Communities Books

The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context.  It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments."  Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners.  Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities.  It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable.  The author has written a new foreword for this Modern Library edition.

Cities of the World: World Regional Urban Development

Stanley D. Brunn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

This can also be considered a book on world history 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

An important reason that I think this book gives a balanced, non-biased overview of the development of cities throughout the world is because it was written by a diverse group of authors. While in every chapter or section of the book we find that "Western imperialists" are always involved in the evolution of world cities, this book also emphasizes how indigenous city planning still shape the cities and offer the means for cities to be friendlier places to live.

Since cities are sources of power of soverignty for nations, countries, and empires, one finds that this city planning book is also a type of world history book.

Editorial Review:

The only text to offer a regional survey of world urban development, this third edition has been fully revised and updated to include new chapter authors, new cities and regions, and an expanded art program. Focusing on the eleven major culture realms of the world, the volume examines each region's urban history, economy, and culture and society, and offers engaging case studies of major representative cities. Introductory and concluding chapters frame the regional discussion by summarizing world urban history and by looking to the future of urban development. Maps, graphs, tables, photos, color satellite images, recommended readings, web sites, and UN data on major cities offer rich additional resources for students. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Edge City: Life on the New Frontier

Joel Garreau

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I actually shook my fist at this book while reading it. More than once. 1 out of 5 stars.
32 of 38 people found this review helpful.

Edge City is obnoxious partially because it is full of lies, distortions, and contradictions, and partially because it espouses an irresponsible model of growth and settlement. I say "irresponsble" because while Garreau claims to be merely descriptive, he's actually prescriptive: he not only argues that ECs are inevitable, but insists that they're vital and wonderful and soup for the human soul. I admit, however, that what what initially raised and finally sustained my rancor is that it's another case of someone simply ignoring the research that has come before them, research of which they are clearly aware, and not bothering to show how their new theory sits with respect to that previous knowledge, or why their new explanations are superior to previous ones.

Garreau makes at least 4 references to Jane Jacobs and her seminal Life and Death of Great American Cities early on in his book - mostly throwaway references, one slightly critical. There's absolutely no engagement, though her work is highly relevant. In LDGAM, Jacobs argues that the basic tenents of urban zoning and planning, which she labels "City Beautiful", are flawed, and destined to create dead grey areas in cities. She advocates mixed zoning, so that the same neighborhood contains at least retail, offices, and residential units, and so that there's significant cross-use and foot traffic throughout the day and night. She also advocates measures in general that are calculated to make movement easier and more appealing for pedestrians, such as shorter blocks, and irregular streets mixed in with the main arterial thoroughfares. Her book is much richer than all of this; this is just a summary of the most relevant parts.

Garreau's Edge City opens up by lamenting the deadness of downtowns and their lack of cross-use, their tendency for single-zoning, etc. He goes on to suggest that his "Edge Cities" (suburbs that have rapidly sprung up over the past 30 years, and which contain a mix of commercial, retail, and residential areas) are not only a good solution to the "problems of cities", but in fact, the inevitable one as well. This would be fine if he talked explicity about why mixed-use zoning in cities doesn't work; why being able to walk across the street to buy milk, take a 20 minute bus to work, walk 10 minutes to a park, and be in the midst of thousands of easily accessible city amenities is so much worse than living in a suburb where you need a car to get anywhere, where you have a 20-minute drive to shopping of any kind, and a 45-minute drive to work. But he doesn't. He makes hand-wavey remarks that humans seek out open spaces and freedom, that a man over 30 who takes the bus every day is a failure, that man seeks to be close to nature, and that urban planners are effete intellectuals who have no idea how real people live. Etc. Again, any one of those propositions would be fine, but there's no data to back it up. The book as a whole is little more than a complicated mess of contradictory claims.

For example, in one chapter, Garreau describes Edge Cities as affordable, but in another he admits that as Edge Cities age, they become increasingly expensive, and "middle-income" people are reduced to paying through the nose to live in what Garreau himself describes as the suburban equivalent of tenement houses. When praising the loveliness and freedom of Edge Cities, Garreau more or less only concentrates on the richest citizens - his interviewees were business owners, vice-presidents, and lawyers, all pulling down upper-middle class salaries at the very least. One upscale couple remarks, "It's really our money that makes us free." (How droll!) Indeed, Edge Cities are great if you're a CEO or can afford a giant house on a 3-acre lot, and at least one car per driver to meet basic transit needs. (And social services are a lot better when you're in a neighborhood where everyone makes several hundred thousand a year: at last, you don't have to subsidize local poor people!) At least, Edge Cities are great while they're new. Garreau describes in several places old suburbs that crumbled and died after they got a little less shiny and new, and their corporate sponsors decided to pick up and build a different plot of virgin land.

In sum, the Edge City phenomenon Garreau describes and joyfully embraces as inevitable is no more and no less than a greedy, unsustainable land grab that will force us to build a lot of unecessary infrastructure (roads, sewers) to places that will just be abandoned in another 50 years.

