The Death of Urbanism: Transitions through five stages of grief

Koolhaas pronounced urbanism dead in 1995. Since then, urban design has struggled to come to terms with this and other losses including environmental stability, affordable housing, design control, and urban amenity.

This book explores urban design paradigms transitioning through a misappropriation of Kübler-Ross’ “five stages of grief” – from pro-sprawl ‘denial’, NIMBY ‘anger’, revisionist new urbanist ‘bargaining’, ‘depressed’ starchitects, through to an optimistic manifesto of ‘acceptance’.