CityReads | The Top Urban Planning Books of 2021

Brasuell et al. 城读 2022-07-13

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The Top Urban Planning Books of 2021

Planetizen releases its annual list of top urban planning books of 2021.

James Brasuell, Josh Stephens, Diana Ionescu. November 26, 2021. The Top Urban Planning Books of 2021.

Source:

https://www.planetizen.com/features/115397-top-urban-planning-books-2021

1. Charles Marohn, 2021. Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, Willey.

In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, renowned speaker and author of Strong Towns Charles L. Marohn Jr. delivers an accessible and engaging exploration of America's transportation system, laying bare the reasons why it no longer works as it once did, and how to modernize transportation to better serve local communities.

You'll discover real-world examples of poor design choices and how those choices have dramatic and tragic effects on the lives of the people who use them. You'll also find case studies and examples of design improvements that have revitalized communities and improved safety.

This important book shows you:

The values of the transportation professions, how they are applied in the design process, and how those priorities differ from those of the public.

How the standard approach to transportation ensures the maximum amount of traffic congestion possible is created each day, and how to fight that congestion on a budget.

Bottom-up techniques for spending less and getting higher returns on transportation projects, all while improving quality of life for residents.

2. Gene Slater. 2021. Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregate Housing and Divide America. Heyday.

Freedom to Discriminate uncovers realtors' definitive role in segregating America and shaping modern conservative ideology. Drawing on confidential documents from leaders of the real estate industry, Gene Slater reveals how realtors systematically created and justified residential segregation.

Using confidential documents and communications between real estate industry leaders, Slater shows how the California realtor lobby conspired to legalize residential discrimination and entrench the freedom to exclude as an essential American right tied to the sanctity of private property. Through their support of California's Proposition 14 and then-governor Ronald Reagan, realtors built a discriminatory system that had a lasting impact on the entire country.

3. Sekou Cooke. 2021. Hip Hop Architecture. Bloomsbury.

Hip-Hop Architecture outlines a powerful new manifesto-the voice of the underrepresented, marginalized, and voiceless within the discipline. Exploring the production of spaces, buildings, and urban environments that embody the creative energies in hip-hop, it is a newly expanding design philosophy which sees architecture as a distinct part of hip-hop's cultural expression, and which uses hip-hop as a lens through which to provoke new architectural ideas.

Examining the present and the future of Hip-Hop Architecture, the book also explores its historical antecedents and its theory, placing it in a wider context both within architecture and within Black and African American movements. Throughout, the work is illustrated with inspirational case studies of architectural projects and creative practices, and interspersed with interludes and interviews with key architects, designers, and academics in the field.

4. Mariana Mogilevuch. 2020. The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay's New York. University of Minnesota Press.

As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with "urban crisis", the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) experimented with a broad array of projects in open spaces to affirm the value of city life. Mariana Mogilevich provides a fascinating history of a watershed moment when designers, government administrators, and residents sought to remake the city in the image of a diverse, free, and democratic society.

New pedestrian malls, residential plazas, playgrounds in vacant lots, and parks on postindustrial waterfronts promised everyday spaces for play, social interaction, and participation in the life of the city. Drawing on extensive archival research, site work, interviews, and the analysis of film and photographs, The Invention of Public Space considers familiar figures, such as William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, in a new light and foregrounds the important work of landscape architects Paul Friedberg and Lawrence Halprin and the architects of New York City's Urban Design Group.

The Invention of Public Space brings together psychology, politics, and design to uncover a critical moment of transformation in our understanding of city life and reveals the emergence of a concept of public space that remains today a powerful, if unrealized, aspiration.

5. Simon Winchester. 2021. Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. HarperCollins.

The question of land—how we understand it, who controls it, how it's been distributed/claimed/seized historically, and how climate change will alter it—is a crucial one. Simon Winchester's new book Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World attempts to answer these questions.

In this book, Winchester examines our dueling impulses for appropriation and exploitation, on the one hand, and stewardship and restoration, on the other, tracing our relationship to land from the dawn of agriculture to the current age. Moving across varied histories and geographies, he offers us one case study after another of how the once seemingly inexhaustible surface of the Earth has devolved into a commodity, the ultimate object of contestation and control.

6. Ben Wilson. 2020. Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention. Doubleday.

During the two hundred millennia of humanity's existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. From their very beginnings, cities created such a flourishing of human endeavor—new professions, new forms of art, worship and trade—that they kick-started civilization. Guiding us through the centuries, Wilson reveals the innovations nurtured by the inimitable energy of human beings together: civics in the agora of Athens, global trade in ninth-century Baghdad, finance in the coffeehouses of London, domestic comforts in the heart of Amsterdam, peacocking in Belle Époque Paris. In the modern age, the skyscrapers of New York City inspired utopian visions of community design, while the trees of twenty-first-century Seattle and Shanghai point to a sustainable future in the age of climate change. Page-turning, irresistible, and rich with engrossing detail, Metropolis is a brilliant demonstration that the story of human civilization is the story of cities.

