The Chosen City. (Unlovable Urbanity).

By Nicholas Schoon. London: Spon Press. 2001. [pounds sterling]18.99

Most of us know that every new analysis of urban issues has to repeat facts familiar for decades, and this author endears himself to this reader with his comment that the 1977 Government White Paper on urban regeneration could be mostly repeated without change in 2000. The difference is, he notes, that the old one was a slim, small dull-looking document which cost 80p, while that of 2000, Our Towns and Cities: The Future, 'packed with colour photographs, maps and diagrams, looks like a GCSE geography textbook, is about five times as long and costs [pounds sterling]28'.

Schoon's book, by contrast, has a lot of grainy black-and-white photos to show the increasingly tatty state of the cities, and the unlovability of the out-of-town dwellings sold by members of the House-Builders' Federation. He notes that some city-watchers argue that since dispersal is inevitable, it would be useful to plan for linear new towns on public transport routes. But he can't understand how those 'clever, thoughtful and extremely well-informed people' could have got it so dreadfully wrong.

One reason why they might have got it right is that they realize that the vast, overcrowded city, accompanied by rural depopulation, was a product of Britain as the steam-powered workshop of the world. Electricity and the collapse of manufacturing industry deflated the Victorian city, while site values inflated. So the workers on whom the city depends, like train-drivers, nurses and teachers, are driven out of the city housing market. Without the unfashionable suburbs, the city economy would collapse.