John King on Watching a City Change Through its Buildings

Buildings are arguably the most important ingredients of a city. But they alone don’t make a city what it is. History, context, and most importantly the changes brought by time are what shapes a city. Its buildings, though, reflect these changes.

That’s why buildings are a good way to track and understand the city as a whole, according to John King, the urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism. In his new book Cityscapes, King brings together a collection of 50 of his columns looking at individual buildings in the city. But these aren’t verbose or pompous architectural reviews. At just a little over 100 words each, they’re neat and concise summaries of these separate but linked elements of the city. He argues that the brevity of these mini-reviews makes writing them a challenge, but that it brings out their most important aspects.