City is still picking up reviews, most recently in the Spring 2013 issue of Urban Design journal, where it was described as "an excellent introduction to the city, and should be on every student's reading list".

"At Old-street Police Court yesterday an old man complained to Mr. Clarke Hall that he had lent his daughter £10, which she refused to give back. The daughter said he had given it her to bury him."

"The author’s ideas are original and inventive enough to warrant his description of the book as ‘a guidebook to an imaginary Everycity.’ It’s a great thinker whose musings run the gamut from the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan to Tahrir Square, graffiti to gladiators, who can quote the Old Testament and Baudelaire, and throw in an infographic entitled, ‘When skyscrapers rise, do markets fall?’"

Read Allison's whole piece here.

Although the weather outside my window is miserable, wet and not at all festive, I want to wish everyone a very happy Christmas! And I hope someone, somewhere has snow...

"The city is a big subject but this is readable, concise and extremely entertaining. Smith spans the emergence of the first Middle Eastern cities – places with no streets, so inhabitants needed to walk on roofs and descend ladders to reach their homes – up to informal settlements and high-tech hubs today. Well-researched, well-written and clear."

Canadian author Taras Grescoe has written an excellent piece in the Globe & Mail on City and Jeff Speck’s Walkable City. Writing about City, he notes that "this crash course in urban civilization is a reminder of the complexity, cosmopolitanism and creativity that are engendered, and encouraged, by living and working cheek by jowl". Read the article here.

Eric Liebetrau, editor of Kirkus Reviews, has also included City among his Best Nonfiction of 2012. The full list is here.

Postscript, 8 December:

City was among the Notable Books of 2012 chosen by architectural writer Mark Lamster for Designers & Books. I'm still blushing at his fulsome praise for the book:

"Reading it is like being seated next to the most-informed, and most charming guest at your dream dinner party, someone with an endless font of facts enlivened by quirky and often hilarious anecdotes."

Read the rest of what he had to say and see the other excellent books he selected here. There was also a piece about City this weekend in the Los Angeles Times by Carolyn Kellogg. She writes:

"Smith deftly integrates the narratives of far-flung places across centuries. Discussing sports within city bounds, he draws a connection between the Roman Colosseum and skateboarders in Venice Beach. In this continuum, he creates an uber-city, a grand portrait of what urbanity is and might become."

For the first time I visited the Museum Geelvinck-Hinlopen, a late seventeenth-century mansion facing the Herengracht.

With its secluded garden and luxurious rooms, it provided a memorable glimpse into a time when Amsterdam was one of the wealthiest cities on the planet. But as I was walking round, I noticed a small white plaque on a piano in the Blue Room. In wonderfully ornate script, it proclaimed that the makers of that piano were John Broadwood & Sons, who were based in Great Pulteney Street, near Golden Square, London - the city that would soon take over the role as the commercial capital of the world.

If you're planning a trip to Amsterdam, I would recommend Proeverij 274 as a great place to eat (thanks to Matt Muir for that tip), and for a really superb cup of coffee, Screaming Beans. They sell delicious almond cookies too.

I forgot to mention before I went away that the Guardian published my review of Taras Grescoe's Straphanger, an excellent whistle-stop tour of world cities and their transport systems. Apparently, Americans now spend nine years of their lives sitting in their cars, and the pollution they produce kills 30,000 US citizens each year. You can read the review here.

When I got back from Amsterdam, a very nice review of City was waiting for me, by Annick Labeca on Urban Lab Global Cities. In it she admits to having read the book four times! I'm impressed... Also on City, I did a Q & A with Sherin Wing for Metropolis Magazine. That was posted online yesterday and you can read it here. There's also a slideshow of some of my urban photos at the end.

Oh, and here are some of my photos of Amsterdam on Flickr. Enjoy...

I’ve just signed the contract for my next book! I’m very happy indeed that it will be published by Bloomsbury and that my editor will be Bill Swainson, who worked with me on City.

The working title of the book is Watching the Detectives: The Birth of a Modern Hero. (Yes, it’s one of my favourite songs too.) It will tell the story of the detective set against the backdrop of the city of crime. It’s an exciting story, full of deception, mystery and, of course, murder. And it’s one in which fact and fiction are closely woven together, as they were in my earlier book, Doomsday Men. Indeed, when you look at the history of detection and the city, it’s sometimes difficult to tell where fiction ends and hard facts begin. But that’s what makes this story so fascinating to me.

Like many people, I grew up reading about detectives and watching them on TV: Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes, the unforgettable Frank Marker in Public Eye, scruffy, cigar-puffing Columbo, the misanthropic Morse, and many more. These characters and other more recent ones have become part of me, part of how I visualise the modern city and its problems. In Watching the Detectives, I will explore what the figure of the detective tells us about ourselves and our modern urban culture.

Let the investigation begin…

Like much of our often invisible urban infrastructure, modern city dwellers take street lighting for granted. At least, they do until they walk down an unlit and unfamiliar street. While I was researching City, I came across the rather sad story of one of the pioneers of gas lighting, a man who was truly ahead of his time. There wasn’t room to include it in the book, so I thought I’d share it with you now.

Continue reading...

City was reviewed by Will Wiles in this month's Icon magazine. It's an urban-themed issue, including a fascinating piece on feral cities by Geoff Manaugh and some of Michael Wolf's superb photos of Hong Kong skyscrapers. Well worth buying! The review is not online, but here's a taster of what he thought about the book:

"The overall effect is an energetic tribute to the city rather than a guide or academic study - a celebration of city-ness itself. Smith...writes plainly and with astonishing scope, persistently global and seemingly at home with everything from Mardok to Masdar. The little thematic essays are a joy... With even littler texts boxed in colour and scattered hither and yon, City is a tremendously jazzy, restless book."

"Arrival frames many of our experiences of the city: the routine arrival of the commuter each day, the excitement of the tourist at that first glimpse of the metropolis, the anxiety of the migrant – a stranger in a strange city. Sam Thompson’s Communion Town begins with an appeal to a migrant, Ulya, from a faceless official who has been secretly observing her and her husband, ever since they arrived in the city. He tells Ulya that he just wants her to open up, to confess her true feelings. Think of it as your “true arrival in the city,” he says. But the words of this sinister, Kafkaesque narrator ring false. It smells like a trap."

My review of Sam Thompson's novel Communion Town: A City in Ten Chapters, which has been long-listed for the Booker Prize, appeared in the TLS last week. You can read it here.