I’ve been enjoying a personal renaissance of documentary film lately. Gary Huswit’s 2011 Urbanized has topped the list of important films to view. Whether you live in a city, or whether you interact with urban issues at all, matters not. This documentary will grab you in unexpected and provoking ways.

Hustwit has made a trilogy of design orientated films, Urbanized being the latest in the series, preceded by Objectified and Helvetica. If you’ve tasted the prequels and enjoyed the visceral explorations of Hustwit’s storytelling capabilities, you will be inspired by this momentous final segment that summarily declares and deliberates the realities of our modern urban condition.

Strangers to Hustwit’s talents can be prepared by this summary:

“Urbanized,takes this fundamental pandering to head scratching confoundment. How easily are we to be pacified in our surrounds, when the most essential questions of our day are circling above and there for us to consider and participate in. This is the essence of Ubranized. It’s breaking the bigger picture across our small heads. And at the same time considering the absolute minute, and it figures into the grander scheme of healthy societies.

If hot water heaters, instead of bathtubs, are subsidized for new social housing occupants in Bogota, would this not be the perceived desired utility? Well what if a public consultation actually occurred? And what if that process revealed that most occupants were coming from conditions accustomed to a single community can in courtyard for showering, and what if the majority of proposed occupants possessed absolutely no viable means of immediately paying for the gas bills that would heat the hot water?

Hustwit probes at these fundamental issues of usage and participatory legitimacy that have ebbed and flowed within our urban consciousness throughout history and now challenge and inspire us like never before. Our modern situation is thus that we may not have enough time to fall back on. Our modern challenge is that we pushed our limits to walk the most finest line between chaos and harmony, between depletion and sustainability, and between failure and success.”

via Urbanized: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit.

This is a clever, enthralling film. This is a keen exploration of the human condition. It is an essay on life. And as nearly 75% of the world’s population will soon inhabit our urban centres, it is a necessary point of discussion.

Check out the website  urbanizedfilm.com and viewings are now available via itunes.