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books tagged “Urban Planning” (urban planning)
books tagged “Urban Planning”
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American Architecture and Urbanismby Vincent Joseph ScullyISBN 0805008136 (0-8050-0813-6)
Softcover, Henry Holt & Co
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The Arcades Projectby Walter Benjamin, Kevin McLaughlin, Howard EilandISBN 0674008022 (0-674-00802-2)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arcades Project'Book summary:You could spend years trying to read Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project--after all, he spent much of the last 13 years of his life doing the research. When he committed suicide in 1940, he destroyed his copy of the manuscript, and so for decades the work was believed lost. But another copy turned up, and Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin have translated it into English. It is a complex, fragmentary work--more a series of notes for a book than a book itself--which probes the culture of the Paris arcades (a cross between covered streets and shopping malls) of the mid-19th century and the flaneur ("the man who walks long and aimlessly through the streets" in an "anamnestic intoxication [that] ... feeds on the sensory data taking shape before his eyes but often possesses itself of abstract knowledge--indeed, of dead facts--as something experienced and lived through"). The Arcades Project is, frankly, so dense a work that one hardly has enough time to glimpse fleetingly at its sections--over 100 pages of notes on Baudelaire alone!--before mentioning it to you, though one certainly looks forward to the opportunity to peruse it at leisure. [via]
Arcosanti: An Urban Laboratory?by Paolo SoleriISBN 0932238440 (0-932238-44-0)
Softcover, Vti Pr
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Better Not Bigger: How to Take Control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Communityby Eben FodorISBN 0865713863 (0-86571-386-3)
Softcover, New Society Pub
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A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburbby Philip LangdonISBN 1558491066 (1-55849-106-6)
Softcover, Univ of Massachusetts Pr
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Celebration, U.S.A: Living in Disney's Brave New Townby Douglas Frantz, Catherine CollinsISBN 0805055614 (0-8050-5561-4)
Softcover, Henry Holt & Co
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Changing Places : Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawlby Richard Moe, Carter WilkieISBN 0805061843 (0-8050-6184-3)
Softcover, Holt & Company, Henry
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Changing Places : Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl'Book summary:America's preservation movement has long fought the destructive force of so- called urban renewal, where highways and shopping malls rise up on the rubble of former thriving downtowns. Now communities are in the fight of their lives against urban sprawl- boundless development that devours the countryside and leaves cities and small towns in ruins-a fight that is as much about preserving our civic space as our landscape. In Changing Places, authors Richard Moe and Carter Wilkie give examples of how America's embattled towns are defing themselves against corporate giants and depressed economies, from community activists restoring pride in their innercities to municipalities breathing life back into historic downtowns. At once cautionary and redemptive, Changing Places has been hailed by David McCullough as "a call to arms that should be read by everyone alarmed by the rampant devastation of our cities, our towns, our history, and our way of life."[via]More editions of Changing Places : Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl:
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Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Lifeby Jane JacobsISBN 0394729110 (0-394-72911-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life'Book summary:"Learned, iconoclastic and exciting...Jacobs' diagnosis of the decay of cities in an increasingly integrated world economy is on the mark."New York Times Book Review
"Jacobs' book is inspired, idiosyncratic and personal...It is written with verve and humor; for a work of embattled theory, it is wonderfully concrete, and its leaps are breathtaking."Los Angeles Times
"Not only comprehensible but entertaining...Like Mrs. Jacobs' other books, it offers a concrete approach to an abstract and elusive subject. That, all by itself, makes for an intoxicating experience."New York Times [via]More editions of Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life:
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Cities in Civilizationby Peter HallISBN 0753808153 (0-7538-0815-3)
Softcover, Orion Publishing Group, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities in Civilization'Book summary:Ranging over 2,500 years, Cities in Civilization is a tribute to the city as the birthplace of Western civilization. Drawing on the contributions of economists and geographers, of cultural, technological, and social historians, Sir Peter Hall examines twenty-one cities at their greatest moments. Hall describes the achievements of these golden ages and outlines the precise combinations of forces -- both universal and local -- that led to each city's belle epoque.
Hall identifies four distinct expressions of civic innovation: artistic growth, technological progress, the marriage of culture and technology, and solutions to evolving problems. Descriptions of Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Elizabethan London, and nineteenth-century Vienna bring to life those seedbeds of artistic and intellectual creativity. Explorations of Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, of Henry Ford's Detroit, and of Palo Alto at the dawn of the computer age highlight centers of technological advances. Tales of the creation of Los Angeles' movie industry and the birth of the blues and rock 'n' roll in Memphis depict the marriage of culture and technology.
Finally, Hall celebrates cities that have been forced to solve problems created by their very size. With Imperial Rome came the apartment block and aqueduct; nineteenth-century London introduced policing, prisons, and sewers; twentieth-century New York developed the skyscraper; and Los Angeles became the first city without a center, a city ruled instead by the car. And in a fascinating conclusion, Hall speculates on urban creativity in the twenty-first century.
This penetrating study reveals not only the lives of cities but also the lives of the people who built them and created the civilizations within them. A decade in the making, Cities in Civilization is the definitive account of the culture of cities. [via] 
Cities in Civilizationby Peter Geoffrey HallISBN 0880642505 (0-88064-250-5)
Softcover, Fromm Intl
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Cities in Civilization: Culture, Innovation, and Urban Orderby Peter HallISBN 0297842196 (0-297-84219-6)
Hardcover, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities in Civilization: Culture, Innovation, and Urban Order'Book summary:Every golden age has been an urban age; throughout history, cities have provided a crucible for creativity. How do such belles époquescome about? Why should the creative flame burn so uniquely in cities and not in the countryside, and why does the creative and innovative spirit of one city inevitably yield to another? Cities in Civilization explores these issues and others related to the central role of cities, past and present, in the fostering of artistic, philosophical, scientific, and technological genius.
