The 77-year old grandfather was struck in a hit-and-run crash while trying to cross a high-speed, six-lane road without crosswalks near his son’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. He was one of the more than 6,000 people killed while walking in America in 2018. In the last ten years, there has been a 50 percent increase in pedestrian deaths. The tragedy of traffic violence has barely registered with the media and wider culture. Disproportionately the victims are like Duarte-Rodriguez—immigrants, the poor, and people of color. They have largely been blamed and forgotten. In Right of Way, journalist Angie Schmitt shows us that deaths like Duarte-Rodriguez’s are not unavoidable “accidents.” They don’t happen because of jaywalking or distracted walking. They are predictable, occurring in stark geographic patterns that tell a story about systemic inequality. These deaths are the forgotten faces of an increasingly urgent public-health crisis that we have the tools, but not the will, to solve.  Schmitt examines the possible causes of the increase in pedestrian deaths as well as programs and movements that are beginning to respond to the epidemic. Her investigation unveils why pedestrians are dying—and she demands action.  Right of Way is a call to reframe the problem, acknowledge the role of racism and classism in the public response to these deaths, and energize advocacy around road safety. Ultimately, Schmitt argues that we need improvements in infrastructure and changes to policy to save lives.Right of Way unveils a crisis that is rooted in both inequality and the undeterred reign of the automobile in our cities. It challenges us to imagine and demand safer and more equitable cities, where no one is expendable.

    Vouchers are meant to provide the poor with increased choice in the private rental marketplace, enabling access to safe neighborhoods with good schools and higher-paying jobs. But do they?The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known as "Section 8," and how it shapes the lives of families living in a Baltimore neighborhood called Park Heights. Eva Rosen tells stories about the daily lives of homeowners, voucher holders, renters who receive no housing assistance, and the landlords who provide housing. While vouchers are a powerful tool with great promise, she demonstrates how the housing policy can replicate the very inequalities it has the power to solve.Rosen spent more than a year living in Park Heights, sitting on front stoops, getting to know families, accompanying them on housing searches, speaking to landlords, and learning about the neighborhood's history. Voucher holders disproportionately end up in this area despite rampant unemployment, drugs, crime, and abandoned housing. Exploring why they are unable to relocate to other neighborhoods, Rosen illustrates the challenges in obtaining vouchers and the difficulties faced by recipients in using them when and where they want to. Yet, despite the program's real shortcomings, she argues that vouchers offer basic stability for families and should remain integral to solutions for the nation's housing crisis.Delving into the connections between safe, affordable housing and social mobility, The Voucher Promise investigates the profound benefits and formidable obstacles involved in housing America's poor.

    As a result, many modernist buildings have been destroyed, while others have become almost unrecognizable following insensitive renovations.Russian photographer Arseniy Kotov intends to document these buildings and their surroundings before they are lost forever. He likes to take pictures in winter, during the "blue hour," which occurs immediately after sunset or just before sunrise. At this time, the warm yellow colors inside apartment block windows contrast with the twilight gloom outside. To Kotov, this atmosphere reflects the Soviet period of his imagination. His impression of this time is unashamedly idealistic: He envisages a great civilization, built on a fair society, which hopes to explore nature and conquer space.

    Through an assessment of the history of automobility in North America, the "three revolutions" in automotive transportation, as well as the current work of committed people advocating for a different way forward, James Wilt imagines what public transit should look like in order to be green and equitable. Wilt considers environment and climate change, economic and racial inequality, urban density, accessibility and safety, work and labour unions, privacy and control of personal data, as well as the importance of public and democratic decision-making.Based on interviews wity more than forty experts, including community activists, academics, transit planners, authors, and journalists, Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? explores our ability to exert power over how cities are built and for whom.

    Debates over the appropriate course of action have been defined by two poles: building more housing or enacting stronger tenant protections. These options are often treated as mutually exclusive, with support for one implying opposition to the other. Shane Phillips believes that effectively tackling the housing crisis requires that cities support both tenant protections and housing abundance. He offers readers more than 50 policy recommendations, beginning with a set of principles and general recommendations that should apply to all housing policy. The remaining recommendations are organized by what he calls the Three S’s of Supply, Stability, and Subsidy. Phillips makes a moral and economic case for why each is essential and recommendations for making them work together. There is no single solution to the housing crisis—it will require a comprehensive approach backed by strong, diverse coalitions. The Affordable City is an essential tool for professionals and advocates working to improve affordability and increase community resilience through local action.

