Movies: Urbanism

This short documentary features a portrait of Ottawa in the mid-20th century, as the nascent Canadian capital grew with force but without direction. Street congestion, air pollution, and rail traffic were all the negative results of a city that had g...

This short film explores the problems and potentials of small towns in the Drumheller Valley region of Alberta. Citizen participation in the growth and improvement of the region is encouraged through the Task Force on Urbanization and the Future. How...

Under Dorchester Square in Montreal lies the cemetery where 55,000 people were buried in the 19th century. The square is still at the heart of social conflicts in Quebec, 150 years later....

A short documentary on the River Ouse, following it downstream from Lewes to Newhaven, meditating on the surrounding area....

Casablanca, vibrant and diverse, always ahead of its time, is the star of this exceptional show bringing together leading speakers and contributors to tell the story, experience the present, and build the future of Metropolitan Casablanca....

Author and activist Jane Jacobs talks about the problems and virtues of North American cities....

Picture Perfect Pyramid is a 16mm film which in counter-clockwise spirals, circles a large pyramid structure that was built on the outskirts of Vienna in 1983. Using twenty-four positions the film was shot over the course of an entire day, with one s...

...

...

Exemplary in its town planning and administration, Bologna has been transformed into a city that is avant-garde, both socially and culturally, yet still preserves its historical roots....

A young woman wakes up on a train going to an unknown destination. She has no recollection of how she got there or where she is. She finds herself in a vast city; a forest of steel and iron and concrete, wandering the dark streets....

...

A close-up of a snow-bound city, and the men, money and machinery it takes to dig it out....

...

In 1959 New York City announced a "slum clearance plan" by Robert Moses that would displace 2,400 working class and immigrant families, and dozens of businesses, from the Cooper Square section of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Guided by the belief that...

This full-length documentary from the Challenge for Change program addresses housing issues affecting Montreal in the mid-1970s. As the city is restoring older apartments through direct action and government subsidies, new, low-rent housing is being ...

"This film is one of the first French Unit productions of the “Société Nouvelle/Challenge for Change” program. When an old area of Montréal is to be demolished to make way for a new low-income housing development, is there anything the residents can ...

Following a commission from the College of Architects of Seville, for the production of a documentary about the La Alameda de Hércules area of the Sevillian capital in a debate about its possible destiny and urban planning challenges, the filmmaker J...

Legault is an aging man who lived in a rural cabin, now a suburban cabin, as developments have popped up around him....

This feature documentary zooms in on the city of Sapporo, on the Island of Hokkaïdo in southern Japan. In contrast to the unplanned sprawl of neighbouring industrialized cities, Sapporo appears to be one of the best-planned large cities in the world,...