Peter Hall devoted 15 years of his life conceptualizing, researching, and writing Cities in Civilization. His extraordinary efforts are apparent in the analytical scope, historical depth, and sheer length of the book, which, including photographs and a bibliography, is well over 1,000 pages. Supporting his argument with ample reference to dates, historical figures, and citations of leading urban scholars, the book does not lend itself to casual, cover-to-cover reading. Despite the book's length, though, it remains easy to navigate through the case studies of individual cities. Hall systematically divides the text into five thematic chapters, further subdividing each chapter chronologically by city. The chapters explore themes of cultural creativity, technological and economic innovation, the urban fusion of art and technology, urban innovation, and the partnership of the private and public sector to promote urban development and regeneration.
Breaking from other leading scholars in the field, Hall does not consider the great city doomed. Instead, Cities in Civilization testifies to his confidence that cities of the 21st century, like the great cities of the past, will successfully work to solve their own problems and ameliorate their own ills. --Bertina Loeffler [via]
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Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Centuryby Peter HallISBN 0631232524 (0-631-23252-4)
Softcover, Blackwell Pub
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century'Book summary:This is a history of the ideas, events and personalities that shaped the cities of the world during the twentieth century. Peter Hall shows the benevolent influence of the anarchist ideals of Reclus and Kropotkin in the work of Howard, Geddes and Lloyd Wright, which found expression in garden cities and community planning. He contrasts this with the totalitarian vision of Le Corbusier which, spurned by Mussolini and Stalin, was enthusiastically taken up by countless city authorities in Europe and America. He explores the nightmare cities of Brasilia and Chandigarh and seeks the origins of the high-rise slums and vandalized spaces that afflict the lives of so many people. Planners have become the handmaidens of business, architects the designers of spectacle: both have retreated from any active interest in real, social achievement. Meanwhile the threat to civilized life represented on the one hand by the despair and resentment of the urban underclass and on the other by uncontrolled demolition and development, remains as real and as intractable as ever. Peter Hall is author of over 20 books on planning and related subjects including "London 2000", "The World Cities" "Great Planning Disasters" and "High Tech America". He has been credited with the invention of the "urban enterprise zone" concept. He is widely known throughout the west for his contributions both to the practice and to the theory of city and regional planning. [via]
More editions of Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century:
- Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century: ISBN 0631175679 (0-631-17567-9)
Softcover, Blackwell Pub - Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century: ISBN 0631199438 (0-631-19943-8)
Softcover, Blackwell Pub - Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century: ISBN 063119942X (0-631-19942-X)
Hardcover, Blackwell Pub - Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century: ISBN 0631232648 (0-631-23264-8)
Hardcover, Blackwell Pub - Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century: ISBN 0631232524 (0-631-23252-4)
Softcover, Blackwell Pub
- Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century: ISBN 0631175679 (0-631-17567-9)
Cities Without Suburbsby David RuskISBN 0943875501 (0-943875-50-1)
Softcover, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities Without Suburbs'Book summary:Cities without Suburbs, first published in 1993, has become an influential analysis of America's cities among city planners, scholars, and citizens alike. In it, David Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, argues that America must end the isolation of the central city from its suburbs in order to attack its urban problems.
The second edition not only employs updated census data available since publication of the first edition, but it provides more precise information about population, income, and racial trends in central cities. Updated case studies of metropolitan reforms are based on Rusk's direct involvement as a consultant in over fifty metro areas since the publication of the first edition.
[via]More editions of Cities Without Suburbs:
- Cities Without Suburbs: ISBN 0943875730 (0-943875-73-0)
Softcover, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr - Cities Without Suburbs: ISBN 0943875498 (0-943875-49-8)
Hardcover, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr - Cities Without Suburbs: ISBN 0943875749 (0-943875-74-9)
Hardcover, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr - Cities Without Suburbs: ISBN 0943875501 (0-943875-50-1)
Softcover, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
- Cities Without Suburbs: ISBN 0943875730 (0-943875-73-0)
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Cities Without Suburbs: A Census 2000 Updateby David RuskISBN 1930365144 (1-930365-14-4)
Softcover, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities Without Suburbs: A Census 2000 Update'Book summary:Cities without Suburbs, first published in 1993, has become an influential analysis of America's cities among city planners, scholars, and citizens alike. In it, David Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, argues that America must end the isolation of the central city from its suburbs in order to attack its urban problems.
Rusk's analysis, extending back to 1950, covers 522 central cities in 320 metro areas of the United States. He finds that cities trapped within old boundaries have suffered severe racial segregation and the emergence of an urban underclass. But cities with annexation powerstermed "elastic" by Ruskhave shared in area-wide development.
This third edition is among the first books of any kind to employ information from the 2000 U.S. census. While refining his argument with this new data, Rusk assesses the major trends of the 1990s, including the perceived rebound of central cities, the impact of Hispanic and Asian migration, the growing similarities of older "inner-ring" suburbs to central cities, and the emerging influence of faith-based movements. New recommendations take account of growing restrictions on cities' annexation powers, even in the Southwestern United States, and of new opportunities for federal shaping of home mortgage programs and urban planning processes. Rusk's conclusion stresses cities' growing experience with building political coalitions in pursuit of development and growth.