Editorial Review:

First there was downtown. Then there were suburbs. Then there were malls. Then Americans launched the most sweeping change in 100 years in how they live, work, and play. The Edge City.

The Ecology of Place: Planning for Environment, Economy, and Community

Timothy Beatley, Kristy Manning

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Current patterns of land use and development are at once socially, economically, and environmentally destructive. Sprawling low-density development literally devours natural landscapes while breeding a pervasive sense of social isolation and exacerbating a vast array of economic problems. As more and more counties begin to look more and more the same, hope for a different future may seem to be fading. But alternatives do exist.

The Ecology of Place, Timothy Beatley and Kristy Manning describe a world in which land is consumed sparingly, cities and towns are vibrant and green, local economies thrive, and citizens work together to create places of eduring value. They present a holistic and compelling approach to repairing and enhancing communities, introducing a vision of "sustainable places" that extends beyond traditional architecture and urban design to consider not just the physical layout of a development but the broad set of ways in which communities are organized and operate. Chapters examine:

• the history and context of current land use problems, along with the concept of "sustainable places"
• the ecology of place and ecological policies and actions
• local and regional economic development
• links between land-use and community planning and civic involvement
• specific recommendations to help move toward sustainability

.

The authors address a variety of policy and development issues that affect a community-from its economic base to its transit options to the ways in which its streets and public spaces are managed-and examine the wide range of programs, policies, and creative ideas that can be used to turn the vision of sustainable places into reality.

The Ecology of Place is a timely resource for planners, economic development specialists, students, and citizen activists working toward establishing healthier and more sustainable patterns of growth and development.

Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City (4th Edition)

Gmelch Zenner

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Editorial Review:

This authoritative introduction to the study of human beings and their cultural institutions in cities offers twenty-six readings more than one-half new or revised for the Fourth Edition that form a rich blend of classic studies of enduring interest and important new research. Impressive in scope, the latest edition offers an entirely new section on globalization and transnationalism.

Public Places - Urban Spaces

Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Taner Oc, Steve Tiesdell

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Public Places - Urban Spaces is a holistic guide to the many complex and interacting dimensions of urban design.

The discussion moves systematically through ideas, theories, research and the practice of urban design from an unrivalled range of sources. It aids the reader by gradually building the concepts one upon the other towards a total view of the subject.

The author team explain the catalysts of change and renewal, and explore the global and local contexts and processes within which urban design operates. The book presents six key dimensions of urban design theory and practice - the social, visual, functional, temporal, morphological and perceptual - allowing it to be dipped into for specific information, or read from cover to cover. This is a clear and accessible text that provides a comprehensive discussion of this complex subject.

* Learn all you need to know about design of urban spaces from this one-stop introductory guide
*Gain a comprehensive overview of the topic through the authors' holistic approach
*Complex ideas are presented logically for ease of understanding

Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier

Robert Fishman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good subject matter, even better narrative 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Although an interesting subject matter, the author does an amazing job using the narrative of the thinkers lives to cooincide with their belief system, the only problem is he probably could have done it in about 50 pages less, but overall its a good fast read

Editorial Review:

As Robert Fishman writes of three of urban planning's greatest visionaries, Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, they 'hated the cities of their time with an overwhelming passion. The metropolis was the counter-image of their ideal cities, the hell that inspired their heavens.'

Community Analysis and Planning Techniques

Richard E. Klosterman

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

On a Different Wave Length 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 9 people found this review helpful.

This publication is much more technical than I anticipated. I was expecting that the book would have more examples of ways to evaluate community needs and to generate participatory planning.

Great Resource For Projecting Population And Economy 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is a one-stop-shop how-to for projecting population and employment figures, as well as developing location quotients. This is a great resource for city planners and those interested in detailed location analysis. It explains how population and employment projections are made as well as what methods are appropriate and when they should be used, so as not to misrepresent data. Though some of the text itself may be a bit technical from time to time, the mathematics are sound and chart examples are very easy to understand. The population projections, cohort population projections, and employment projection techniques were very easy recreate on spreadsheets with own data. This is a useful reference for any planning office.

Urban Problems in Sociological Perspective, 4/E

Thomas R. Shannon, Nancy Kleniewski, William M. Cross

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Editorial Review:

The latest edition of this well-regarded text continues the tradition of excellence established in previous editions, providing an urban sociology text that is concise, clearly written, and theoretically balanced. The authors maintain their focus on the sociological analysis of contemporary urban problems and bring breadth and depth to their analysis by examining urban conditions within the context of U.S. urban history and sociological theory. Moreover, they present an even-handed evaluation of the social policies advanced to address urban problems. While retaining the topical organization of previous editions, the fourth edition offers an up-to-date look at urban trends in the United States as well as new and updated material on such topics as urban migration flows in the Third World, the impact of immigration on the ethnic mix in cities, and the persistence of poverty as a problem of low-wage workers. Readers will appreciate the chapter on urban conditions in other societies, which gives them a cross-cultural framework for thinking about urban conditions in this country.

The Practice of Local Government Planning (Municipal Management Series)

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