Anthony Greenbank's cult book Survival in the City shows you how make your way through the urban jungle, with gritty black and white illustrations and a sense of impending peril around every corner. The urban survival handbook is not quite as popular as it once was (although Greenbank's book eventually morphed into the Book of Survival, and made its way into things like the low-tech library), we're now too cynical and jaded to look at this advice except through a fug of irony.

Did we ever take this sort of thing at face value? Witness the enormous success of the Worst Case Scenario series, useful/useless advice presented with a nod and a wink, more likely to surface in a Christmas stocking than a mercenary's backpack. Admittedly, true practitioners of the dark arts of survival can find a market for their less ironic tomes (and dig a little deeper into the world of the survivalist and your pixels will start oozing pure panic) but it seems that 21st irony has largely superseded the streak of urban panic that ran through the 70s and 80s.

Perhaps Greenbank blamed the French. The riots of 68 had nailed the idea of the city as a device of perpetual control, a theory based on the demolitions and constructions of Baron Haussmann, the best-known proponent of the rational, socially-divided city. According to the Situationists, "he nicely separated leisure areas from work places, thus announcing modern functionalism, as illustrated by Le Corbusier's precise zone tripartition (one zone for circulation, another one for accommodations, and the last one for labour)." Take a look Above Paris, courtesy of the tmn gallery of the work of aerial photographer Roger Henrard, two decades before the barricades went up.

Greenbank's urban environment was, of course, America, where simmering unease had sporadically exploded into confrontation. Urban survival combines the fear of widespread disorder with an ongoing, unrelenting attack on life and liberty from all corners, be they drug addicts, muggers, kidnappers, whatever. This was the era of Assault on Precinct 13, and the city was, by its very nature, unsafe. It's ironic that disorder should plague the American city, given the European experience of reconstruction to maintain division and control. Before Haussmann had even been let lose on Paris, Christopher Wren wanted to have a go at post-Great Fire London, drawing up a classic plan for the medieval morass that was the City (taken from the many maps at London Ancestor). A similar story is told in Lynda Nead's Victorian Babylon, which chronicled the removal of Holywell, a small thoroughfare north of the Strand lined with bookshops, many of which were prone to displaying saucy pictures, hastening the street's destruction, and the passing of the Obscene Publications Act of 1857.

The act was a form of Hausmanisation, just not an architectural one. (Hausmanisation is not a word in common usage, but one which crops up in this post, This is not architecture, over at Kosmograd. See also the post Spore Cities and, while we're at it, the 'Julian Opie Lenticular' cover for Draft Magazine, which also introduces us to the works of Garth Walker and Asuka Ohsawa. The latter produces ultra-twisted little vignettes in a quasi-traditional style. Phew).

We digress. Paris in the floods of 1910: big, striking images. Another set of 1910 images, taken by Pierre Petit, hosted at the Historic Cities site. See also the Seine at a low point in 1943. Related (and referenced in today's Guardian), Global Warming - London Flooding, a projection using the amazing Virtual London / New Popular Edition maps. The UK in 1940 / the work of Andrew Bracey (via Flavorpill) / DesignNotes, a weblog by Michael Surtees / when is Brand X better? / why is the CGI in Jurassic Park so good?

Was there a mysterious 13th episode of Fawlty Towers? / 2006, the year in pictures, courtesy of i like / The Ryde, a group of courtyard houses in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. One of the best is currently for sale / Cafe Kafka, a weblog / architectural objects available at Cornucopia3D / the soundblog / the survival books has also been commented on by others, and it has even inspired some rather creepy music / designer Eliot Noyes' own house in New Canaan, still lived in by his widow, Molly / Jeff Bezos's Goddard space vehicle, built by his Blue Origin company, finally breaks cover, two months after the first trials / celebrity patents / is the American house reaching its peak? What was supersized may one day be downsized: 'Today's McMansions, with their overbearing scale and frenetic ornamentation, are a pretty close match for Victorian excess.'

Six Months in a Fleecy Coat, blogging from Antarctica. See also the Antarctic Conservation Blog, concerned with 'conserving artefacts from the explorer's hut left behind by Ernest Shackleton in 1908.' And just for good measure, Tchotchke schlock, Laurel Blossom's musings on 'Souvenirs of the Shackleton Exhibition', back in things 10 / Mr K puts together an impressive list of the Best Links of 2006; reading it is like delving back into the artworks, trends, events and oddities that spiked into our consciousness these past twelve months. All of them now seem so last year, as the internet's relentless whirl and churn makes novelties ever shorter-lived.

Poppytalk, a weblog / visual weblog: thrilling wonder. The post on the Winstanley Lighthouse (scroll down) is fun, the second of five built on the Eddystone Rock since 1698. Winstanley's eccentric tower has survived in many reproductions and prints. A fine collection of thirty famous British lighthouses (at The Seafarer / The One Train / marketallica, marketing trends via Turkey / the preservation woes and wonders of 2006.



coming to us via THINGS MAGAZINE