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The City : A Global Historyby Joel KotkinISBN 0679603360 (0-679-60336-0)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The City : A Global History'Book summary:If humankind can be said to have a single greatest creation, it would be those places that represent the most eloquent expression of our speciess ingenuity, beliefs, and ideals: the city. In this authoritative and engagingly written account, the acclaimed urbanist and bestselling author examines the evolution of urban life over the millennia and, in doing so, attempts to answer the age-old question: What makes a city great?
Despite their infinite variety, all cities essentially serve three purposes: spiritual, political, and economic. Kotkin follows the progression of the city from the early religious centers of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China to the imperial centers of the Classical era, through the rise of the Islamic city and the European commercial capitals, ending with todays post-industrial suburban metropolis.
Despite widespread optimistic claims that cities are back in style, Kotkin warns that whatever their form, cities can thrive only if they remain sacred, safe, and busyand this is true for both the increasingly urbanized developing world and the often self-possessed global cities of the West and East Asia.
Looking at cities in the twenty-first century, Kotkin discusses the effects of developments such as shifting demographics and emerging technologies. He also considers the effects of terrorismhow the religious and cultural struggles of the present pose the greatest challenge to the urban future.
Truly global in scope, The City is a timely narrative that will place Kotkin in the company of Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and other preeminent urban scholars. [via]More editions of The City : A Global History:
City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Villageby David SucherISBN 0964268019 (0-9642680-1-9)
Softcover, City Comforts Inc
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The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospectsby Lewis MumfordISBN 156731211X (1-56731-211-X)
Hardcover, Fine Communications
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects'Book summary:Lewis Mumford's massive historical study brings together a wide array of evidence--from the earliest group habitats to medieval towns to the modern centers of commerce (as well as dozens of black-and-white illustrations)--to show how the urban form has changed throughout human civilization. His tone is ultimately somewhat pessimistic: Mumford was deeply concerned with what he viewed as the dehumanizing aspects of the metropolitan trend, which he deemed "a world of professional illusionists and their credulous victims." (In another typically unrestrained criticism, he dubbed the Pentagon a Bronze Age monument to humanity's basest impulses, as well as an "effete and worthless baroque conceit.") Mumford hoped for a rediscovery of urban principles that emphasized humanity's organic relationship to its environment. The City in History remains a powerfully influential work, one that has shaped the agendas of urban planners, sociologists, and social critics since its publication in the 1960s. [via]
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The City in Mind: Meditations on the Urban Conditionby James Howard KunstlerISBN 0743227239 (0-7432-2723-9)
Softcover, Free Pr
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The City in Mind : Notes on the Urban Conditionby James Howard KunstlerISBN 0684845911 (0-684-84591-1)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The City in Mind : Notes on the Urban Condition'Book summary:In "The Geography of Nowhere," James Howard Kunstler declared suburbia "a tragic landscape of cartoon architecture, junked cities, and ravaged countryside" and put himself at the heart of a fierce debate over how we will live in twenty-first century America. Now, Kunstler turns his wickedly mordant and astute eye on urban life both in America and across the world. From classical Rome to the "gigantic hairball" of contemporary Atlanta, he offers a far-reaching discourse on the history and current state of urban life.
"The City in Mind" tells the story of urban design and how the architectural makeup of a city directly influences its culture as well as its success. From the ingenious architectural design of Louis-Napoleon's renovation of Paris to the bloody collision of cultures that occurred when Cortes conquered the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, from the grandiose architectural schemes of Hitler and Albert Speer to the meanings behind the ludicrous spectacle of Las Vegas, Kunstler opens up a new dialogue on the development and effects of urban construction. In his investigations, he discovers American communities in the Sunbelt and Southwest alienated from each other and themselves, Northeastern cities caught between their initial civic construction and our current car-obsessed society, and a disparate Europe with its mix of pre-industrial creativity, and war-marked reminders of the twentieth century.
Expanding on ideas first discussed in Jane Jacobs' seminal work, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," Kunstler looks to Europe to discover what is constant and enduring in cities at their greatest, and at the same time, how a city's design can be directly linked toits decline. In these dazzling excursions he finds the reasons that America got lost in its suburban wilderness and locates the pathways in culture that might lead to a civic revival here. Kunstler's examination of these cities is at once a concise history of their urban lives and a detailed criticism of how those histories have either aided or hindered the social and civil progress of the cities' occupants. By turns dramatic and wildly comic, and always authoritative, "The City in Mind," is an exceptional glimpse into the urban condition. [via]
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City Lifeby Witold RybczynskiISBN 0684825295 (0-684-82529-5)
Softcover, Scribner
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City Life: Urban Expectations in a New Worldby Witold RybczynskiISBN 0684813025 (0-684-81302-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'City Life : Urban Expectations in a New World'Book summary:In City Life, Witold Rybczynski looks at what we want from cities, how they have evolved, and what accounts for their unique identities. In this vivid description of everything from the early colonial settlements to the advent of the skyscraper to the changes wrought by the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and telecommuting, Rybczynski reveals how our urban spaces have been shaped by the landscapes and lifestyles of the New World. [via]
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The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through Historyby Spiro KostofISBN 0821220160 (0-8212-2016-0)
Softcover, Bulfinch Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History'Book summary:Spanning the ages and the globe, Spiro Kostof explores the city as a "repository of cultural meaning" and an embodiment of the community it shelters. Widely used by both architects and students of architecture, The City Shaped won the AIA's prestigious book award in Architecture and Urbanism. With hundreds of photographs and drawings that illustrate Professor Kostof's innovative ideas, this has become one of the most important works on urbanization. [via]
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A Clearing in the Distance: Frederich Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Centuryby Witold RybczynskiISBN 0684865750 (0-684-86575-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Clearing in the Distance: Frederich Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century'Book summary:Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is best remembered today as a landscape designer, well known for his plans for New York's Central Park and Prospect Park, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and the campus of Stanford University, among other noteworthy sites.
