Twenty Minutes in Manhattan

Over the course of more than fifteen years, architect and critic Michael Sorkin has taken an almost daily twenty-minute walk from his apartment near Washington Square in New York’s Greenwich Village to his architecture studio further downtown in Tribeca. This walk has afforded abundant opportunities for Sorkin to reflect on the ongoing transformation of the neighbourhoods through which he passes. Inspired by events both mundane and monumental, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan unearths a network of relationships between the physical and the social city. Sorkin takes the reader past local characters, neighbourhood stores, buildings, streets and blocks, providing an informative, witty and sometimes humorous travelogue of a part of Manhattan. Yet his perambulations fuel more than a general reflection on what he sees every day: they also offer a technique for engaging a wide range of issues that preoccupy him as an architect, urbanist and citizen. Whether Sorkin is despairing at street garbage, or admiring elevator etiquette, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan offers a testing ground for speculation about the way in which the city can be newly imagined and designed, to deal with pressing issues such as the crisis of the environment, free expression and public space, security and surveillance, the place of history, and the future of the neighbourhood. Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, growing out of an intimate relationship with a much-loved locality, ultimately offers a grounded set of ideas relevant not only to the preservation and amelioration of New York, but also to cities everywhere.

About the Author :
Michael Sorkin is Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York, and was for ten years the architecture critic for the Village Voice. He is the author of many books, including Variations on a Theme Park (1992), Some Assembly Required (2001) and Indefensible Space (2007).

Review :
'This book captures architect Sorkin wandering through lower Manhattan, where even the most banal-seeming sights send the author into casually fascinating digressions about urban planning, the history behind New York's grid, stoops and parks. After looking at the city through this ambler's eyes, you'll never look at a tenement building - or a stairwell - the same way again.' - Time Out, New York 'In his delightful book, Michael Sorkin writes about New York from a flaneur's perspective. Focusing on a 20-minute walk from his apartment to his studio, the author - one of architecture's most consistent and consistently interesting critical voices - meanders through architecture, urbanism, sociology, politics and history ... Quirky, erudite and occasionally frustrating in its movement between the personal, the political and the physical, every city should have its Michael Sorkin.' - Financial Times 'The trove of thumbnail sketches and obscure facts is augmented with fascinating ruminations about the socio-political ins and outs of the business of construction and urban renewal in New York City, the intricate socioeconomic consequences that result, and the ethical ramifications of these undertakings.' - James Sclavunos, The Times