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Recommended
Reading: Our Top Ten |
Here are the ten
publications we refer to the most,
sorted alphabetically by author. We’ve tried to include a
review for each, to give you an idea why we recommend them so highly.
You’ll also find a direct link to each book’s
specific page at Amazon.com, if you would like to order a copy.
(Amazon.com will appear in a new window.)
If you would rather see our complete list of recommended reading
(sorted by author, no reviews), click
here or use the link at the bottom of this page.
If you have a book you think deserves a spot on our list, please Suggest a book
and tell us a little bit about why you like it.
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The Regional City: Planning for the End
of
Sprawl |
Calthorpe,
Peter and Fulton, William and Fishman,
Robert
(Island Press, 2001)
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The author, architect Peter Calthorpe is a charter member of the New
Urbanist group, and has worked to control sprawling growth directly in
a number of places. His principal contribution to New Urbanist
thought has been the creation of plans structured by public
transportation; transit-oriented development, or T.O.D. as it's known,
was the subject of his earlier book ''The Next American Metropolis.''
In ''The Regional City,'' written with William Fulton, he takes a
larger picture of the economic, social and environmental factors
involved in design. The two authors make the discussion useful for
readers who are new to the subject. Readers concerned about the fate of
the places where they live will find a context within which to begin to
think about the problem in meaningful, effective ways, and those who
have been focused on one or another aspect of sprawl will find in this
book a satisfying opening out of the subject toward its larger
implications. All readers, whether they agree or disagree with the
proposals in this book, will emerge seeing the world differently.
The key word in all this is ''regional,'' and there is no one in the
conversation who contests the belief that the only realistic way to
think about our evolving world is in terms of regions rather than in
terms of cities or even in terms of the country as a whole. As
Calthorpe and Fulton demonstrate, ecology, traffic, pollution, even
social life, are all regional, even though our political jurisdictions
do not reflect this reality.
Calthorpe and Fulton bring in a new idea with this book, latent in the
discussion much of the time but put forward boldly in the book's title.
The notion of a ''regional city'' contrasts immediately with the more
commonly used term, ''metropolitan region.'' The latter suggests a
pattern of growth with a city at its center, whereas a ''regional
city'' suggests a pattern that is more like a constellation, with many
centers. This is, in fact, what is happening in the landscape of
sprawl, as ''centers'' spring up not only on the suburban edges of
traditional cities but sometimes way out in the middle of nowhere.
Overall, this book is accessible and well written, animated by a sense
of the large relevance of the matter at hand.
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Once There Were Greenfields: How Urban Sprawl is Undermining
America’s Environment, Economy, and Social Fabric.> |
Benfield,
F. Kaid and Raimi, Matthew D, and Chen,
Donald D.T.
(Natural Resources Defense Council, 1999)
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Is pursuit of the American dream becoming a nightmare? Once There Were
Greenfields presents the story of one of America's most challenging
social problems, sprawl development. Community downtowns are being
replaced with strip malls. Farmland is giving way to parking lots.
Meanwhile, inner cities are losing jobs and the tax base necessary to
support public schools. This book meticulously documents the
consequences of sprawling growth patterns and proposes guiding
principles for a new kind of "smart" growth that combines economic
progress with environmental protection and social goals.
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Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American
Dream |
Duany,
Andres and Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth, and
Speck, Jeff
(North Point Press, 2000)
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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 an 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;
commuters, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day; the urban
poor, isolated in deteriorating cities without access to jobs or
services.
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. This book is a lively
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 indicts the design and development industries for the fact that
America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is a book
that also offers us solutions.
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Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution |
Hawken,
Paul and Lovins, Amory B. and Lovins, L.
Hunter
(Back Bay Books, 2000)
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Book review excerpted from the NY Times Book Review:
Paul Hawken is the author of The Ecology of Commerce (1993) and is best
known for his PBS series Growing a Business. Amory and Hunter Lovins
founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, which promotes efficient resource
use, and Amory has been called the "godfather" of alternative energy.
The three have joined forces here to set a blueprint for sustainable
development. The authors argue that it is possible for companies to
reduce energy and materials consumption by up to 90 percent but still
increase profits, production, and employment. They outline the four
strategies that underlie "natural capitalism" and, using hypercars and
neighborhood land use and superefficient buildings as examples, show
how these strategies are being applied. They also identify ways
resources are being wasted and explain the principles of "resource
productivity." Throughout their book, the authors indicate new business
opportunities that will be created by practicing "natural capitalism."
Accompanying the book will be a CD composed of "KnowledgeMaps," which
will be "visual, interactive conceptual models" that complement the
material in each chapter and include hyperlinks to relevant sites on
the Internet.
