XLVII. Timgad. 100. The City, Form and Intent: being a collection of the plans of fifty significant towns and cities all to the scale of 1:14400.

This work enables comparison of 50 cities in different parts of the world at the same scale, 1:14,400. The image model of each city is reduced to essential elements. The project was completed as part of a class that Richard Wurman taught at the School of Design, North Carolina State University in 1963. 61 students took the class and built the city models. The City, Form and Intent is considered one of the pioneering works of information architecture and design. From Wurman's forward: "The city is man's activities in density. The city is the greatest invention of man, and as it represents the density of man's activities, it represents the birthplace of all other of man's inventions. No invention of man has more molded his life than the city and all other inventions have come to fruition because of this gathering of people and exchange of ideas." In 1974 it was republished in smaller format. A related 1966 work is "Urban Atlas: 20 American Cities" (see our 10195.000). In 2014 Wurman revived the idea of understanding cities by comparing them in a new web based work, "Urban Observatory", http://urbanobservatory.org Images copyright 1963 by Richard Saul Wurman. Images may be downloaded and reproduced and credit should be given to the author. Richard Saul Wurman says that "he can be flattered into submission and he likes credit."