WiMBY! Hoogvliet

The suburban Dutch neighborhood of Hoogyliet, just outside Rotterdam, was designed after World War II along Modernist lines. Over the ensuing years, the district became more and more rundown and economically depressed. Then the WiMBY! project came along--its mission to raise the standard of this increasingly blighted neighborhood by developing a range of experimental buildings for the town's regeneration, as well as smaller-scale architectural, urban-planning, visual-art and sociocultural projects. This densely adorable paperback tells the whole story, focusing on the positive achievements and lessons drawn, with copious illustrations of all the resulting buildings and designs. It's a must-have for any design professionals interested in real, working urban renewal but also an uplifting manual for a more general audience: the book reads like a fairytale, tracing the many ups and downs of the WiMBY! project in frank detail in a format that is as informative as it is lively and humorous.