    But in the last half century, it has changed more than ever before - with little sign of slowing down. As this phenomenon takes place, an increasing number of architects, innovators and policy-makers are rethinking the city to make the most of space and resources. This book chronicles the design of urban futures. From apps designed to curb food waste to inventive fresh water infrastructure, Designing Urban Futures explores the many initiatives and experiments, all with the shared goal of making the cities of tomorrow a happier, healthier and more inclusive place to be. What to expect: - A progressive, global view of the future of cities by one of Europe's leading research and design labs - Expert profiles and an introduction to the doers and thinkers at the forefront of urbanism - First-hand insight from essays written by urbanist thought leaders - A multi-disciplinary approach that takes ideas from architecture, technology, infrastructure and sustainability

    It collects Stephens’s work from the California Planning & Development Report and elsewhere, covering everything from the minutiae of setbacks, the impacts of transit investments, the promise of smart growth and sustainability, and the precariousness of urban politics in the 21st century. In the book, Stephens seeks the human side of cities, highlighting how ineffable qualities like spirit and culture relate to the visible elements of the built environment: streets, buildings, infrastructure. Indeed, The Urban Mystique treats the built environment and human environment as one in the same.Having covered urban planning for over a decade, Stephens understands the intricacies of planning. But Stephens’s first love was literature, and he reads cities as texts with messages and truths waiting to be articulated. It is this combination of appreciation for the technical and the human that makes The Urban Mystique a significant contribution to American urban writing. Ultimately, The Urban Mystique is motivated by the idea that all city-dwellers have different tastes and needs but that, at the same time, the urban ideal is a place that is dynamic enough, wealthy enough, spirited enough, and large enough to accommodate the needs and wants of everyone who chooses to participate in humanity’s greatest collective work. For Stephens, that work focuses on places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, and Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. He takes a few detours too, to Beijing, Honolulu, Krakow, and Tucson, among others.“Every chapter of The Urban Mystique contains gems of critical observation. They add up to a genuinely enlightening and thoroughly enjoyable book.” –Donald Shoup, Author, The High Cost of Free Parking “Josh Stephens uses his perch in Los Angeles to take stock of, and take aim at, everything from housing policy and gentrification to the histrionics of NIMBYISM. The Urban Mystique is a bracing look at the way we live now.”–John King, Urban Design Critic, San Francisco Chronicle

    From the plantations of slavery to contemporary segregated cities, from freedman villages to northern migrations for freedom, the nation's landscape bears the detritus of diverse origins. Black landscapes matter because they tell the truth. In this vital new collection, acclaimed landscape designer and public artist Walter Hood assembles a group of notable landscape architecture and planning professionals and scholars to probe how race, memory, and meaning intersect in the American landscape.Essayists examine a variety of U.S. places--ranging from New Orleans and Charlotte to Milwaukee and Detroit--exposing racism endemic in the built environment and acknowledging the widespread erasure of black geographies and cultural landscapes. Through a combination of case studies, critiques, and calls to action, contributors reveal the deficient, normative portrayals of landscape that affect communities of color and question how public design and preservation efforts can support people in these places. In a culture in which historical omissions and specious narratives routinely provoke disinvestment in minority communities, creative solutions by designers, planners, artists, and residents are necessary to activate them in novel ways. Black people have built and shaped the American landscape in ways that can never be fully known. Black Landscapes Matter is a timely and necessary reminder that without recognizing and reconciling these histories and spaces, America's past and future cannot be understood.

    The post-WWII, auto-centric, single-family-development model no longer meets the needs of residents. Urban areas in the US are experiencing dramatically shifting household and cultural demographics and a growing demand for walkable urban living.   Missing Middle Housing, a term coined by Daniel Parolek, describes the walkable, desirable, yet attainable housing that many people across the country are struggling to find. Missing Middle Housing types—such as duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts—can provide options along a spectrum of affordability.   In Missing Middle Housing, Parolek, an architect and urban designer, illustrates the power of these housing types to meet today’s diverse housing needs. With the benefit of beautiful full-color graphics, Parolek goes into depth about the benefits and qualities of Missing Middle Housing. The book demonstrates why more developers should be building Missing Middle Housing and defines the barriers cities need to remove to enable it to be built. Case studies of built projects show what is possible, from  the Prairie Queen Neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska to the Sonoma Wildfire Cottages, in California. A chapter from urban scholar Arthur C. Nelson uses data analysis to highlight the urgency to deliver Missing Middle Housing.   Parolek proves that density is too blunt of an instrument to effectively regulate for twenty-first-century housing needs. Complete industries and systems will have to be rethought to help deliver the broad range of Missing Middle Housing needed to meet the demand, as this book shows. Whether you are a planner, architect, builder, or city leader, Missing Middle Housing will help you think differently about how to address housing needs for today’s communities.

    Over the past two decades, Inga Saffron has served as the premier chronicler of the city’s physical transformation as it emerged from a half century of decline. Through her Pulitzer Prize-winning columns on architecture and urbanism in the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has tracked the city’s revival on a weekly basis.Becoming Philadelphia collects the best of Saffron’s work, plus a new introduction reflecting on the stunning changes the city has undergone. A fearless crusader who is also a seasoned reporter, Saffron ranges beyond the usual boundaries of architectural criticism to explore how big money and politics intersect with design, profoundly shaping our everyday experience of city life. Even as she celebrates Philadelphia’s resurgence, she considers how it finds itself grappling with the problems of success: gentrification, poverty, privatization, and the unequal distribution of public services. What emerges in these 80 pieces is a remarkable narrative of a remarkable time. The proverbial first draft of history, these columns tell the story of how a great city shape-shifted before our very eyes.

