit that
Urbanized is really rather remarkably engaging as it explores the many different elements that come
into play as modern cities become increasingly populated.
Urbanized works in several history lessons as it trots the globe, giving a generalist overview of various urban planning schemes that
have taken hold over the past couple of centuries, especially as what we would call the "modern city" has begun springing up around the
world. The City Beautiful Movement was huge in the United States in the mid to late nineteenth century, emulating the wide boulevards and
classical façades of Europe. (It's also the movement that is the bane of Ayn Rand in
The Fountainhead, with its Greek columns and
impenetrable edifices.) A couple of decades later the Garden City Movement took hold, which sought to separate areas of cities by whatever
function they provided, and which often introduced a concentric circular design element. Interestingly, this Garden City idea of "separation"
continued to be championed well into the twentieth century, with sometimes unexpected results. Brasilia, the "new" capital of Brazil built
from
scratch in the sixties, attempted to modernize the "separation" idea and ended up creating a city which in the words of one of the
participants
in
Urbanized looks great from the air but is a nightmare to actually navigate through on ground, as everything is too widely spaced
to
make for easy walking.
A number of other historical phenomena are explored, including the huge effect the advent of the automobile had on city planning, especially
after World War II when cheap gasoline and the urge to get out of crowded urban center led to suburbs filled with cookie cutter houses
where everyone pursued their own little piece of the American Dream. (Interestingly, the "American Dream" is still almost always summed
up in the idea of home ownership.) While the intent may have been benign, the result again has ended up being disastrous, at least in
part, as people have ended up driving further and further for even basic services. And the increased uptick of autos within metropolitan
areas has been a nightmare, as anyone who has ever tried to navigate the streets of cites as disparate as New York or Seattle will attest.
The Mayor of Bogota is interviewed and asks the perhaps cheekily ironic question of whether parking is a right that should be enforced by
the United Nations Charter. Of course he feels it
isn't, and his administration enacted all sorts of new requirements for car driving
within the city limits, as well as expanding mass transit opportunities for Bogota's burgeoning population.
The movement to at least partially reclaim dense urban environments and give them a more natural, human scale is dealt with in such recent
developments as The High Line in Manhattan. This fascinating "park" is a one mile or so green space planted on top of an abandoned
elevated spur of the old New York Central Railroad. Interestingly, the development of The High Line has fostered all sorts of actual urban
redevelopment (as in remodeled building and new construction) on the borders of the park itself, proving perhaps that nature is not an
"enemy" of development but instead can actually work in tandem with it. Thousands of miles away a less well thought out redevelopment
scheme fostered by the government of Stuttgart brought about huge protest movements, such that for the first time in decades a Green
Party President was elected. Ironically, residents later approved the redevelopment project anyway.
Hustwit does an exemplary job of keeping
Urbanized moving (no pun intended), with an appealingly wide variety of locations that
literally spans the globe and looks at all sorts of different design aesthetics and philosophies. It's mentioned outright at the close of
Urbanized that cities themselves are ideas as much as physical manifestations, and any idea will prosper only when it's challenged
and allowed to grow as new information becomes available.
Urbanized shows that there are people all over the planet making sure
that happens.
Urbanized Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
A documentary about urban planning may not immediately jump to the "must have
now" list of any Blu-ray aficionado, but even those
who normally aren't drawn to documentaries of
any sort, let alone one about something as ostensibly dry as urban planning, might be
pleasantly surprised at just how engaging
Urbanized really is. Hustwit has already proven himself a great storyteller in both
Helvetica and
Objectified and he continues that trend with
Urbanized. This piece plays as something of a travelogue as
well, journeying hither and yon to explore a variety of urban locales and how local governments and planners have dealt with various issues.
Part history lesson, part sociopolitical screed (but only in the nicest way possible),
Urbanized is both informative and entertaining. This
Blu-ray looks great and features decent (if lossy) audio, and it also includes almost an hour of interesting supplementary material that didn't
make it into the final cut of the documentary.
Recommended.
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