Best of
Urban-Planning

2017

How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood


Peter Moskowitz - 2017
    It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much-maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance.Peter Moskowitz's How to Kill a City takes readers from the kitchen tables of hurting families who can no longer afford their homes to the corporate boardrooms and political backrooms where destructive housing policies are devised. Along the way, Moskowitz uncovers the massive, systemic forces behind gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. The deceptively simple question of who can and cannot afford to pay the rent goes to the heart of America's crises of race and inequality. In the fight for economic opportunity and racial justice, nothing could be more important than housing.A vigorous, hard-hitting expose, How to Kill a City reveals who holds power in our cities-and how we can get it back

How Cycling Can Save the World


Peter Walker - 2017
    Car culture has ensnared much of the world--and it's no wonder. Convenience and comfort (as well as some clever lobbying) have made the car the transportation method of choice for generations. But as the world evolves, the high cost of the automobile is made clearer--with its dramatic effects on pollution, the way it cuts people off from their communities, and the alarming rate at which people are injured and killed in crashes. Walker argues that the simplest way to tackle many of these problems at once is with one of humankind's most perfect inventions--the bicycle. In How Cycling Can Save the World, Walker takes readers on a tour of cities like Copenhagen and Utrecht, where everyday cycling has taken root, demonstrating cycling's proven effect on reducing smog and obesity, and improving quality of life and mental health. Interviews with public figures--such as Janette Sadik-Khan, who led the charge to create more pedestrian- and cyclist- friendly infrastructure in New York City--provide case studies on how it can be done, and prove that you can make a big change with just a few cycling lanes and a paradigm shift. Meticulously researched and incredibly inspiring, How Cycling Can Save the World delivers on its lofty promise and leads readers to the realization that cycling could not only save the world, but have a lasting and positive impact on their own lives.

Transforming Communities: How People Like You Are Healing Their Neighborhoods


Sandhya Jha - 2017
    When there's so much conflict around the country and around the corner, it's easy to feel overwhelmed, powerless, and helpless. What can one person do to make a difference?Here's the good news. Millions of everyday people are ready to step into their power to transform their communities. And you are one of them. Take heart and be inspired by real stories of ordinary people who took action and changed their corner of the world, one block at a time. Equal parts inspiration, education, and Do-It-Yourself, Transforming Communities by veteran community activist Sandhya Jha will open your eyes to the world-healing potential within you, and give you the vision, the tools, and the encouragement to start transforming your neighborhood, one person at a time.

Flight Path: A Search for Roots Beneath the World's Busiest Airport


Hannah Palmer - 2017
    Having uprooted herself from a promising career in publishing in her adopted Brooklyn), Palmer embarks on a quest to determine the fate of her lost homesand of a community that has been erased by unchecked Southern progress. Lyrically chronicling the overlooked devastation and beauty along the airport's fringe communities in the tradition of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Leslie Jamison, Palmer unearths the startling narratives about race, power, and place that continue to shape American cities. Part memoir, part urban history, Flight Path: A Search for Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport is a riveting account of one young mother's attempt at making a home where there's little home left.

A Place for All People


Richard Rogers - 2017
    He was educated in the UK and then at the Yale School of Architecture, where he met Norman Foster. Alongside his partners, he has been responsible for some of the most radical designs of the twentieth century, including the Pompidou Centre, the Millennium Dome, the Bordeaux Law Courts, Leadenhall Tower and Lloyd's of London. He chaired the Urban Task Force, which pioneered the return to urban living in the UK, was chief architectural advisor to the Mayor of London, and has also advised the mayors of Barcelona and Paris. He is married to Ruth Rogers, chef and owner of the River Café in London. He was knighted in 1991 by Queen Elizabeth II, and made a life peer in 1996. He has been awarded the Légion d'Honneur, the Royal Institute of British Architects' Royal Gold Medal, and the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour.Richard Brown is Research Director at Centre for London, the independent think tank for London. He was previously Strategy Director at London Legacy Development Corporation, Manager of the Mayor of London's Architecture and Urbanism Unit, and an urban regeneration researcher at the Audit Commission.

