Introducing Urbanism: Top Books for Curious Novices

In January, I asked Where readers and contributors what books they’d recommend to introduce the basic concepts of urbanism to curious, non-expert friends. I asked for a short list of accessible, concise books.

Since the initial query more than 30 titles have been suggested. Because I was already familiar with only a handful of the books, I headed to the library to get better acquainted with at least some of the other suggestions.

Based on that library visit, on posted comments from readers, on behind-the-scenes advice from Where contributors and my interpretation—from my own very amateurish (and American) perspective—of what counts as “accessible” and “concise,” here are five books about the basics of urbanism that I’d now recommend to relatively clueless, but curious friends.

Almost all of the links in this post connect to Google Book Search.

The Top 5

1. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961). At about 450 pages, “concise” is probably not the most apt description of this book. But, as this is the single best written, most accessible, most compelling book I’ve ever read about cities, I’m willing to forsake the concision criterion even in my first recommendation. If you want to know what can make cities pleasant, safe and interesting places to live, read this book. If you want to read one of the best non-fiction prose stylists of our time, read this book. It’s a classic, and deservedly so. As one Where reader put it: “It’s a great book for explaining why we care about all of this.”

2. The Option of Urbanism by Christopher Leinberger (2007). While not as fun to read as The Death and Life of Great American Cities or The Geography of Nowhere (see below), this slender volume briskly highlights difference between drivable sub-urban development and walkable urban development, and does a good job of explaining the benefits of walkable city neighborhoods. It’s good primer on the basics of density, zoning and the hidden subsidies fueling drivable sub-urban development.

3. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler (1993). This book is an exploration—and excoriation—of the rise of suburbia and sprawl. It also explains how the more traditional patterns and places of city life and country life are superior to the “geography of nowhere.” Accessible and ferocious.

4. Cities Back from the Edge by Roberta Gratz, with Norman Mintz (1998). According to a Where reader, this book is “in the spirit of Jacobs” and discusses “how existing cities can be improved with citizen participation in contrast to destructive master plans.” The book is filled with lots of specific ideas about how to improve downtown areas, all of them lavishly illustrated with real life examples from successful efforts in dozens of cities.

5. How Cities Work by Alex Marshall (2000). Squarely aimed at the lay person, this book seeks to discover what forces shape places and cities—and finds that one of the most powerful forces is political choices, particularly those having to do with transportation policy. A Where reader gave this recommendation: “It’s not comprehensive, of course, but it’s a good snack, possibly the kind that could interest a person in a larger meal.”

A Tall Stack of Other Suggestions

Many other titles were suggested. They’re all listed here in no particular order, with quoted comments—when available—from the Where readers and contributors who recommended them.

Cities of Tomorrow by Peter Hall is “a great history of urban planning, knowledge of which is essential for understanding modern cities.”

The Last Landscape by William Whyte “focuses on the benefits of relatively dense urban form.”

Good City Form by Kevin Lynch is a “very engaging overview of urban history and theory” with “compelling ideas for developing vibrant cities.”

The Granite Garden by Ann Whiston Spirn “introduces thoughtful ways of improving the relationships between cities and the ecosystems in which they’re built.”

Building Suburbia by Dolores Hayden covers the sociology and history of suburbia. “It's written in a way a layperson…can understand.”

Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred by Philip Bess “does a nice job” explaining “exactly why urban design matters.” It may not be a simple primer, but “a few of the chapters are perfect intros to the subject.”

The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999 by Ray Suarez is an “excellent introduction to the challenges experienced in aging, post-industrial cities, including Chicago, Cincinnati and Philadelphia.”

Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America by Gwendolyn Wright is “an essential resource for understanding the social movements and political processes that have shaped urban/suburban cultural landscapes.”

The Culture of Cities by Louis Mumford is a “great classic” by an “exceptional writer.” The book includes introductions to the ideas of Ebenezer Howard and Patrick Geddes, two influential early modern urban planners.

Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth Jackson “does a great job of explaining how we ended up with the urban landscape we have,” and is “very accessible, too.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=On0iJsl0HY4C

The Power Broker by Robert Caro, while “not short at all, reads like a novel” and “illustrates the state of city administration and urban planning during the past century better than anything else I’ve ever read.”

Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas and “On Liberty” by John Stuart Mill are good to read together because Koolhaas’s book “provides an essential perspective on why contemporary urbanism discussions are where they are today,” and Mill’s essay is a “classic for anyone who wants to learn about living with other people, things and places.”