But, writes urban studies professor and accomplished author Witold Rybczynski, Olmsted was an American original, a 19th-century success story who packed many careers and wide learning and travel into a long life. He spent time in China and Europe, managed a California gold mine, edited The Nation, commanded a medical unit in the Civil War, and crisscrossed the United States many times over, writing long reports and articles all the while. (One series of reports urged, for instance, that the then-remote Yosemite region of California be made a national park.) Olmsted, Rybczynski suggests, changed the face of America: he had a vision of the American landscape as a reflection of the national character, with its broad vistas and open skies, and he was concerned to make America's urban spaces livable, bringing "trees and greenery into the congested grid of streets." At Olmsted's urging, many American and Canadian cities adopted his system of parks, broad avenues, and greenways, which encouraged the appreciation and preservation of nature; his influence is felt today in the so-called urban ecology movement, and in dozens of public spaces across the continent.
Rybczynski's fine and illuminating biography of Olmsted shows him to have been a man of many parts, an important historical figure whose legacy remains strong nearly a century after his death. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Centuryby Witold RybczynskiISBN 0684824639 (0-684-82463-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century'Book summary:Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is best remembered today as a landscape designer, well known for his plans for New York's Central Park and Prospect Park, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and the campus of Stanford University, among other noteworthy sites.
But, writes urban studies professor and accomplished author Witold Rybczynski, Olmsted was an American original, a 19th-century success story who packed many careers and wide learning and travel into a long life. He spent time in China and Europe, managed a California gold mine, edited The Nation, commanded a medical unit in the Civil War, and crisscrossed the United States many times over, writing long reports and articles all the while. (One series of reports urged, for instance, that the then-remote Yosemite region of California be made a national park.) Olmsted, Rybczynski suggests, changed the face of America: he had a vision of the American landscape as a reflection of the national character, with its broad vistas and open skies, and he was concerned to make America's urban spaces livable, bringing "trees and greenery into the congested grid of streets." At Olmsted's urging, many American and Canadian cities adopted his system of parks, broad avenues, and greenways, which encouraged the appreciation and preservation of nature; his influence is felt today in the so-called urban ecology movement, and in dozens of public spaces across the continent.
Rybczynski's fine and illuminating biography of Olmsted shows him to have been a man of many parts, an important historical figure whose legacy remains strong nearly a century after his death. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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Close-Up, How to Read the American Cityby Grady ClayISBN 0226109453 (0-226-10945-3)
Softcover, Univ of Chicago Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Close-Up, How to Read the American City'Book summary:"Grady Clay looks hard at the landscape, finding out who built what and why, noticing who participates in a city's success and who gets left in a 'sink,' or depressed (often literally) area. Clay doesn't stay in the city; he looks at industrial towns, truck stops, suburbsnearly anywhere people live or work. His style is witty and readable, and the book is crammed with illustrations that clarify his points. If I had to pick up one book to guide my observations of the American scene, this would be it."Sonia Simone, Whole Earth Review[via]
"The emphasis on the informal aspects of city-shapingtopographical, historical, economic and socialdoes much to counteract the formalist approach to American urban design. Close-Up...should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand Americans and their cities."Roger Cunliffe, Architectural Review
"Close-Up is a provocative and stimulating book."Thomas J. Schlereth, Winterthur Portfolio
"Within this coherent string of essays, the urban dweller or observer, as well as the student, will find refreshing strategies for viewing the environmental 'situations' interacting to form a landscape."Dallas Morning News
"Clay's Close-Up, first published in 1973, is still a key book for looking at the real American city. Too many urban books and guidebooks concentrate on the good parts of the city....Clay looks at all parts of the city, the suburbs, and the places between cities, and develops new terms to describe parts of the built environmentfronts, strips, beats, stacks, sinks, and turf. No one who wants to understand American cities or to describe them, should fail to know this book. The illustrations are of special interest to the guidebook writer."American Urban GuidenotesMore editions of Close-Up, How to Read the American City:
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Dark Age Aheadby Jane JacobsISBN 1400076706 (1-4000-7670-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dark Age Ahead'Book summary:Optimistic despite its author's central premise that North American culture may be headed into a cataclysmic decline, Jane Jacobs's Dark Age Ahead presents a lucid examination of just how easily a thriving culture can squander its most precious resources. Crime, racism, environmental destruction, distrust of the political process, and the widening gap between rich and poor are not, Jacobs lucidly argues, the key causes of concern when a civilization starts to collapse, but merely symptoms of more pervasive threats.
Written when this legendary author of classics including The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Cities and the Wealth of Nations had already entered her 80s, Dark Age Ahead draws on a lifetime of astute observation to identify factors such as the erosion of community and family and the lack of public fiscal accountability as the true harbingers of an unhealthy cultural base. Jacobs, whose own formal education ended with a high school diploma and a year-long unpaid Depression-era apprenticeship at a Pennsylvania newspaper, identifies the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next as vitally important, and sees the trend towards replacing intellectual mentorship with what she calls "credentialing" at universities and other institutions of higher education as very dangerous indeed. "My impression is that university-educated parents or grandparents of students presently in university do not realize how much the experience has changed since their own student days, nor do the students themselves, since they have not experienced anything else," Jacobs writes. "Only faculty who have lived through the loss realize what has been lost. A vigorous culture capable of making corrective, stabilizing changes depends heavily on its educated people, and especially upon their critical capacities and depth of understanding."
