Beatriz Colomina, X-Ray Architecture; Lars Müller (Zurich, 2019), 200 pp. incl. 277 col. and b&w ills; ISBN: 9783037784433; £30

Abstract

beyond London to the reality of practice across Britain. It is a timely study, too. Boom Cities is ultimately about ‘a local response to a national debate about cities, and [...] deindustrialisation’ (p. ). Blackburnwas thus ‘wrestlingwith problemswhich remain intractable and pertinent: how to mould private investment towards giving a new role to a city whose meaning had been tied up with a now defunct industry’ (p. ). Discussions of city centres today frequently invoke the idea of crisis and the need to reinvent the urban core, albeit now in the face of e-commerce and the climate emergency, as well as continuing social inequalities and debates about the role of the state versus private developers. In this context, there is surely much to be learned by revisiting the s.