Movies: Urban development

Two penniless orphans, Black and White, struggle to survive on the mean streets of Treasure Town. When a megacorporation threatens to tear down the town to build an amusement park, Black and White engage in the fight of their life....

The living Volkswagen Beetle helps an old lady protect her home from a corrupt developer....

Undine is a historian and tour guide at the Berlin City Museum specializing in urban development, while Christoph is an industrial diver. Linked by a love of the water, the two form an intense bond, which can only do so much to help Undine overcome t...

Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years Subur...

A sophisticated and beautifully constructed account of landscape change in and around Paris in the early 1960s. The film raises complex issues about the meaning and experience of modern landscapes and the enigmatic characteristics of features such as...

This witty and original film is about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others don't. Beginning at New York's Seagram Plaza, one of the most used open areas in the city, the film proceeds to analyze why this space i...

While looking for a new home for his family, a Haitian demolition worker is faced with the realities of redevelopment as he is tasked with dismantling his rapidly gentrifying Miami neighborhood....

Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that inef...

Ecumenopolis: City Without Limits" tells the story of Istanbul and other Mega-Cities on a neo-liberal course to destruction. It follows the story of a migrant family from the demolition of their neighborhood to their on-going struggle for housing rig...

Rotterdam 2040 is a film about the city’s future, departing from the principle of Gyz La Rivière that you can’t look ahead without considering your past (something that hasn’t always been Rotterdam’s strongest feature). At high speed, La Rivière reco...

An intimate portrait of Christopher Alexander, a critic of modern architecture on a lifelong quest to build harmonious, livable places in today’s world. The film tells the story of two projects – a spectacular high school in Japan and an innovative ...

Su Friedrich's personal essay charting the destruction of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After living in the neighborhood for 20 years, the filmmaker was one of many who were forced out after the city passed a rezoning plan allowing developers to build luxu...

A couple moves from the country to istanbul to get proper schooling for their son, who has Down syndrome. However, the house they move to will be demolished in a number of months, the father can't get a job and has to resort to begging. Meanwhile, th...

The six-decade transformation of a block of houses, shown by means of artfully featured archival shots, highlights the beauty and sadness of human-made decay. In the blink of an eye 66 years pass by and a savings bank replaces a church....

The construction of the Obelisco in Buenos Aires, Argentina....

In the summer of 2004, the Mayor of Lewiston, Maine announced a plan to develop a four-lane boulevard across downtown's low-income neighborhood. This project was called "The Heritage Initiative." Contrary to its name, this plan was going to eliminate...

Greek internal migrants in Athens, after the Greek Civil War colonize the tops of the Tourkovounia hills....

As development encroaches on a farming community, they struggle with the loss of their heritage and land....

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"At the beginning of the 19th century there is no Chicago. There was a fort that was set on fire by Indians shortly thereafter. Later, the turbulent expansion of a settlement began, which became a center for the immigrant workforce, traditional indus...