These and other factors are discussed with formidable clarity and insight in Jacobs's trademark elegant, plain-language prose. Rather than disrupting the flow of her extensively indexed main narrative analysis with dense notes, the Toronto-based visionary presents her references in a 47-page parallel text following the book's initial 176 pages. "This is both a gloomy and a hopeful book," the modern-day Cassandra notes; reading it is a pleasure. --Deirdre Hanna [via]
Dead Cities: And Other Talesby Mike DavisISBN 1565848446 (1-56584-844-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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The Death and Life of Great American Citiesby Jane JacobsISBN 067974195X (0-679-74195-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities'Book summary:Jane Jacobs sets out to produce an attack on current city-planning and rebuilding in America and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on the urban environment. Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusier's Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitious projects based on self-contained neighbourhoods, super-blocks, rigid "scientific" plans and endless acres of grass. Yet they seldom stop to look at what actually works on the ground. The real vitality of cities, argues Jacobs, lies in their diversity, architectural variety, teeming street life and human scale. It is only when we appreciate such fundamental realities that we can hope to create cities that are safe, interesting and economically viable, as well as places that people want to live in. [via]
More editions of The Death and Life of Great American Cities:
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities: ISBN 0140551417 (0-14-055141-7)
Softcover, Penguin USA - The Death and Life of Great American Cities: ISBN 0140206817 (0-14-020681-7)
Hardcover, Penguin - The Death and Life of Great American Cities: ISBN 0375508732 (0-375-50873-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group - The Death and Life of Great American Cities: ISBN 0679600477 (0-679-60047-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - The Death and Life of Great American Cities: ISBN 067974195X (0-679-74195-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities: ISBN 0140551417 (0-14-055141-7)
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Delirious New Yorkby Rem KoolhaasISBN 1885254008 (1-885254-00-8)
Softcover, Monacelli Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan'Book summary:In this fanciful volume, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.), both analyzes and celebrates New York City. By suggesting the city as the site for an infinite variety of human activities and events--both real and imagined--the essence of the metropolitan lifestyle, its "culture of congestion" and its architecture are revealed in a brilliant new light. "Manhattan," Koolhaas writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Filled with fascinating facts, as well as photographs, postcards, maps, watercolors, and drawings, the vibrancy of Koolhaas's poignant exploration of Gotham equals the heady, frenetic energy of the city itself. Anyone who loves New York will want to own this book. [via]
Design of Citiesby Edmund N. BaconISBN 0140042369 (0-14-004236-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed Americaby Erik LarsonISBN 0375725601 (0-375-72560-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America'Book summary:Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. --John Moe [via]
More editions of The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America:
- The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America: ISBN 0609608444 (0-609-60844-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America: ISBN 0786252189 (0-7862-5218-9)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr - The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America: ISBN 0375725601 (0-375-72560-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America: ISBN 0609608444 (0-609-60844-4)
Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York's World Trade Centerby Eric DartonISBN 0465017274 (0-465-01727-4)
Softcover, Basic Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York's World Trade Center'Book summary:When the World Trade Towers in New York City were erected at the Hudsons edge, they led the way to a real estate boom that was truly astonishing. Divided We Stand reveals the coming together and eruption of four volatile elements: super-tall buildings, financial speculation, globalization, and terrorism. The Trade Center serves as a potent symbol of the disastrous consequences of undemocratic planning and development.This book is a history of that skyscraping ambition and the impact it had on New York and international life. It is a portrait of a building complex that lives at the convergence point of social and economic realities central not only to New York City but to all industrial cities and suburbs. A meticulously researched historical account based on primary documents, Divided We Stand is a contemporary indictment of the prevailing urban order in the spirit of Jane Jacobss mid-century classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities.[via]More editions of Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York's World Trade Center:
Ecology of Fearby Mike DavisISBN 0375706070 (0-375-70607-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Ecology of Fear : Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disasterby Mike DavisISBN 0805051066 (0-8050-5106-6)
Hardcover, Holt & Company, Henry
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ecology of Fear : Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster'Book summary:The 1990s have not been kind to Los Angeles. As Mike Davis writes, "The destructive February 1992, January 1993, and January 1995 floods ($500 million in damage) were mere brackets around the April 1992 insurrection ($1 billion), the October-November 1993 firestorms ($1 billion) and the January 1994 earthquake ($42 billion)." But, he argues, the increasing fear about nature's reign of terror in Southern California reflected in Hollywood's preoccupation with apocalypse--L.A. has been destroyed on screen by everything from lava (Volcano) to nukes (Miracle Mile) to alien death rays (Independence Day)--is in reality a strong case of denial. Again, Davis himself says it best: "For generations, market-driven urbanization has transgressed environmental common sense. Historic wildfire corridors have been turned into view-lot suburbs, wetland liquefaction zones into marinas, and floodplains into industrial districts and housing tracts. Monolithic public works have been substituted for regional planning and a responsible land ethic. As a result, Southern California has reaped flood, fire, and earthquake tragedies that were as avoidable, as unnatural, as the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing explosion in the streets."