Who's Afraid Of Niketown? by Friedrich von Borries “investigates the contemporary effect of global corporations on public space and urbanism.”

Books, essays, articles by J.B. Jackson because his “short, easily digestible” work “looks at cities and other environments in such a different way,” and “inspires people to think beyond the clichés.”

Psychogeography by Will Self is an “interesting anecdotal urbanist book.”

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon is “longish,” but provides historical perspective on urbanism issues.

The Essential William H. Whyte as a substitute for the out of print City: Rediscovering the Center by William H. Whyte.

"Junkspace" an essay by Rem Koolhaas.

A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb by Philip Langdon.

Poetics of Cities: Designing Neighborhoods that Work by Mike Greenberg.

The Living City: Thinking Big in a Small Way by Roberta Gratz.

To Scale: One Hundred Urban Plans by Eric Jenkins.

American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto by Sudhir Venkatesh.

Off The Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor by Sudhir Venkatesh.

(Photo from Flickr users danlorentz and docman. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Urban America, Urban World

Besides reveling in the renewed post-election America-philia as an American living abroad, I was happy to hear that less than a week after he became President-Elect, Barack Obama affirmed his campaign promise to create a federal Office of Urban Policy. As someone who has had her eye on urban denial in the developing world, I hadn't fully realized that the U.S. has yet to acknowledge our urban future.

The new federal office will be in charge of developing a comprehensive and targeted strategy for America’s cities and coordinating the work of agencies like the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Transportation, and Department of Labor. Given its title, I thought HUD may have been doing this job, but it seems to mostly ignore the second half of its name and focus overwhelmingly on homeownership and reluctantly on public housing programs. It also doesn't bode well that HUD’s secretary resigned in the very heat of the mortgage crisis in April amid corruption allegations.

In contrast to Obama's urban focus (his campaign website included sections on "Urban Policy" and "Poverty", as well as a fact sheet on his urban strategy), the McCain-Palin camp ignored cities altogether. Their campaign website didn’t seem to even have mentioned the word; instead, they listed the right to bear arms, national service, and a space program as key issues more worthy of discussion.

Here in India, the idea that this is at heart a rural country and that migrants who come to work in urban centers are "encroachers" who should by no means be encouraged to stay with luxuries like basic shelter or sanitation is a surprisingly deep-seated, although waning, attitude. Mahatma Gandhi's oft-repeated quote —"India is not to be found in its few cities but in the 700,000 villages" — is still re-printed on half-page spreads in The Times of India. All members of the elite Indian civil service, who will go on to fill the nation’s powerful bureaucratic posts, are required to first serve a term in a rural location. Domestic development efforts are still largely focused on rural areas. Many cities are implementing development plans that remain unchanged from when they were approved two decades earlier; some cities and states lack an urban policy altogether — especially one that affords due attention to their large poor populations.

A focus on rural development and denial of urbanization as a systemic and irreversible force is not unique to India. This remains the tenor of policy in most developing countries and, by some accounts, of international aid.

What exactly accounts for the deep-seated ambivalence of America towards its cities? The agrarian ideal (famously promoted by Thomas Jefferson) and resistance to the clogged metropolises of the Old World go back to the founding days of the United States. Frank Lloyd Wright and other intellectuals, as well as developers and the media, helped to reify suburbs as incubators for model families and idyllic town-country living. Activists like Lewis Mumford and Jacob Riis helped highlight the social ills bred by city life. Then, there's always been the "frontier mentality" encouraging us to spread out because he have so much darn land. White flight, the erosion of cities’ industrial cores, and the concentration of poverty and violence have helped give cities a bad name in the last quarter-century. It is well known that "inner-city" and "urban" have become euphemisms for “violent, poor and black.”

It is fitting that we elect an "urban" president the year we become an urban world. As Obama realizes, America's cities need attention because they "house over 80 percent of the people, businesses, universities and cultural institutions… and produce well over 85 percent of the nation's wealth." In a globalized world, cities are on their way to eclipsing countries as centers of wealth and power. They are a locus of productivity, culture and innovation, but also of poverty and inequality.

Obama's urban sensitivity may have come from his days as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago — or perhaps from a cursory glance at the general state of affairs in the world — but I hope it also signals a shift on a larger scale away from idealization of suburbs and bad-mouthing of cities: not only for the sake of nurturing our own cities, but also for directing programs and resources to address the effects of urbanization around the world.

(Photos from Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Pitch Blog)