Democracy and Urban Form

Democracy and Urban Form
Richard Sennett with introduction by Moshe Safdie

“Never have the potential political consequences of architecture been greater, and never has the political sensibility of architecture been less.”

This was the state of the discipline that social theorist and urban thinker Richard Sennett declared when he addressed an audience at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1981. Over a series of six lectures, Sennett presented social discourse as the foundation of democracy, and posited that our cities are uniquely positioned to either empower or constrict this discourse—and that the difference could lie in architecture and urban design.

Now, over forty years later, as political polarization persists and its consequences arise in both new and familiar ways, Democracy and Urban Form revisits questions that remain relevant: If discourse is the foundation of democracy, how can the design of our cities empower and enable it?

Democracy and Urban Form is the eleventh title in The Incidents, a book series based on events at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Designed by ELLA.

Hardcover, 264 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm
$27.95 / €21.95 / $36.95 CAN
ISBN 978-1-915609-47-2

Copublished by Harvard Design Press and Sternberg Press, Fall 2024.

Soon available to pre-order via Sternberg Press.