doi:10.1016/j.cities.2008.03.002Cities 25 (2008) 178–183

www.elsevier.com/locate/cities

Book review(s)

Two Squares: Martyrs Square, Beirut, and Sirkeci Square,IstanbulSarkis Hashim, Mark Dwyer, Pars Kibarer (Eds.) (2006).Harvard University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 0-935617-89-2, 978-0-93561-789-4, MA, 165pp.

In recent years, there have been a growing number ofedited collections based on the work produced in graduatedesign studios. Such books often involve ‘First World’North American design academics and practitionerscharging into the ‘Third World,’ leading their graduatestudents into unfamiliar terrain, conducting a superficialfield analysis with shaky methodology and offering littleinformation about the culture, history, and political situa-tion of the place. As a result, some studio books can unin-tentionally serve to exoticize the place of study. TwoSquares, however, is a refreshing departure from manyother studio books, as it strikes a nice balance betweenwell-written, insightful scholarly essays by experts on theplaces of study and exploratory student design projects.

Based on two studio classes run by Harvard’s Gradu-ate School of Design in 2004 and 2005, Two Squares isdivided into two parts, each examining the origins, urbandevelopment and social and political dimensions of onemajor public space currently undergoing urban transfor-mation. The beginning of each part consists of severalessays by urban scholars, followed by a few pages ofwritten explanation and images for each individual stu-dent project.

Part 1 focuses on Martyrs Square, the key publicspace in downtown Beirut and one which symbolicallyand physically divides the city. Hashim Sarkis (a scholarand practicing architect), Samir Khalaf (a Beirut-basedLebanese sociologist) and Mark Dwyer (an architect) of-fer excellent historical overviews of the changing physi-cal and social aspects of Beirut and of Martyrs Square,providing richly illustrated analyses of the square overtime and the urban destruction caused by the 15-year ci-vil war beginning in 1975. In his essay, ‘Considering Pub-lic Life in Beirut’, Dwyer points to the role that car-centred planning has played in the decline of Beirut’smost symbolic space. Dwyer outlines the complexitiesand contestation involved in the reconstruction process,critically analyzing existing public space in Beirut andinvestigating various international precedents that couldbe drawn upon to cultivate a healthy public life in down-town Beirut.

Part 2 focuses on Sirkeci Square, a public space inIstanbul used historically as a transportation hub and the

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final stop on the Orient Express. After the upcoming com-pletion of a new train tunnel that will connect the Euro-pean and Asian sides of Istanbul under the Bosphorus,Sirkeci Square will be the tunnel’s first station on theEuropean side. Tansel Korkmaz (a Turkish architect andprofessor) and Pars Kibarer (an architect) contributethoughtful and well-illustrated essays on the urban historyof Istanbul since ancient times and the rise and decline ofSirkeci Square’s importance as a transportation hub in re-cent decades.

The studio classes which examined the two squaresconsisted of about a dozen graduate students, each fromone of three design programs at Harvard’s GraduateSchool of Design: architecture, urban design and land-scape architecture. While graduate design training is of-ten territorial and concerned with policing disciplinaryboundaries over collaborative work, the students producean exciting variety of work. The studios set out to revital-ize the two squares without over-programming the spacesin order to maintain flexibility and encourage creativeand spontaneous activity. In the Martyrs Square studio,the graduate students first studied the social and histori-cal context, particularly in relation to other public spacesin Beirut that have been recreated in the post-war recon-struction plan, including an analysis of unsuccessfulspaces. The student designs generally sought ways of pri-oritizing the pedestrian, providing much-needed parkingand bringing people of different religions and social clas-ses into the space for both spontaneous and plannedactivities. Design strategies that sought to achieve thesegoals included creating a public life underground (inthe form of gas stations, auto repair shops, car washes,laundromats, and so on) by creating a porous surface thatconnects the ground with various levels of undergroundactivity, creating symbolic structures to memorialize thesite, transforming the site into a transportation hub andbotanical garden, converting the square into a sort of ur-ban campus, connecting the long park to the oceanthrough a series of pedestrian underpasses and escalators,and truncating the long form of the existing square intoan actual square shape in an effort to create a more use-able and focused public space.

Some of the themes that emerged through the studentdesigns for Sirkeci Square include integrating the historictrain station as a symbol while constructing a new train sta-tion, focusing on archaeological sites and improving link-ages between the various modes of transportation whichconverge around the site. Some of the ideas for the site in-clude creating a new public space based on transience,approaching the project from a landscape perspective byintroducing ecological elements to the site or defining the

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Book reviews

edges of the site, and being sensitive to the skyline bycreating views to surrounding important historical sites.Overall, the graduate student designs demonstrate anuanced understanding of the complex urban and socialhistories as well as the physical opportunities and con-straints of the sites, something that is crucial for designersto master in order to begin to offer sound and convincingdesign solutions.

