In Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi introduces a new science of the city and the concept of 'architectural tendency'. In the thirty years since its publication, the book has left an indelible mark on the development of twentieth-century architecture.

True to the spirit of the age, it resists the modernists and, in particular, the functionalist reduction of architecture and the conception of the city as merely a product of planning processes. Rossi proposes a new method of analysing the city. His method is based on the concepts of typology and morphology and is related to the design process, which is anything but ‘neutral’. Rather it is sustained by an ‘attitude’ or an architectural tendency.

In Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi introduces a new science of the city and the concept of 'architectural tendency'. In the thirty years since its publication, the book has left an indelible mark on the development of twentieth-century architecture.

True to the spirit of the age, it resists the modernists and, in particular, the functionalist reduction of architecture and the conception of the city as merely a product of planning processes. Rossi proposes a new method of analysing the city. His method is based on the concepts of typology and morphology and is related to the design process, which is anything but ‘neutral’. Rather it is sustained by an ‘attitude’ or an architectural tendency.

The architecture of the city has outlived trends and fashions and remains a relevant instrument for those who invoke the possibility of an intrinsic rationality in architectural design.