Cities Alive: Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and the Roots of the New Urban Renaissance


Michael W. Mehaffy - 2017
     This book is a lively, readable account of two revealing figures in the history of that renaissance: the urban economist Jane Jacobs and the architect Christopher Alexander. Their key insights have shaped several generations of scholars, professionals, and activists. However, as the book argues, this renaissance is still immature, and more must be done to achieve its promise -- especially in an age of rapid, often sprawling urbanization. The author is a noted scholar on both Jacobs and Alexander, and a participant in the development of the "New Urban Agenda," a historic United Nations agreement emphasizing the pivotal role of cities and towns in meeting the challenges of the future. As the book documents, Jacobs and Alexander played key roles in formulating the conceptual insights behind the New Urban Agenda, and they continue to offer us crucial implementation lessons for the years ahead. This book is ideal for students, professionals, government officials, activists, and anyone who is interested in the future of cities. The author, Michael W. Mehaffy, Ph.D., is currently Senior Researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and Director of the Future of Places Research Network. He is a popular educator, speaker and author with periodic appointments in seven graduate institutions in six countries, and a consultant in sustainable urban development with an international practice. This is his third book.

Trespassers?: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia


Willow Lung-Amam - 2017
    Over the past several decades, the region's booming tech economy spurred rapid population growth, increased racial diversity, and prompted an influx of immigration, especially among highly skilled and educated migrants from China, Taiwan, and India. At the same time, the response to these newcomers among long-time neighbors and city officials revealed complex attitudes in even the most well-heeled and diverse communities.Trespassers? takes an intimate look at the everyday life and politics inside Silicon Valley against a backdrop of these dramatic demographic shifts. At the broadest level, it raises questions about the rights of diverse populations to their own piece of the suburban American Dream. It follows one community over several decades as it transforms from a sleepy rural town to a global gateway and one of the nation's largest Asian American-majority cities. There, it highlights the passionate efforts of Asian Americans to make Silicon Valley their home by investing in local schools, neighborhoods, and shopping centers. It also provides a textured tale of the tensions that emerge over this suburb's changing environment. With vivid storytelling, Trespassers? uncovers suburbia as an increasingly important place for immigrants and minorities to register their claims for equality and inclusion.

Left Bank of the Hudson: Jersey City and the Artists of 111 1st Street


David J. Goodwin - 2017
    Lorillard Tobacco Company warehouse. Over the next two decades, an eclectic collection of painters, sculptors, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and writers dreamt and toiled within the building's labyrinthine halls. The local arts scene flourished, igniting hope that Jersey City would emerge as the next grassroots center of the art world. However, a rising real estate market coupled with a provincial political establishment threatened the community at 111 1st Street. The artists found themselves entangled in a long, complicated, and vicious fight for their place in the building and for the physical survival of 111 1st Street itself, a site that held so much potential, so much promise for Jersey City. Left Bank of the Hudson offers a window into the demographic, political, and socio-economic changes experienced by Jersey City during the last thirty years. Documenting the narrative of 111 1st Street as an act of cultural preservation, author David J. Goodwin's well-researched and significant contribution addresses the question of the role of artists in economically improving cities. As a Jersey City resident, Goodwin applies his knowledge of the city's rich history of political malfeasance and corruption, including how auspicious plans for a waterfront arts enclave were repeatedly bungled by a provincial-minded city administration. In writing this story, Goodwin interviewed thirteen artists and residents, two businesses, three government officials, and five non-profits, civic organizations, and community activists. The book chronologically explores the history and business of the P. Lorillard Tobacco Company, its evolution into a bustling arts community, the battle to preserve the warehouse as a historic structure, and the lessons to be drawn from the loss and ultimate demolition of the building in 2007, as well as the present state of the neighborhood. Setting the facts straight for future generations, Left Bank of the Hudson provides an illustrative lesson to government officials, scholars, students, activists, and everyday citizens attempting to navigate the -rediscovery- of American cities.

