Brian Ladd – författare

From the Model T to the SUV, "Autophobia" reveals that our vexed relationship with the automobile is nothing new - in fact, debates over whether cars are forces of good or evil in our world have raged for over a century now, ever since the automobile was invented. According to Brian Ladd, this love-hate relationship with our cars is the defining quality of the automotive age. And everyone has an opinion about them, from the industry shills, oil barons, and radical libertarians who offer cars blithe paeans and deny their ill effects, to the technophobes, tree huggers, and killjoys who curse cars, ignoring the very real freedoms and benefits they provide us. Focusing in particular on the automotive transformation of our world's cities, and spanning settings as varied as Belle Epoque Paris, Nazi Germany, postwar London, Los Angeles, New York, and the smoggy Shanghai of today, Ladd explores this conundrum, acknowledging adherents and detractors of the automobile alike.

In the twenty years since its original publication, The Ghosts of Berlin has become a classic, an unparalleled guide to understanding the presence of history in our built environment, especially in a space as historically contested--and emotionally fraught--as Berlin. Brian Ladd examines the ongoing conflicts radiating from the remarkable fusion of architecture, history, and national identity in Berlin. Returning to the city frequently, Ladd continues to survey the urban landscape, traversing its ruins, contemplating its buildings and memorials, and carefully deconstructing the public debates and political controversies emerging from its past.

A multi-sensory urban history of Europe’s bustling streets.Merchants’ shouts, jostling strangers, aromas of fresh fish and flowers, plodding horses, and friendly chatter long filled the narrow, crowded streets of the European city. As they developed over many centuries, these spaces of commerce, communion, and commuting framed daily life. At its heyday in the 1800s, the European street was the place where social worlds connected and collided.Brian Ladd recounts a rich social and cultural history of the European city street, tracing its transformation from a lively scene of trade and crowds into a thoroughfare for high-speed transportation. Looking closely at four major cities—London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—Ladd uncovers both the joys and the struggles of a past world. The story takes us up to the twentieth century, when the life of the street was transformed as wealthier citizens withdrew from the crowds to seek refuge in suburbs and automobiles. As demographics and technologies changed, so did the structure of cities and the design of streets, significantly shifting our relationships to them. In today’s world of high-speed transportation and impersonal marketplaces, Ladd leads us to consider how we might draw on our history to once again build streets that encourage us to linger. ​By unearthing the vivid descriptions recorded by amused and outraged contemporaries, Ladd reveals the changing nature of city life, showing why streets matter and how they can contribute to public life.

This unique contribution to social and urban history describes the struggle of prosperous German bourgeois leaders to bring order to their rapidly growing cities during the tumultuous age of industrial expansion in the decades before World War I. Brian Ladd sets the emerging theory and practice of city planning in the context of debates about the nature of the modern city and the possibility of improving society by regulating its physical environment. In so doing, he reveals the extent to which modern city planning is a product of the aspirations, prejudices, and frustrations of the German burghers who created it.He sifts through the often contradictory motives underlying public health works (including waterworks, sewers, baths, and parks); plans for streets and squares, especially in new developments; working-class housing, zoning, public transit, and aesthetic concerns. He examines planning as civic boosterism and as social reform, identifying the reformers and describing their role in urban politics and society. His analysis focuses on Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Frankfurt-am-Main, but also pays considerable attention to Berlin and other cities.This broad-gauged view of an increasingly popular subject will enlighten historians of Germany and of modern Europe, urban historians, city planners, and architectural historians.