Metropolis Magazine

The book prides itself on taking a contrarian view of the city, much like Joel Garreau's Edge City (Anchor, 1991) or Robert Bruegmann's MSprawl (The ...

Prison design is about as unglamorous as architecture can get. Corrections agencies want the cheapest cage they can buy; communities want the monstrosities out of sight. Innovation has typically meant anything that will cut costs -- for instance, casting an entire prefabricated cell, from the bed frame to the toilet, as a single piece of low-grade concrete. But when British nonprofit Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) approached the architect Will Alsop about designing a concept prison -- from the inside out -- he jumped at the chance.

Cities have always been about change. And as we plunge deeper into the millennium, we may now be witnessing the emergence of a new kind of urban place, populated largely by nonfamilies and the nomadic rich. This "ephemeral city" might become the prototype for advanced countries in the twenty-first century. San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and parts of New York already serve as ephemeral cities.