Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers

Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world. Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground. In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below. Starting at the edge of earth's atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers.

About the Author :
Stephen Graham is Professor of Cities and Society at the Global Urban Research Unit, based in Newcastle University's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. He is the author or editor of several books, including Telecommunications and the City and Splintering Urbanism (both with Simon Marvin), Cities, War and Terrorism, Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructures Fail, and Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism.

Review :
"In this panoramic, at times jaw-dropping book, Stephen Graham describes how in recent years the built environment around the world, both above and below ground, has become dramatically more vertical - and more unequal. sharp and memorable. dizzyingly restless. Cities feel different once you've read it" A rigorously researched, pioneering book packed with disturbing and at times astonishing information He takes the view that we've been looking at cities all wrong, all laid out like maps, when what we should be doing is taking vertical slices through them instead. He doesn't just mean from the tip of the skyscrapers to the metro tunnels below ground: he means from the circling satellites round the planet right down to bunkers, sewers, mines. An enlightening overview of the security state's impact on contemporary cities, from overt authoritarian control in war-torn areas to more subtle forms of behavioral influence in places supposedly at peace. Graham shows how military/police/security forces perceive urban places and urban dwellers as subjects to control, and how their inherently undemocratic tactics threaten freedom all over the world Seeing cities as Gordian knots of geopolitics, he gathers an impressive range of case studies to bolster his analysis. These compel and convince, from Saudi Arabia's high-rise vanity projects to Rio de Janeiro's favelas.