As in City of Quartz, his earlier book about Los Angeles, Davis reveals the deeper ideological narratives behind historical events. Whether he's explaining the motivations behind the persistent refusal of civic leaders to admit that a tornado alley runs down the middle of the region, from Long Beach to Pasadena, or discussing, as one chapter refers to it, "the case for letting Malibu burn," he outlines his arguments with a fascinating amount of detail and a subtle sense of irony. There are wonderful chapters here, such as "Maneaters of the Sierra Madre," a zoology of the wild beasts Angelenos fear, including mountain lions that descend from the hills to eat joggers and small children, swarms of Africanized killer bees making their way across the deserts, and El Chupacabra, the "goat-sucking vampire" that joined L.A.'s roster of faddish icons in 1996.
Although this book is specifically about Los Angeles, its lessons about the relationship between urban developments and natural ecosystems and about the dangerous influence of class politics on environmental safety policy are applicable to any city. Anyone with a serious interest in natural history or urban policy should make a point of reading this book. --Ron Hogan [via]
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The Economy of Citiesby Jane JacobsISBN 039470584X (0-394-70584-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Edge Cityby Joel GarreauISBN 0385424345 (0-385-42434-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Edge City'Book summary: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. [via]
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The Edge City: Life on the New Frontierby Joel GarreauISBN 0385262493 (0-385-26249-3)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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A Field Guide to Sprawlby Dolores HaydenISBN 0393731987 (0-393-73198-7)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Field Guide to Sprawl'Book summary:A visual lexicon of the colorful slang, from alligator investment to zoomburb, that defines sprawl in America. "May well establish Ms. Hayden as the Roger Tory Peterson of Sprawl." New York Times
Duck, ruburb, tower farm, big box, and pig-in-a-python are among the dozens of zany terms invented by real estate developers and designers today to characterize land-use practices and the physical elements of sprawl. Sprawl in the environment, based on the metaphor of a person spread out, is hard to define. This concise book engages its meaning, explains common building patterns, and illustrates the visual culture of sprawl. Seventy-five stunning color aerial photographs, each paired with a definition, convey the impact of excessive development. This "engagingly organized and splendidly photographed" (Wall Street Journal) book provides the verbal and visual vocabulary needed by professionals, public officials, and citizens to critique uncontrolled growth in the American landscape. 75 color illustrations [via] 
Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park Systemby Cynthia ZaitzevskyISBN 0674318315 (0-674-31831-5)
Softcover, Harvard University Press
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The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscapeby James Howard KunstlerISBN 0671888250 (0-671-88825-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape'Book summary:An analysis of America's national landscape argues that much of what surrounds Americans is depressing, ugly, and unhealthy and traces America's evolution from a land of village commons to a man-made landscape that ignores nature and human needs. [via]
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The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Communityby Ray OldenburgISBN 1569246815 (1-56924-681-5)
Softcover, Marlowe & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community'More editions of The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community:
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The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Dayby Ray OldenburgISBN 1569247781 (1-56924-778-1)
Softcover, Pub Group West
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day'Book summary:A look at informal gathering places--coffe shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars and others. The author considers their importance to our communities and the reasons for their gradual disappearance. [via]
More editions of The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day:
- The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day: ISBN 1557781109 (1-55778-110-9)
Hardcover, Continuum Intl Pub Group - The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day: ISBN 1569247781 (1-56924-778-1)
Softcover, Pub Group West
- The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day: ISBN 1557781109 (1-55778-110-9)
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Home from Nowhere : Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Centuryby James H. KunstlerISBN 0684811960 (0-684-81196-0)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Home from Nowhere : Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century'Book summary:Through magazine articles and through his previous book, The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler has become one of the foremost decriers of the blighted urban landscape of the United States. Now, in this new sequel to the earlier book, Kunstler moves from description to prescription. The villains, Kunstler says, are zoning laws, real estate taxes, modernist architecture, and, particularly, the automobile. The solutions include multi-use zoning districts, car-free urban cores, revised tax laws, Beaux-Arts design principles, and, in particular, the neo-traditionalist school of architecture and city planning known as "new urbanism." It's possible to disagree with some of Kunstler's conclusions--the hope that large numbers of commuters will give up their single-passenger vehicles for public transit downtown has been discredited in city after city--without abandoning his larger goal: a return to a saner urban geography and, with it, to a saner way of life. [via]
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Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Centuryby James Howard KunstlerISBN 0684837374 (0-684-83737-4)
Softcover, Free Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Century'Book summary:Through magazine articles and through his previous book, The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler has become one of the foremost decriers of the blighted urban landscape of the United States. Now, in this new sequel to the earlier book, Kunstler moves from description to prescription. The villains, Kunstler says, are zoning laws, real estate taxes, modernist architecture, and, particularly, the automobile. The solutions include multi-use zoning districts, car-free urban cores, revised tax laws, Beaux-Arts design principles, and, in particular, the neo-traditionalist school of architecture and city planning known as "new urbanism." It's possible to disagree with some of Kunstler's conclusions--the hope that large numbers of commuters will give up their single-passenger vehicles for public transit downtown has been discredited in city after city--without abandoning his larger goal: a return to a saner urban geography and, with it, to a saner way of life. [via]
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How Buildings Learn : What Happens after They're Builtby Stewart BrandISBN 0670835153 (0-670-83515-3)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How Buildings Learn : What Happens after They're Built'Book summary:This book on buildings asks the question why so many buildings punish and restrict us because almost none of them adapt well. In real use, buildings need to adapt because their uses are constantly changing. All buildings are predictions, and yet more high-style buildings are designed not to change, not to accommodate new use. A good portion of how buildings learn will be a natural history of how buildings change with time and what things work to make buildings adapt gracefully, what building layouts allow easy redefinition of space and building code considerations that permit remodelling. This practical book aims to integrate all the different aspects of the fragmented design and construction process, so that buildings can be seen as embodying a functional, yet aesthetic and capacious vision, not the conflicts, compromises and conveniences of clients, architects, engineers and contractors, all working in their interests, not the buildings. [via]
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The Image of the Cityby Kevin LynchISBN 0262620014 (0-262-62001-4)
Softcover, Mit Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Image of the City'Book summary:What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion--imageability--and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities.The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book. [via]
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The Metropolis of Tomorrowby Hugh FerrissISBN 0910413118 (0-910413-11-8)
Hardcover, Princeton Architectural Press
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Mutationsby Sanford Kwinter, Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, Nadia TaziISBN 8495273519 (84-95273-51-9)
Softcover, Actar-D
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mutations'Book summary:"A city is a plane of tarmac with some red hot spots of intensity," Rem Koolhaas, the pathbreaking architect and author of such semiotically seminal books as Delirious New York and the more recent S, M, L, XL, remarked in 1969. More than 30 years later, there are more of those hot spots around the world than ever, and they're getting hotter every day. Globalization, standardization, and the high-speed innovations of our current information age are transforming urban centers from London to Los Angeles to Lagos, and more places are becoming more urban, and at a faster pace, than ever before.