Playground of My Mind


Julia Jacquette - 2017
    Inspired by the adventure playgrounds from her youth growing up in New York City, the painter Julia Jacquette explores the brightly colored structures of the play spaces and the surrounding landscape of the city in Playground of My Mind. With compelling illustrations and personal narrative, this book features adventure playgrounds created by architects Richard Dattner, M. Paul Friedberg, the partnership Ross Ryan Jacquette in New York City, and Aldo van Eyck in Amsterdam. These structures encouraged constructive, imaginative play and gave renewed life to utopian notions of American and European modernist architecture. Playground of My Mind reflects upon the period of the 1960s and 1970s which was a tumultuous time of social change and activism in New York City and throughout the United States. While considering the conflicted emotions that envelop idealized aspects of the past, this unique book captures the nostalgia for a bygone era of New York life in vivid detail. Published in association with the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in association with the exhibition, Julia Jacquette: Unrequited and Acts of Play.

Renovate Innovate: Reclaimed and Upcycled Homes


Antonia Edwards - 2017
    Antonia Edwards' first book, Upcyclist, explored how artists and designers around the globe transform castoff materials into elegant domestic furnishings. Now, she turns her sights to the homes themselves in this breathtaking selection of unique buildings and interiors. Divided into three sections--Reclaimed, Revived, and Reimagined--Renovate Innovate offers vibrant photographs and fascinating descriptions of its subjects. Projects in the Reclaimed chapter include environmentalist Peter Bahouth's highly coveted three-unit tree house nestled in the Atlanta woods and the Love Art Studio in Phuket, Thailand, which is constructed entirely from bits of driftwood. The Revived section features a traditional Slovenian barn, rescued from disrepair and converted into a light-filled holiday home with beautiful Alpine views, and a Milanese apartment furnished with striking vintage finds. Reimagined takes readers from Melbourne to Madrid, Tribeca to the English countryside, showcasing a 7,500 square-foot reservoir converted into a trendy modern residence and a former cement factory that has found new life as architect Ricardo Bofill's famed studio and living space. This international sampling of stunning new buildings and renovations will inspire readers, designers, architects, and dreamers alike to reimagine lived in spaces.

Rio 2016: Olympic Myths, Hard Realities


Andrew Zimbalist - 2017
    Although the games were held without major incident, the economic, environmental, political, and social outcomes for Brazil ranged from disappointing to devastating. Corruption scandals trimmed the fat profits that many local real estate developers had envisioned, and the local government was driven into bankruptcy. At the other end of the economic spectrum, some 77,000 residents of Rio's poorest neighborhoods—the favelas—were evicted and forced to move, in many cases as far as 20 or 30 miles to the west. Hosting the games ultimately cost Brazil $20 billion, with little positive to show for the investment. Rio 2016 assembles the views of leading experts on Brazil and the Olympics into a clear-eyed assessment of the impact of the games on Brazil in general and on the lives of Cariocas, as Rio's residents are known. Edited by sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, the other contributors include Juliana Barbassa, Jules Boykoff, Jamil Chade, Stephen Essex, Renata Latuf, and Theresa Williamson.

Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas: Linkages between Science, Policy and Practice (Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions)


Nadja Kabisch - 2017
    Emphasis is given to the potential of nature-based approaches to create multiple-benefits for society.The expert contributions present recommendations for creating synergies between ongoing policy processes, scientific programmes and practical implementation of climate change and nature conservation measures in global urban areas.Except where otherwise noted, this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

Who Cleans the Park?: Public Work and Urban Governance in New York City


John Krinsky - 2017
    Hundreds of millions of dollars—both public and private—fund urban jewels like Manhattan’s Central Park. Keeping the polish on landmark parks and in neighborhood playgrounds alike means that the trash must be picked up, benches painted, equipment tested, and leaves raked. Bringing this often-invisible work into view, however, raises profound questions for citizens of cities. In Who Cleans the Park? John Krinsky and Maud Simonet explain that the work of maintaining parks has intersected with broader trends in welfare reform, civic engagement, criminal justice, and the rise of public-private partnerships. Welfare-to-work trainees, volunteers, unionized city workers (sometimes working outside their official job descriptions), staff of nonprofit park “conservancies,” and people sentenced to community service are just a few of the groups who routinely maintain parks. With public services no longer being provided primarily by public workers, Krinsky and Simonet argue, the nature of public work must be reevaluated. Based on four years of fieldwork in New York City, Who Cleans the Park? looks at the transformation of public parks from the ground up. Beginning with studying changes in the workplace, progressing through the public-private partnerships that help maintain the parks, and culminating in an investigation of a park’s contribution to urban real-estate values, the book unearths a new urban order based on nonprofit partnerships and a rhetoric of responsible citizenship, which at the same time promotes unpaid work, reinforces workers’ domination at the workplace, and increases the value of park-side property. Who Cleans the Park? asks difficult questions about who benefits from public work, ultimately forcing us to think anew about the way we govern ourselves, with implications well beyond the five boroughs.

Suburban Planet: Making the World Urban from the Outside in


Roger Keil - 2017
    While the massive wave of present urbanization is often referred to as an 'urban revolution', most of this startling urban growth worldwide is happening at the margins of cities. This book is about the process that creates the global urban periphery - suburbanization - and the ways of life - suburbanisms - we encounter there. Richly detailed with examples from around the world, the book argues that suburbanization is a global process and part of the extended urbanization of the planet. This includes the gated communities of elites, the squatter settlements of the poor, and many built forms and ways of life in-between. The reality of life in the urban century is suburban: most of the earth's future 10 billion inhabitants will not live in conventional cities but in suburban constellations of one kind or another. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre's demand not to give up urban theory when the city in its classical form disappears, this book is a challenge to urban thought more generally as it invites the reader to reconsider the city from the outside in.

Bike Boom: The Unexpected Resurgence of Cycling


Carlton Reid - 2017
    While many global cities are seeing the number of bike commuters increase, this future is still far away; at times, urban cycling seems to be fighting for its very survival. Will we ever witness a true “bike boom” in cities? What can we learn from past successes and failures to make cycling safer, easier, and more accessible? Use of bicycles in America and Britain fell off a cliff in the 1950s and 1960s thanks to the rapid rise in car ownership. Urban planners and politicians predicted that cycling would wither to nothing, and they did their level best to bring about this extinction by catering to only motorists. But in the 1970s, something strange happened—bicycling bounced back, first in America and then in Britain. In Bike Boom, journalist Carlton Reid uses history to shine a spotlight on the present and demonstrates how bicycling has the potential to grow even further, if the right measures are put in place by the politicians and planners of today and tomorrow. He explores the benefits and challenges of cycling, the roles of infrastructure and advocacy, and what we can learn from cities that have successfully supported and encouraged bike booms, including London; Davis, California; Montreal; Stevenage; Amsterdam; New York; and Copenhagen.Given that today’s global bicycling “boom” has its roots in the early 1970s, Reid draws lessons from that period.  At that time, the Dutch were investing in bike infrastructure and advocacy— the US and the UK had the choice to follow the Dutch example, but didn’t. Reid sets out to discover what we can learn from the history of bike “booms” in this entertaining and thought-provoking book.

Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places


Robert Cervero - 2017
    The consequences are measured in smoggy air basins, sprawling suburbs, unsafe pedestrian environments, and despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investments, a failure to stem traffic congestion. Every year our current transportation paradigm generates more than 1.25 million fatalities directly through traffic collisions. Worldwide, 3.2 million people died prematurely in 2010 because of air pollution, four times as many as a decade earlier. Instead of planning primarily for mobility, our cities should focus on the safety, health, and access of the people in them.  Beyond Mobility is about prioritizing the needs and aspirations of people and the creation of great places. This is as important, if not more important, than expediting movement. A stronger focus on accessibility and place creates better communities, environments, and economies. Rethinking how projects are planned and designed in cities and suburbs needs to occur at multiple geographic scales, from micro-designs (such as parklets), corridors (such as road-diets), and city-regions (such as an urban growth boundary). It can involve both software (a shift in policy) and hardware (a physical transformation). Moving beyond mobility must also be socially inclusive, a significant challenge in light of the price increases that typically result from creating higher quality urban spaces.   There are many examples of communities across the globe working to create a seamless fit between transit and surrounding land uses, retrofit car-oriented suburbs, reclaim surplus or dangerous roadways for other activities, and revitalize neglected urban spaces like abandoned railways in urban centers.   The authors draw on experiences and data from a range of cities and countries around the globe in making the case for moving beyond mobility. Throughout the book, they provide an optimistic outlook about the potential to transform places for the better. Beyond Mobility celebrates the growing demand for a shift in global thinking around place and mobility in creating better communities, environments, and economies.

After Great Disasters: An In-Depth Analysis of How Six Countries Managed Community Recovery


Laurie A. Johnson - 2017
    This book and its companion Policy Focus Report identify lessons from different parts of the world to help communities and government leaders better organize for recovery after future disasters. The authors consider the processes and outcomes of community recovery and reconstruction following major disasters in six countries: China, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. If done well, reconstruction can help break the cycle of disaster-related impacts and losses, and improve the resilience of a city or region.

Taken for a Ride: Grounding Neoliberalism, Precarious Labour, and Public Transport in an African Metropolis


Matteo Rizzo - 2017
    Taken for a Ride addresses both, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and charting its public transport system's journey from public to private provision. Thisnew addition to the Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research and Practice in International Development Studies series investigates this shift alongside the increasing deregulation of the sector and the resulting chaotic modality of public transport. It reviews state attempts to regain control overpublic transport and documents how informal wage relations prevailed in the sector. The changing political attitude of workers towards employers and the state is investigated: from an initial incapacity to respond to exploitation, to the political organisation and unionisation which won workersconcessions on labour rights. A longitudinal study of workers throws light on patterns of occupational mobility in the sector. The book ends with an analysis of the political and economic interests that shaped the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit in Dar es Salaam, and local resistance to it.Taken for a Ride is an interdisciplinary political economy of public transport, exposing the limitations of market fundamentalist and postcolonial appraoches to the study of economic informality, the urban experience in developing countries, and their failure to locate the agency of the urban poorwithin their economic and political structures. It is both a contribution to and a call for the contextualised study of neoliberalism.

Data and the City


Rob Kitchin - 2017
    Recently, we have entered the age of big data, and now many aspects of everyday urban life are being captured as data and city management is mediated through data-driven technologies. Data and the City is the first edited collection to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of how this new era of urban big data is reshaping how we come to know and govern cities, and the implications of such a transformation. This book looks at the creation of real-time cities and data-driven urbanism and considers the relationships at play. By taking a philosophical, political, practical and technical approach to urban data, the authors analyse the ways in which data is produced and framed within socio-technical systems. They then examine the constellation of existing and emerging urban data technologies. The volume concludes by considering the social and political ramifications of data-driven urbanism, questioning whom it serves and for what ends.This book, the companion volume to 2016's Code and the City, offers the first critical reflection on the relationship between data, data practices and the city, and how we come to know and understand cities through data. It will be crucial reading for those who wish to understand and conceptualize urban big data, data-driven urbanism and the development of smart cities.

