The further it ventures beyond the realm of the specialist (and it increasingly does so), the bigger the potential for the initiate to bamboozle the layman (what non-planner knows what ‘assimilative capacity’ means?) Conversely, definitions can lose their meaning through the apparent liberation of wider use. It’s hard to think of another subject that so many people discuss with so little regard for the precision of the terminology.
So, along comes Cowan’s book, a light-hearted, often irreverent lexicon of more than 6,500 urbanisms. It will, at the very least, help planners, architects, urbanists and keen urbanites talk in the same language. And dipping in to it at random provides many surprising and enjoyable snippets. That entries for subjects as diverse as the Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act 1875, asbestos and the film Escape from New York can coexist in one volume is a reminder of the richness of the field, which alone would make this book worth celebrating.