From office towers in the central business district to commercial strips in the edge city, Ford shows how changes in the built environment parallel changes in urban economies and human culture. Focusing on ordinary structures rather than famous landmarks, the book aims to provide a guide to understanding the changing character of any urban landscape.

    Nelessen advocates design by democracy: involving citizens and public officals in planning and designing their own communities. He describes techniques planners can use to help residents create a common vision. Nelessen has successfully used these techniques the Visual Preference Survey and Hands-on Model Building Workshop in seminars and workshops for more than 25 years. Visions for a New American Dream outlines a seven step planning and design process for creating three basic types of traditional small communities: hamlets, villages, and neighborhoods. Nelessen presents 10 design principles ranging from humanism and ecological responsibility to open space design and community focus to help planners and designers turn a community's common vision into reality. Visions for a New American Dream is extensively illustrated with photographs, diagrams, and maps. This is must reading for all planners, designers, public officals, and citizens who want to envision and direct the future of their communities."

    This collection of original essays, written by experts with hands-on policy experience, explores a promising alternative to housing programs that subsidize either public ownership or private, for-profit ownership: third sector housing. In his comprehensive introduction, editor John Emmeus Davis distinguishes three characteristics of third sector housing: it is privately owned, socially oriented, and price-restricted. Much of it is being produced by nonprofit, community-based organizations with municipal support, but many cities have also used mechanisms like linkage and inclusionary zoning to force for-profit developers into providing housing with lasting affordability. The ten essays comprising The Affordable City examine the benefits, struggles, and political risks involved in moving toward this private, nonmarket approach to affordable housing. The authors, all social activists, offer new insights into the current debates over the privatization of public services and the future of public innovation.