Review of Urbanized (2011) by Ted R — 11 Nov 2011

While I would have made the movie different, I think it does a surprisingly good job of presenting the issues associated with urbanization. Within the first 10 minutes, after they get past some of the cool design and technical aspects of explaining cities and how more and more people are living in them, they get to slums and how many city dwellers are in fact slum dwellers.

I liked the story in Chile about public transit, the one about a guy in Detroit starting a community garden and the pitched battle in Stuttgart over a development plan (that ended up costing the city historic trees that weren't even used for firewood in WWII and the conservative CDU party was booted out of office for the first time in 6 decades to be replaced by the Greens).

I don't think it's a shortcoming that he allows, for instance, a suburbanite to defend sprawl. If an overly ideological movie that seeks to wrap everything up for you is going to not get seen anyway, I'd rather a competent, well-made, beautifully shot, smart movie that brings up the issues be made.