Urbanized Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Urbanized Blu-ray Movie Review

Livin' just enough for the city.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 10, 2012

Have you ever taken a road trip to a less populated area of our country and been surprised when suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, there appears a small village or even a single household? Perhaps the question flits through your mind, “How did these people ever end up here?” In the vast expanses of not just the United States, but indeed the entire globe, there are so many nooks and crannies tucked away here and there that it can be a literal voyage of discovery to ferret out these hidden gems. Ironically, few people ever seem to really give much thought to how major cities got to be where they are, or indeed how they ended up looking like they do. Urbanized tackles that dearth of recognition with an interesting look at urban planning, courtesy of documentarian Gary Hustwit, who envisioned Urbanized as the final installment of a Design Trilogy which included his two previous, and widely acclaimed, documentaries, Helvetica and Objectified. The fact that Hustwit would include everything from a typeface to industrial design to the look of and intent behind major metropolises gives some indication of how wide ranging Hustwit’s approach really is. Urban planning might seem like a dry subject for a documentary, but it’s to Hustwit’s credit that Urbanized is really rather remarkably engaging as it explores the many different elements that come into play as modern cities become increasingly populated.

Urbanized works in several history lessons as it trots the globe, giving a generalist overview of various urban planning schemes that have taken hold over the past couple of centuries, especially as what we would call the “modern city” has begun springing up around the world. The City Beautiful Movement was huge in the United States in the mid to late nineteenth century, emulating the wide boulevards and classical façades of Europe. (It’s also the movement that is the bane of Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead, with its Greek columns and impenetrable edifices.) A couple of decades later the Garden City Movement took hold, which sought to separate areas of cities by whatever function they provided, and which often introduced a concentric circular design element. Interestingly, this Garden City idea of “separation” continued to be championed well into the twentieth century, with sometimes unexpected results. Brasilia, the “new” capital of Brazil built from scratch in the sixties, attempted to modernize the “separation” idea and ended up creating a city which in the words of one of the participants in Urbanized looks great from the air but is a nightmare to actually navigate through on ground, as everything is too widely spaced to make for easy walking.

A number of other historical phenomena are explored, including the huge effect the advent of the automobile had on city planning, especially after World War II when cheap gasoline and the urge to get out of crowded urban center led to suburbs filled with cookie cutter houses where everyone pursued their own little piece of the American Dream. (Interestingly, the “American Dream” is still almost always summed up in the idea of home ownership.) While the intent may have been benign, the result again has ended up being disastrous, at least in part, as people have ended up driving further and further for even basic services. And the increased uptick of autos within metropolitan areas has been a nightmare, as anyone who has ever tried to navigate the streets of cites as disparate as New York or Seattle will attest. The Mayor of Bogota is interviewed and asks the perhaps cheekily ironic question of whether parking is a right that should be enforced by the United Nations Charter. Of course he feels it isn’t, and his administration enacted all sorts of new requirements for car driving within the city limits, as well as expanding mass transit opportunities for Bogota’s burgeoning population.

The movement to at least partially reclaim dense urban environments and give them a more natural, human scale is dealt with in such recent developments as The High Line in Manhattan. This fascinating “park” is a one mile or so green space planted on top of an abandoned elevated spur of the old New York Central Railroad. Interestingly, the development of The High Line has fostered all sorts of actual urban redevelopment (as in remodeled building and new construction) on the borders of the park itself, proving perhaps that nature is not an “enemy” of development but instead can actually work in tandem with it. Thousands of miles away a less well thought out redevelopment scheme fostered by the government of Stuttgart brought about huge protest movements, such that for the first time in decades a Green Party President was elected. Ironically, residents later approved the redevelopment project anyway.

Hustwit does an exemplary job of keeping Urbanized moving (no pun intended), with an appealingly wide variety of locations that literally spans the globe and looks at all sorts of different design aesthetics and philosophies. It’s mentioned outright at the close of Urbanized that cities themselves are ideas as much as physical manifestations, and any idea will prosper only when it’s challenged and allowed to grow as new information becomes available. Urbanized shows that there are people all over the planet making sure that happens.

Urbanized Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Urbanized is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of New Video Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a nice looking high definition presentation that spans the globe and offers a lot of fantastic shots of some of the world's major metropolises. Generally these shots are decently sharp looking, but what they often offer is superb depth of field. Colors are often nicely saturated, especially in scenes with evocative sunrises or sunsets. The rest of this piece is simply talking heads, and those elements actually pop quite nicely, with very good and pleasing fine detail, accurate flesh tones and well above average contrast and clarity. There's nothing here that is going to knock the average videophile's socks off, but Urbanized looks very nicely detailed within the confines of its documentary ambitions.

Urbanized Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Only two lossy Dolby audio options are offered on this Blu-ray, a stereo 2.0 mix and a surround 5.1 mix. Truth be told, few are probably going to be overly disappointed in the results here, as the bulk of this documentary is simply talking heads spouting off about various urban planning ideas. There are occasional opportunities for surround activity with some of the urban ambient environmental noises (there's a great moment late in the documentary where one of the designers of The High Line is talking about the interaction of urban and natural elements when suddenly a loud police siren goes off, clearly in the left channel, and the designer states, "Well, I guess the noises are part of that"). But overall both of these mixes are pretty front-centric, with decent fidelity and clarity. Would a lossless option, even a stereo one, have been preferable? Probably. But all things considered, the audio here sounds just fine and there should be no major complaints from anyone other than those who insist every release should have lossless audio.

Urbanized Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The generically titled Extras (HD; 53:36) includes a wealth of extra interview segments with a variety of participants, as well as some extra content on places like Cabrini Green that didn't make it into the final cut of the documentary.

Urbanized Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A documentary about urban planning may not immediately jump to the "must have now" list of any Blu-ray aficionado, but even those who normally aren't drawn to documentaries of any sort, let alone one about something as ostensibly dry as urban planning, might be pleasantly surprised at just how engaging Urbanized really is. Hustwit has already proven himself a great storyteller in both Helvetica and Objectified and he continues that trend with Urbanized. This piece plays as something of a travelogue as well, journeying hither and yon to explore a variety of urban locales and how local governments and planners have dealt with various issues. Part history lesson, part sociopolitical screed (but only in the nicest way possible), Urbanized is both informative and entertaining. This Blu-ray looks great and features decent (if lossy) audio, and it also includes almost an hour of interesting supplementary material that didn't make it into the final cut of the documentary. Recommended.