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The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made
Landscape |
Kunstler,
James Howard
(Simon & Schuster, 1994)
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Book review excerpted from Kirkus Review of Books:
"It's no news that many Americans live in a spread-out, privatized
suburban wasteland without community or centers; that much landscape
has given way to ugly sprawl; that this condition may be due to
systematic policies on the part of government and industrial forces;
and that the automobile is the engine that has driven us there. What
novelist Kunstler (The Halloween Ball, 1987, etc.) does here is to
explore and deplore these developments. Kunstler traces, from the
nation's beginnings, the implications of changing architecture styles;
the manifestations of our extreme emphasis on private-property rights
and low regard for the public realm; and the destruction that our
car-centered life has visited on American communities in general and
certain profiled older towns and cities in particular. His discussions
of specific places--chosen to represent such concepts as an "old
industrial metropolis gone to hell" (Detroit); "how to mess up a town"
(Saratoga Springs, New York); the "most hopeful and progressive trends
in...urban planning" (Portland, Oregon); and sinister commercial
myth-mongering that distorts small-town reality (Disney World)--lack
the original ideas, cutting analysis, and stimulating insights that
characterized last year's Variations on a Theme Park (ed., Michael
Sorkin). But for a more popular audience, Kunstler provides an
accessible overview that's all the more interesting and effective for
his frankly expressed and all-enveloping viewpoint. If his attachment
to the small towns of the past seems an insufficient answer to the
problems of the present and future, his depiction of those problems is
on target. And the author makes a persuasive case for convicting the
private automobile of a gamut of 20th-century ills: the Great
Depression; the death of the cities and of the family farm; the trashy
consumerism that has driven the economy since the end of WW II; voodoo
economics; the S&L crisis; and global environmental
degradation. An informative and well-integrated polemic."
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Charter of the New Urbanism |
Leccese,
Michael and McCormick, Kathleen
(McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing, 1999)
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Charter of the New Urbanism presents a set of essays written by charter
members of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a movement which seeks to
support an American movement to restore urban centers, reconfigure
sprawling suburbs, conserve environmental assets, and preserve our
built legacy. The volume's 27 essays are organized into three sections:
metropolis, city, and town; neighborhood, district, and corridor; and
block, street, and building.Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR.
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How to Turn a Place Around |
Project
for Public Spaces
(Project for Public Spaces, Inc., 2000)
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This a great handbook and resource for creating more attractive and
useful public spaces in any given community.
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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community |
Putnam,
Robert D.
(Simon & Schuster, 2000)
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Review provided by: Booklist
"Putnam laments the decline in the kind of informal social
institutions--bridge clubs, bowling leagues, charity leagues,
etc.--that were once the glue for many American communities. In a
detailed, well-documented book, he examines how Americans have expended
their "social capital," the good will and social intercourse that
constitute basic neighborliness, to such an extent that they feel civic
malaise despite economic prosperity. As social groups decline, so do
civic, religious, and work groups. But Putnam sees trends of both
collapse and renewal in civic engagement and seeks to avoid "simple
nostalgia." Indeed, he also examines the darker side of social capital,
including the compulsion to promote homogeneity. He cites generational
differences, demographic changes, technology, and increased mobility as
reasons for the decline in social organizations,but he notes trends in
technology that spur the reformulating of social groups as well as
growth in such mass-membership organizations as the American
Association of Retired Persons. Finally, he suggests how the nation can
reengage citizens and improve its investment in social capital."
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.
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Architecture: The Natural and the Manmade |
Scully,
Vincent
(St. Martins Press, 1993)
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Book review excerpted from Kirkus Review of Books:
"A brilliant distillation of the ideas of the man called by Philip
Johnson "the most influential architecture teacher ever." Here, Scully
(Art History/Yale; Pueblo, 1974) surveys with charm, eloquence, and
philosophical reflection the history of the symbolic structures that
mediate between the human beings who created and use them and the
natural world. Scully's major theme is that architecture either
imitates natural forms, as in pre-Hellenic Greece and in early as well
as contemporary America, or contrasts with them, separating humans from
nature, as in classical Greece and Rome, Renaissance Italy and France,
and 18th-century England. Starting with a lyrical description of the
skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan, drawing analogies with the sacred
mountains and building of the Southwest Indians, he tours with
pleasure, insight, and familiarity the Acropolis, the pyramids and the
Romanesque Hagia Sophia, leading to the achievement of the Gothic
cathedral--which Scully sees as an incarnation of the City of God and
the human body, indeed of "multiple truths," a cumulative concept that,
he says, "human beings seem afraid to acknowledge." He expresses this
syncretism in his vision of Chartres: "It lifts itself singing out of
the wheat, within which the poppies, the blood of Adonis, grow." In
spite of his eclecticism, Scully excludes from his architectural
pantheon the "brutalist buildings" of the International School and Le
Corbusier because, he says, they have no human relevance. Throughout,
Scully reveals himself as a gifted writer, rising from a crisp
structural analysis of Notre Dame to an incantatory reading of a whole
urban landscape, coming to rest on the ultimate meaning of the Vietnam
Memorial in D.C., designed by his own student Maya Lin. In its
interaction between the living and the dead, between nature and
humanity, the memorial is very much a reflection of Scully's teaching.
Thoughtful, passionate, and visually exciting--a work that will
unquestionably encourage others both to create meaningful monuments,
buildings, gardens and to understand them. (Over 500 illustrations,
including 200 color and 200 b&w photographs.)"
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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City: Rediscovering the Center |
Whyte,
William
(Anchor Books, 1990)
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In a challenging and provocative book, William Whyte, author of the
classic The Organization Man, explores the influence of public spaces
on the people who use them. In his exploration of pedestrian behavior
and urban dynamics, he calls on city planners to provide functional,
pleasant places to work. The result of William Whyte's research is an
extremely human, often amusing look at what goes on in our cities'
streets.
To peruse our complete recommended reading list, please click here.
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