    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. Whereas designers had long created urban spaces for a broad amorphous public, Mogilevich demonstrates how political pressures and the influence of the psychological sciences led them to a new conception of public space that included diverse publics and encouraged individual flourishing. 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.

    They endure for centuries, influencing the ways that cities operate and their residents’ quality of life. A History of Street Networks explores the origins and institutionalization of modern roadway networks, particularly the networks of urban sprawl. The book surveys an international history of these powerful yet unheralded infrastructure systems.It is a story of far-reaching reform, as dreamers, designers, engineers, and business interests sought to remold urban environments into new and radically different patterns. Traffic separation—the separation of different types of traffic from each other—was a key motive of their city-planning and traffic-engineering efforts. The traffic-separation idea is traced from its international emergence during the Industrial Revolution, to its codification in urban sprawl, to the countermovement of neotraditionalism.More than one hundred individuals, visions, built projects, and policies are examined, representing the most important efforts to make and control roadway patterns. Comprehensive, detailed, and abundantly illustrated, A History of Street Networks is a valuable resource for anyone wanting to understand some of the major forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, urban environments.

    It provides a clear overview of the role that urban design and urban designers play in shaping and creating places today and how designers conceive and deliver contextually responsive, high-quality design solutions. Beginning with a brief history of contemporary urban design, the book tracks urban design’s roots in architecture and planning and identifies how and why it has emerged as a separate discipline. It then sets out the principles and key criteria that underpin urban design and explains how urban designers interpret policy, baseline data, and graphical analysis to present an understanding of place and space. Following the urban design process through concept development/strategic framework provisions to public consultation and final design, the book discusses subjects such as costing, phasing, construction, post-construction monitoring, and maintenance. It describes the complexity of project management in delivering large-scale projects, such as master planning and major public-realm and civic schemes. Illustrated with a series of international case studies, the book concludes by highlighting a number of growing urban challenges facing cities today, discussing how urban design can play a leading role in tackling issues connected with climate change, globalization, and technological advancements, as well as how it can respond positively to the current and future needs of society.

    Such Latinized urban landscapes, she observes, especially appear when whites feel threatened by concentrations of Latinx populations, commonly known as barrios. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and visual analysis of barrio built environments, Londoño shows how over the past seventy years urban planners, architects, designers, policy makers, business owners, and other brokers took abstracted elements from barrio design—such as spatial layouts or bright colors—to safely “Latinize” cities and manage a long-standing urban crisis of Latinx belonging. The built environments that resulted ranged from idealized notions of authentic Puerto Rican culture in the interior design of New York City’s public housing in the 1950s, which sought to diminish concerns over Puerto Rican settlement, to the Fiesta Marketplace in downtown Santa Ana, California, built to counteract white flight in the 1980s. Ultimately, Londoño demonstrates that abstracted barrio culture and aesthetics sustain the economic and cultural viability of normalized, white, and middle-class urban spaces.

    The book turns attention to the anthropological definition of culture, encouraging planners in both urban and cultural planning to focus on characteristics of humanity in all their variety. It calls for a paradigm shift, re-positioning city planners' "base maps" to start with a richer understanding of human cultures. Borrup argues for cultural master plans in parallel to transportation, housing, parks, and other specialized plans, while also changing the approach of city comprehensive planning to put people or "users" first rather than land "uses" as does the dominant practice.Cultural plans as currently conceived are not sufficient to help cities keep pace with dizzying impacts of globalization, immigration, and rapidly changing cultural interests. Cultural planners need to up their game, and enriching their own and city planners' cultural competencies is only one step. Both planning practices have much to learn from one another and already overlap in more ways than most recognize. This book highlights some of the strengths of the lesser-known practice of cultural planning to help forge greater understanding and collaboration between the two practices, empowering city planners with new tools to bring about more equitable communities. This will be an important resource for students, teachers, and practitioners of city and cultural planning, as well as municipal policymakers of all stripes.

    Located on the York River between Williamsburg and Yorktown, Virginia, Penniman had 15,000 inhabitants at its peak. During WWI, women were recruited to fill positions that supported the war effort, and some found their way to Penniman. The predominantly female workforce, many known as Canary Girls, loaded TNT into 2.8 million shells. The people of Penniman were surrounded by muddy streets, military style living quarters, espionage, the Spanish flu, and the constant fear of an explosion when working with the TNT. Even so, Penniman became home to many, with its general store, post office, bank, hospital, drug store, salon, barbershop, restaurants, and police and fire stations. Then, in 1921, the town and its residents disappeared. This is the story of life at Penniman.

    It offers advice on how to better understand the nature of flood risk, whilst highlighting the key approaches and principles necessary for developing community and property-level flood resilience. As a comprehensive and practical manual, this book includes richly illustrated diagrams on a variety of concepts and strategies to use when designing for flood resilience. It is vital resource for anyone looking to adapt to the threat of flood risk. Highly practical handbook for architects, students, engineers, urban planners and other built environment professionals Richly illustrated with practical examples and case studies Draws on research with the Cabinet Office, Environment Agency & Local Community as well as input from academic and industry experts, homeowners and residents of communities at risk of flooding.