There are similarities between the two public spaceswhich make them stimulating studio topics and comple-mentary choices for this book. Both are located in Med-iterranean cities within the Muslim world that areexperiencing major urban transformation and are cur-rently concerned with both revitalizing and conservinghistoric districts. Both sites are archaeologically signifi-cant yet are subsumed by a dilapidated urban environ-ment in which automobiles are prioritized. The sitesboth pose a challenge for designers in how to (re)invigo-rate the spaces without being overly prescriptive in pro-gramming them or losing local meaning. Because of themany similarities between the sites, it would have beenvaluable if the editor had written a final short summarycomparing the two spaces. A discussion of lessonslearned, general observations, comments on the designs,and analysis of some of the successes and failures ofthe studios would have helped to provide a stronger linkbetween the two projects.

doi:10.1016/j.cities.2008.03.003

Governing Cities in a Global Era: Urban Innovation,Competition, and Democratic ReformRobin Hambleton, Jill Simone Gross (Eds.) (2007). Pal-grave MacMillan, New York and Houndsmills, Basingstok,Hampsire England ISBN 978-0-23060-230-4.

This interesting volume arose out of the City FuturesInternational Conference held in Chicago at the Universityof Illinois, Chicago in 2004. It is comprised of 14 chaptercontributions, along with introductory, concluding and sec-tional essays by the editors. Like virtually all edited booksthat speak to big, broad and complex topics, this volumealso suffers from some common deficits. As it takes on glob-alization, governance and the futures of cities, the editorsand contributors struggle to remain thematic and speak toa common set of questions throughout its 267 pages. Simi-larly, the quality of the scholarship, research and writingfound in its many chapters varies considerably among itsmany contributors. Nevertheless, this book generallyachieves many of its aims. Due to excellent organization,good introductory material and frequent efforts by the var-ious authors to address common concerns, the volume of-ten succeeds in providing attention to a common set ofissues about the politics of globalization and its meaningin a variety of urban contexts.

The contributors essentially seek to examine what theyconsider the two most compelling challenges to citieseverywhere during the last generation: globalization andurbanization. They note that internationalization has un-leashed new competitive forces and interdependencies

One small criticism I have is that while Two Squares isrichly illustrated with many fascinating historical photosand plans as well as student design projects, many imagesare too small to convey any useful information or are evenillegible. Overall, however, it is refreshing to see a bookthat combines sound scholarship with an exploration ofreal-world design solutions. Two Squares is logically laidout in a compelling format that sets a high standard forout-of-country design studio books. This book will be ahelpful framework for design studio instructors and stu-dents, particularly those conducting or participating in stu-dios outside of their cultural contexts. With sensitive andtimely essays on two urban squares undergoing massivetransformations, this book is also valuable for urbanstudies scholars interested in public space, particularly inMediterranean cities.

Sarah MoserNational University of Singapore,

Department of Geography,Block AS2, 1 Arts Link,

Singapore 117570, SingaporeE-mail address: sarah_moser@nus.edu.sg

Available online 12 May 2008

all over the world, leading some, like Thomas Friedman,to suggest that the world is ‘‘flat.’’ Freer immigration, mo-bile capital and increasingly footloose business and tech-nology often appear to make what is happening locallypale in comparison to the international flows and thedecisions of the private sector. At the same time, urbani-zation has been increasing almost everywhere, particu-larly in areas of the developing world, but also inalready-developed regions where new urban enclavesare proliferating and some older cities are expanding. Thisbook is dedicated to examining three questions about thisphenomenon:

What are the implications of globalization for urbangovernment and governance? How are cities and metro-politan areas responding to these unprecedented changes?What are the implications for those who lead and managethese increasingly complex cities and city regions?

In pursuing these questions, the editors have organizedthe various essays into three sections. Section I is entitled‘‘Global Pressures on Urban Governance’’ and attemptsto look at the scope and impact of globalization andurbanization in a variety of contexts in the developedand developing worlds. Two essays describe the impactof globalization on changing governmental arrangements.Takashi Tsukamoto and Ronald K. Vogel survey 20 glob-alizing cities and find evidence to question theories thatsuppose there is convergence toward more decentralizedgovernment; they report mixed tendencies and little rea-son to believe central governmental intervention is reced-ing on a broad scale. An essay by Manfred Rober and

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