Best City Planning & Urban Development Books
Here you will get Best City Planning & Urban Development Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Author: by Richard Rothstein
Published at: Liveright; Reprint edition (May 1, 2018)
ISBN: 978-1631494536
New York Times Bestseller Notable Book of the Year Editors’ Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ Amazing Books of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist Brooklyn Public Library Literary PrizeThis powerful and disturbing history exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review).
Widely heralded as a masterful (Washington Post) and essential (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation (William Julius Wilson).
Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods.
2. Discrimination and Disparities
Author: by Thomas Sowell
Published at: Basic Books; Enlarged edition (March 5, 2019)
ISBN: 978-1541645639
An enlarged edition of Thomas Sowell’s brilliant examination of the origins of economic disparitiesEconomic and other outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups, and nations. Many explanations have been offered for the differences. Some believe that those with less fortunate outcomes are victims of genetics.
Others believe that those who are less fortunate are victims of the more fortunate. Discrimination and Disparities gathers a wide array of empirical evidence to challenge the idea that different economic outcomes can be explained by any one factor, be it discrimination, exploitation, or genetics.
This revised and enlarged edition also analyzes the human consequences of the prevailing social vision of these disparities and the policies based on that vision-from educational disasters to widespread crime and violence.
3. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Author: by Robert A. Caro
Published at: Vintage; First Printing edition (July 12, 1975)
ISBN: 978-0394720241
Everywhere acknowledged as a modern American classic, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, The Power Broker is a huge and galvanizing biography revealing not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power, but the story of the shaping (and mis-shaping) of New York in the twentieth century.
Robert Caro’s monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happensthe way things really get done in America’s City Halls and Statehousesand brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E.
Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a manan extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives.
4. Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention
Author: by Ben Wilson
Published at: Doubleday (November 10, 2020)
ISBN: 978-0385543460
From a brilliant young historian, a colorful journey through 7,000 years and twenty-six world cities that shows how urban living has been the spur and incubator to humankind’s greatest innovations. In the two hundred millennia of our existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city.
Historian Ben Wilson, author of bestselling and award-winning books on British history, now tells the grand, glorious story of how city living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning with Uruk, the world’s first city, dating to 5000 BC and memorably portrayed in the Epic of Gilgamesh, he shows us that cities were never a necessity but that once they existed their density created such a blossoming of human endeavor-producing new professions, forms of art, worship, and trade-that they kick-started nothing less than civilization.
Guiding readers through famous cities over 7,000 years, he reveals the innovations driven by each: 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 Epoque Paris.
5. Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities
Author: by Andre M. Perry
Published at: Brookings Institution Press (May 19, 2020)
ISBN: 978-0815737278
The deliberate devaluation of Blacks and their communities has had very real, far-reaching, and negative economic and social effects. An enduring white supremacist myth claims brutal conditions in Black communities are mainly the result of Black people’s collective choices and moral failings.
That’s just how they are or there’s really no excuse: we’ve all heard those not so subtle digs. But there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can’t solve. We haven’t known how much the country will gain by properly valuing homes and businesses, family structures, voters, and school districts in Black neighborhoods.
And we need to know. Noted educator, journalist, and scholar Andre Perry takes readers on a tour of six Black-majority cities whose assets and strengths are undervalued. Perry begins in his hometown of Wilkinsburg, a small city east of Pittsburgh that, unlike its much larger neighbor, is struggling and failing to attract new jobs and industry.
Bringing his own personal story of growing up in Black-majority Wilkinsburg, Perry also spotlights five others where he has deep connections: Detroit, Birmingham, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. He provides an intimate look at the assets that should be of greater value to residentsand that can be if they demand it.
6. The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America
Author: by Lawrence T. Brown
Published at: Johns Hopkins University Press (January 26, 2021)
ISBN: 978-1421439877
How can American cities promote racial equity, end redlining, and reverse the damaging health- and wealth-related effects of segregation? The world gasped in April 2015 as Baltimore erupted and Black Lives Matter activists, incensed by Freddie Gray’s brutal death in police custody, shut down highways and marched on city streets.