7. Kim Stanley Robinson. 2020. The Ministry for the Future. Orbit Books.

The Ministry for the Future marks the first appearance of a work of fiction on the Planetizen Top Books list, but describing this book as any one genre is too reductive to be fair. The book includes nature writing, science fiction, and creative exposition. Throughout the genre-shifting, Robinson grounds the book in a holistic vision for the future of a world in the grips of climate change. It takes a mode of imagination that borders on science fiction to imagine a humanity actually doing something to end climate emissions and reverse the effects of sea-level rise, mass migration, and extreme weather. An opening passage about a heat wave in Northern India that kills 20 million people is so effectively brutal that it's hard to imagine the reader making it through the chapter without immediately reconsidering their lifestyle choices.

The book can be classified as a planning book because like any good planning effort, it moves from assessment, to vision making, to implementation. The book's vignette-style chapters allow for quick transition between each of these modes, creating a holistic, expansive view of climate change. You'll look into corners of the world and a changing climate that you never imagined as consequences for your daily choices in diet, mobility, or consumption.

8. Ken Bernstein. 2021. Preserving Los Angeles. Angel City Press.

Los Angeles has developed one of the most successful historic preservation programs in the nation, culminating with the completion of the nation's most ambitious citywide survey of historic resources. Across the city, historic preservation is now transforming Los Angeles, while also pointing the way for other cities to use preservation to revitalize their neighborhoods and build community. Preserving Los Angeles: How Historic Places Can Transform America's Cities, written by Ken Bernstein, who oversees Los Angeles's Office of Historic Resources, tells this under-appreciated L.A. story: how historic preservation has revived neighborhoods, created a Downtown renaissance, and guided the future of the city. With more than 300 full-color images, Preserving Los Angeles is an authoritative chronicle of urban transformation, a guide for citizens and urban practitioners alike who hope to preserve the unique culture of their own cities.

9. Ryanne Pilgeram. 2021. Pushed Out: Contested Development and Rural Gentrification in the US West. University of Washington Press.

What happens to rural communities when their traditional economic base collapses? When new money comes in, who gets left behind? Pushed Out offers a rich portrait of Dover, Idaho, whose transformation from "thriving timber mill town" to "economically depressed small town" to "trendy second-home location" over the past four decades embodies the story and challenges of many other rural communities.

Sociologist Ryanne Pilgeram explores the structural forces driving rural gentrification and examines how social and environmental inequality are written onto these landscapes. Pilgeram weaves together history, interviews, legal documents, and planning theory to describe the redevelopment of Dover and analyze the complex processes that drove the redevelopment. Using David Harvey's "spatial fix" theory, which centers geographic expansion as necessary to the growth of capitalism, Pilgeram positions Dover's story as "not an aberration but rather the product of a capitalist system reorganizing its exploitation of human and natural resources."

Pushed Out sheds light on the transition being made––willingly or not––by small towns and rural communities that can no longer rely on their original, extractive economic base. In this way, the book is a timely reminder that the forces that drive urbanization, economic development, and migration affect communities far beyond the boundaries of major metropolitan areas.

10. Todd Litman. 2021. New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies. Island Press.

New transportation technologies can expand our world. During the last century, motorized modes increased our mobility by an order of magnitude, providing large benefits, but also imposing huge costs on individuals and communities. Faster and more expensive modes were favored over those that are more affordable, efficient, and healthy. As new transportation innovations become available, from e-scooters to autonomous cars, how do we make decisions that benefit our communities?

In New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies, transportation expert Todd Litman examines 12 emerging transportation modes and services that are likely to significantly affect our lives: bike- and car-sharing, micro-mobilities, ride-hailing and micro-transit, public transit innovations, telework, autonomous and electric vehicles, air taxis, mobility prioritization, and logistics management. These innovations allow people to scoot, ride, and fly like never before, but can also impose significant costs on users and communities. Planners need detailed information on their potential benefits and impacts to make informed choices.

Litman critically evaluates these new technologies and services and provides practical guidance for optimizing them. He systematically examines how each New Mobility is likely to affect travel activity (how and how much people travel); consumer costs and affordability; roadway infrastructure design and costs; parking demand; land use development patterns; public safety and health; energy and pollution emissions; and economic opportunity and fairness.

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