Re USA: Toolkit for Post Industrial Cities


Matteo Robiglio - 2017
    

Urshalim: Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, 1967-2017


Nir Hasson - 2017
    

And Now: Architecture Against a Developer Presidency (Essays on the Occasion of Trump's Inauguration)


James Graham - 2017
    Trump as the president of the United States of America have provoked an unprecedented intensity of reflection in virtually all academic disciplines. The professions of architecture and planning, faced with the phenomenon of a self-proclaimed "Builder-in-Chief," have found themselves facing a series of fundamental questions, both old and new. How should we think, teach, and practice under a developer presidency? What sort of walls will we and won't we choose to build? What are our commitments of critical thought, and what obligations should we turn our energies toward?The essays gathered in And Now explore the nature of architecture's many long-standing complicities. Architecture coordinates colossal expenditures (of material, of energy); it scripts forms of labor (in its construction, in its operation, and in the programs it houses); and it is both a repository and generator of capital. Architecture participates, centrally, in defining modes of life, whether for the privileged or the dispossessed--designing and building the boundaries between the "haves" and the "have-nots." This fundamental reality of architectural practice need not inspire either nihilism or defensiveness but should rather be understood, quite simply, as the terrain we navigate. Naming these complicities and the injustices they perpetuate is a first step toward addressing them.And Now includes essays by Ananya Roy, Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, Laura Kunreuther, Ann Lui, Alexandra Delano Alonso, Manuel Shvartzberg Carrio, Shela Shekh, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Rebecca Choi, Rachel Weber, and others.

Sustainable Stormwater Management: A Landscape-Driven Approach to Planning and Design


Tom Liptan - 2017
    No additional infrastructure is required—the water systems are in place, naturally. But once the natural environment has been disrupted by human development, stormwater becomes an issue that requires intervention and ongoing management. Sustainable Stormwater Management, by leading expert Tom Liptan, provides landscape students and professionals with a green approach to landscape design. The hardworking book includes comprehensive information on how to design, install, and maintain a landscape for sustainable stormwater management. It addresses stormwater in the urban environment, relevant environmental and economic policies, and shares case studies of exemplary projects from around the world.

A Guide for the Idealist: Launching and Navigating Your Planning Career


Richard W Willson - 2017
    Speaking to urban and regional planners and those in related fields, the book provides tools for the reader to make good choices, practice effectively, and find meaning in planning work. Built around concepts of idealism and realism, the book takes on the gap between the expectations and the constraints of practice. How to make an impact? How to decide when to compromise and when to fight for a core value?The book advises on career launching issues: doubt, decision-making, assessing types of work and work settings, and career planning. Then it explains principled adaptability as professional style. Subsequent chapters address early-practice issues: being right, avoiding wrong, navigating managers, organizations and teams, working with mentors, and understanding the career journey. Underpinning these dimensions is a call for planners to reflect on what they are doing as they are doing it. The advice provided is based on the experience of a planning professor who has also practiced planning throughout his career. The book includes personal anecdotes from the author and other planners about how they launched and managed their careers, and discussion/reflection questions for the reader to consider.

Elements of Access: Transport Planning for Engineers, Transport Engineering for Planners


David M. Levinson - 2017
    Transport cannot be understood without reference to the location of activities (land use), and vice versa. To understand one requires understanding the other. However, for a variety of historical reasons, transport and land use are quite divorced in practice. Typical transport engineers only touch land use planning courses once at most, and only then if they attend graduate school. Land use planners understand transport the way everyone does, from the perspective of the traveler, not of the system, and are seldom exposed to transport aside from, at best, a lone course in graduate school. This text aims to bridge the chasm, helping engineers understand the elements of access that are associated not only with traffic, but also with human behavior and activity location, and helping planners understand the technology underlying transport engineering, the processes, equations, and logic that make up the transport half of the accessibility measure. It aims to help both communicate accessibility to the public.