In The Black Butterflya reference to the fact that Baltimore’s majority-Black population spreads out on both sides of the coveted strip of real estate running down the center of the city like a butterfly’s wingsLawrence T. Brown reveals that ongoing historical trauma caused by a combination of policies, practices, systems, and budgets is at the root of uprisings and crises in hypersegregated cities around the country.
Putting Baltimore under a microscope, Brown looks closely at the causes of segregation, many of which exist in current legislation and regulatory policy despite the common belief that overtly racist policies are a thing of the past. Drawing on social science research, policy analysis, and archival materials, Brown reveals the long history of racial segregation’s impact on health, from toxic pollution to police brutality.
7. George Washington Dealmaker-In-Chief: The Story of How The Father of Our Country Unleashed The Entrepreneurial Spirit in America
Author: by Cyrus A. Ansary
Published at: Lambert Publications LLC (February 14, 2019)
ISBN: 978-1732687905
Drawing on substantial new material, Cyrus A. Ansary gives a riveting account of how George Washington sought to put in place in America an economic system that was the antithesis of what had existed in the colonies under British rule.
The entrepreneurial economy which nurtures and rewards innovation and inventiveness did not sprout into being in the United States by sheer happenstance. It was put in place by our first President. He painstakingly laid the foundation for it, but it did not take root without a struggle.
He needed extraordinary tenacity to overcome fierce opposition to his program. President Washington’s economic initiatives are the least well understood facets of Washington’s busy and productive life. They enlarged the dreams and opportunities of Americans, led to a flourishing entrepreneurial climate, and are an inspiring tale for our time.
8. Professional Real Estate Development: The ULI Guide to the Business
Author: by Richard B. Peiser
Published at: Urban Land Institute; Third Edition, Third edition (July 15, 2019)
ISBN: 978-0874204322
This classic covers the basics of developing all types of real estate, including multifamily, office, retail, and industrial projects. It includes numerous case studies of actual projects and many small-scale examples.
9. WALKABLE CITY: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
Author: by Jeff Speck
Published at: North Point Press; Reprint edition (November 12, 2013)
ISBN: 978-0865477728
“Timely and important, a delightful, insightful, irreverent work … Should be required reading.” The Christian Science MonitorA Best Book of the Year according to Planetizen and the American Society of Landscape Architects Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive.
And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. Making downtown into a walkable, viable community is the essential fix for thetypical American city; it is eminently achievable and its benefits are manifold. Walk-able Citybursting with sharp observations and key insights into how urban changehappenslays out a practical, necessary, and inspiring vision for how to make Americancities great again.
10. Golden Gates: The Housing Crisis and a Reckoning for the American Dream
Author: by Conor Dougherty
Published at: Penguin Books (February 16, 2021)
ISBN: 978-0525560234
A Time 100 Must-Read Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Named a top 30 must-read Book of 2020 by the New York Post Named one of the 10 Best Business Books of 2020 by Fortune Named A Must-Read Book of 2020 by Apartment Therapy Runner-Up General Nonfiction: San Francisco Book Festival A Planetizen Top Urban Planning Book of 2020 Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social JusticeTells the story of housing in all its complexity.
NPRSpacious and affordable homes used to be the hallmark of American prosperity. Today, however, punishing rents and the increasingly prohibitive cost of ownership have turned housing into the foremost symbol of inequality and an economy gone wrong. Nowhere is this more visible than in the San Francisco Bay Area, where fleets of private buses ferry software engineers past the tarp-and-plywood shanties of the homeless.
The adage that California is a glimpse of the nation’s future has become a cautionary tale. With propulsive storytelling and ground-level reporting, New York Times journalist Conor Dougherty chronicles America’s housing crisis from its West Coast epicenter, peeling back the decades of history and economic forces that brought us here and taking readers inside the activist movements that have risen in tandem with housing costs.
11. Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
Author: by Charles Montgomery
Published at: FSG Adult; Reprint edition (October 7, 2014)
ISBN: 978-0374534882
A globe-trotting, eye-opening exploration of how cities canand domake us happier peopleCharles Montgomery’s Happy City is revolutionizing the way we think about urban life. After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time.
But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and condo towers an improvement on the car dependence of the suburbs? The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, during an exhilarating journey through some of the world’s most dynamic cities.
He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a “sexy” bus to ease status anxiety in Bogot; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris’s urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods.
12. Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
Author: by Eric Klinenberg
Published at: Crown; Reprint edition (September 10, 2019)
ISBN: 978-1524761172
A comprehensive, entertaining, and compelling argument for how rebuilding social infrastructure can help heal divisions in our society and move us forward. Jon StewartNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Engaging. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)We are living in a time of deep divisions.
Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn’t seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together and find common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done?
In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, churches, and parks where crucial connections are formed.
Interweaving his own research with examples from around the globe, Klinenberg shows how social infrastructure is helping to solve some of our most pressing societal challenges. Richly reported and ultimately uplifting, Palaces for the People offers a blueprint for bridging our seemingly unbridgeable divides.
13. The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There)
Author: by Shane Phillips
Published at: Island Press (September 15, 2020)
ISBN: 978-1642831337
From Los Angeles to Boston and Chicago to Miami, US cities are struggling to address the twin crises of high housing costs and household instability. 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 crisisit will require a comprehensive approach backed by strong, diverse coalitions.
14. The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role
Author: by Terry L. Cooper
Published at: Jossey-Bass; 6th edition (February 28, 2012)
ISBN: 978-0470873946
Praise for the Fifth Edition of The Responsible Administrator “Cooper’s fifth edition is the definitive text for students and practitioners who want to have a successful administrative career. Moral reasoning, as Cooper so adeptly points out, is essential in today’s rapidly changing and complex global environment.”Donald C.
Menzel, president, American Society for Public Administration, and professor emeritus, public administration, Northern Illinois University “The Responsible Administrator is at once the most sophisticated and the most practical book available on public sector ethics. It is conceptually clear and jargon-free, which is extraordinary among books on administrative ethics.”H.
George Frederickson, Stone Distinguished Professor of Public Administration, University of Kansas “Remarkably effective in linking the science of what should be done with a prescriptive for how to actually do it, the fifth edition of Cooper’s book keeps pace with the dynamic changes in the field, both for those who study it and those who practice it.
15. Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places
Author: by Jeff Speck
Published at: Island Press (October 15, 2018)
ISBN: 978-1610918985
Cities are the future of the human race, and Jeff Speck knows how to make them work. David Owen, staff writer at the New Yorker Nearly every US city would like to be more walkablefor reasons of health, wealth, and the environmentyet few are taking the proper steps to get there.
The goals are often clear, but the path is seldom easy. Jeff Speck’s follow-up to his bestselling Walkable City is the resource that cities and citizens need to usher in an era of renewed street life. Walkable City Rules is a doer’s guide to making change in cities, and making it now.
The 101 rules are practical yet engagingworded for arguments at the planning commission, illustrated for clarity, and packed with specifications as well as data. For ease of use, the rules are grouped into 19 chapters that cover everything from selling walkability, to getting the parking right, escaping automobilism, making comfortable spaces and interesting places, and doing it now!
Walkable City was written to inspire; Walkable City Rules was written to enable. It is the most comprehensive tool available for bringing the latest and most effective city-planning practices to bear in your community. The content and presentation make it a force multiplier for place-makers and change-makers everywhere.
16. Saving Stuyvesant Town: How One Community Defeated the Worst Real Estate Deal in History
Author: by Daniel R. Garodnick
Published at: Cornell University Press (April 15, 2021)
ISBN: 978-1501754371
From city streets to City Hall and to Midtown corporate offices, Saving Stuyvesant Town is the incredible true story of how one middle class community defeated the largest residential real estate deal in American history. Lifetime Stuy Town resident and former City Councilman Dan Garodnick recounts how his neighbors stood up to mammoth real estate interests and successfully fought to save their homes, delivering New York City’s biggest-ever affordable housing preservation win.
In 2006, Garodnick found himself engaged in an unexpected battle. Stuyvesant Town was built for World War II veterans by MetLife, in partnership with the City. Two generations removed, MetLife announced that it would sell Stuy Town to the highest bidder.
Garodnick and his neighbors sprang into action. Battle lines formed with real estate titans like Tishman Speyer and BlackRock facing an organized coalition of residents, who made a competing bid to buy the property themselves. Tripped-up by an over-leveraged deal, the collapse of the American housing market, and a novel lawsuit brought by tenants, the real estate interests collapsed, and the tenants stood ready to take charge and shape the future of their community.