Mutations is an eye-popping atlas-cum-analysis of this new urbanization, and much of it is composed of essays and meditations (from a variety of contributors) on the 21st-century international City (often un-)Beautiful. Most of them are written in language that will be familiar to readers of Koolhaas's past books: in other words, dense, abstract, and chock-full of references to Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari. If you like that sort of deconstructivist yammering, great; if not, the major small-type essays are best sampled (or, better, skimmed) one at a time, interspersed with the many other more accessible elements of the book that truly do add up to a vivid and fascinating mosaic of postmodern urbanism.
From Koolhaas and Harvard Design School's Project on the City come two engrossing and wholly straightforward explorations: one of the Pearl River Delta, which China has designated as a zone of unrestricted capitalist experimentation, and whose five major urban centers have consequently exploded overnight in all sorts of instructive and often frightening ways; and another of the chaotic, congested and Blade Runneresque megalopolis of Lagos, Nigeria, whose patterns of growth, housing, and commerce defy all conventional wisdom on how cities should develop. There's also a bounty of excellent (and often astonishing) statistics on all aspects of urban growth; a "snapshots" section of phenomena from cities all over the globe; a completely spot-on (and unintentionally funny) analysis of the evolution of shopping as the last truly unifying urban public activity (and the subject of Koolhaas's next full-scale book); and a trenchant look at Kosovo as ground zero in the first major war of the Internet age. (It should be noted that there's a separate section on the U.S., which with all its soulless, tacky consumerist excess gets the drubbing it usually can expect from the European intelligentsia, although the irony here is that more and more of newly urban Europe is starting to look like newly urban America.)
The exhibit-quality photography throughout is great, and, as you could expect from this unofficial successor to S, M, L, XL, the design is satisfyingly outré, right down to its post-Warholian plastic yellow easy-wipe cover with glued-on mousepad. But for all of Mutations's rich trove of facts and insights, and the impression that its high-tech design gives of an ironic embrace of the new urbanization, its deeper tone is one of disappointment and loss. The spirit of Jane Jacobs resides here, with all its yearning for the quirky, quaint beauty of human-scaled townhouses and shops, sidewalks and byways, and for the precorporatized glamour of grand old towns like New York, London, Paris, and Shanghai, before such metallic nouveau hubs as Atlanta and Kuala Lumpur were ever on the world-commerce map. Mutations was written and compiled largely by architects, after all, who hate ugliness as much as the next guy, whatever they may claim otherwise; its precisely for that reason that this densely absorbing new compendium betrays its wistfulness as often as it promotes its own air of cool, ethnographic bemusement. --Timothy Murphy [via]
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The New Civic Art: Elemments of Town Planningby Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Robert AlminanaISBN 0847821862 (0-8478-2186-2)
Hardcover, Rizzoli Intl Pubns
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The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Communityby Peter KatzISBN 0070338892 (0-07-033889-2)
Hardcover, McGraw-Hill
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community'Book summary:The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community [Hardcover] by Katz, Peter [via]
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The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dreamby Peter CalthorpeISBN 1878271687 (1-878271-68-7)
Softcover, Princeton Architectural Pr
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The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroitby Thomas J. SugrueISBN 0691121869 (0-691-12186-9)
Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit'Book summary:Once America's "arsenal of democracy, " Detroit has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's dilemma of racial and economic inequality, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. [via]
More editions of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit:
- The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit: ISBN 0691058881 (0-691-05888-1)
Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr - The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit: ISBN 069101101X (0-691-01101-X)
Hardcover, Princeton Univ Pr - The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit: ISBN 0691121869 (0-691-12186-9)
Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr
- The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit: ISBN 0691058881 (0-691-05888-1)
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A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Constructionby Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein, Sara IshikawaISBN 0195019199 (0-19-501919-9)
Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction'Book summary:The second of three books published by the Center for Environmental Structure to provide a "working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning," A Pattern Language offers a practical language for building and planning based on natural considerations. The reader is given an overview of some 250 patterns that are the units of this language, each consisting of a design problem, discussion, illustration, and solution. By understanding recurrent design problems in our environment, readers can identify extant patterns in their own design projects and use these patterns to create a language of their own. Extraordinarily thorough, coherent, and accessible, this book has become a bible for homebuilders, contractors, and developers who care about creating healthy, high-level design. [via]
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The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New Yorkby Robert A. CaroISBN 0394720245 (0-394-72024-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York'Book summary:For the sheer magnitude, depth and authority of its revelations, The Power Broker stands alone---a huge and galvanizing biography revealing not only the virtually unknown saga of one man's incredible accumulation of power, but the hidden story of the shaping (and mis-shaping) of New York through the past half-century.
Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders have known: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of our time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens--the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses--and brings to light a bonanza of vital new information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.
But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man--an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives. We see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of Our Crowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he fought for the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous flowering of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches--and then ultimately brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, the accumulation of power became an end in itself.
Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He was held in fear--his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade after decade, the newspapers and the public believed. Meanwhile, he was developing his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as "Triborough"--a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses--an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city's political and economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millions of dollars' worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated the politics and politicians of his time--without ever having been elected to any office. He was, in essence, above our democratic system.
Robert Moses held power in the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harriman and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoralties of La Guardia, O'Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay, He personally conceived and carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars--he was undoubtedly America's greatest builder.
This is how he built and dominated New York--before, finally, he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and his power (by Nelson Rockefeller). But his work, and his will, had been done. [via]More editions of The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York:
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The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Lifeby Richard FloridaISBN 1417632518 (1-4176-3251-8)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life'Book summary:The Washington Monthly 2002 Annual Political Book Award WinnerThe Rise of the Creative Class gives us a provocative new way to think about why we live as we do today-and where we might be headed. Weaving storytelling with masses of new and updated research, Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy.Just as William Whyte's 1956 classic The Organization Man showed how the organizational ethos of that age permeated every aspect of life, Florida describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant. Millions of us are beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always have-with the result that our values and tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time are changing. Leading the shift are the nearly 38 million Americans in many diverse fields who create for a living-the Creative Class.The Rise of the Creative Class chronicles the ongoing sea of change in people's choices and attitudes, and shows not only what's happening but also how it stems from a fundamental economic change. The Creative Class now comprises more than thirty percent of the entire workforce. Their choices have already had a huge economic impact. In the future they will determine how the workplace is organized, what companies will prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities will thrive or wither.[via]More editions of The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life:
- The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life: ISBN 0465024777 (0-465-02477-7)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group - The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life: ISBN 0465024769 (0-465-02476-9)
Hardcover, Perseus Books Group - The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life: ISBN 1417632518 (1-4176-3251-8)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
- The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life: ISBN 0465024777 (0-465-02477-7)
Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900. 2d Edby Sam Bass WarnerISBN 0674842111 (0-674-84211-1)
Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dreamby Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff SpeckISBN 0865476063 (0-86547-606-3)
Softcover, North Point Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream'Book summary:A manifesto by America's most controversial and celebrated town planners, proposing an alternative model for community design.[via]
There is a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and to replace the automobile-based settlement patterns of the past fifty years with a return to more traditional planning principles. This movement stems not only from the realization that sprawl is ecologically and economically unsustainable but also from a growing awareness of sprawl's many victims: children, utterly dependent on parental transportation if they wish to escape the cul-de-sac; the elderly, warehoused in institutions once they lose their driver's licenses; the middle class, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day.
Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of this movement, and in Suburban Nation they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. It is a lively, thorough, critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia-characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots-and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course until mid-century. It is an indictment of the entire development community, including governments, for the fact that America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is that rare book that also offers solutions.More editions of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream:
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The Works: Anatomy of a Cityby Kate Ascher, Wendy MarechISBN 1594200718 (1-59420-071-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Works: Anatomy of a City'Book summary:Kate Ascher could not have chosen a much drier topic for a book than water mains, parking meters, railroad classification yards, and the other doodads of city infrastructure. But in Ascher's captivating book, The Works, the innards of New York City come alive. Wonderfully illustrated, the book combines text, maps, and other graphics to tell the story of the systems that keep America's greatest city running smoothly. How are traffic lights coordinated? How do potholes form and which areas have streets with the best "smoothness score"? How is mail processed? What happens when you flush the toilet? Ascher, who has a PhD in government from the London School of Economics and is now executive vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, dissects the colorful workings of all these systems and much more.
The Works contains a section on pretty much every aspect of the Big Apple's infrastructure. You'll learn the mystery of the shiny silver tanks that have become a familiar sight on New York streets. (They prevent moisture from damaging underground phone lines.) Ascher explains how the city's 23 million daily pieces of mail are processed. We also learn about the 27-mile underground pneumatic mail tube that used to carry canisters with 500 letters up to 30 miles per hour around Manhattan. Also interesting: the story of the nine-foot-long, 800-pound robot submarine that city engineers send to probe leaks in the Delaware Aqueduct--which, it might interest you to know, is the world's longest continuous underground tunnel. And you'll find out all about Colonel Waring and his "White Wings." A great coffee table book for New York lovers or anyone with a curiosity bone. --Alex Roslin [via]
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Das Passagen-Werkby Walter Benjamin, Rolf TiedemannISBN 3518112007 (3-518-11200-7)
Softcover, Suhrkamp
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Das Passagen-Werk'More editions of Das Passagen-Werk:
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