A short list:
Walkable City @jeffspeck.bsky.social
Happy City @charlesincities.bsky.social
Life After Cars @sgoodyear.bsky.social & @brooklynspoke.bsky.social
Street Fight @jskstreet.bsky.social
All readable.
Killed By A Traffic Engineer for heavier read @wesmars.bsky.social
#UrbanismBookClub
“I’m not going to beat around the bush. This book is about evil.”
“It’s about the mundane, humdrum, self-assured, self-justifying, pocket-lining, smug & arrogant lies & disinformation that communications ‘professionals’ spread daily.”
Read #DarkPR by @grantennis.bsky.social. #UrbanismBookClub
Read this post below about my colleague in the creation of The Urban Truth Collective @urbantruth.bsky.social, and author of the great book “Dark PR,” @grantennis.bsky.social. #UrbanismBookClub #UrbanTruth
I’m glad we usually agree more than disagree, Jay, but I love that both are equally fun! Hope to get you involved soon with @urbantruth.bsky.social, and I’m so happy for you with how great your new book is doing. #UrbanismBookClub #UrbanTruth
CITY BOOKS: 10 recent great books on cities and city-building, added already in this thread to our #UrbanismBookClub! Check them out, and keep checking the list over time as I keep adding more until I get to 100!
Photo of book cover
Tonight’s #UrbanismBookClub entry is one I’ve wanted to share for a while — “Building For People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-Carbon Communities” by @holz-bau.bsky.social, foreword by @alexsteffen.bsky.social. Excellent guidebook for global eco-districts with great visuals & case studies. 10/
Attention #UrbanismBookClub lovers! My friend @jaypitter.bsky.social’s really important new book “Black Public Joy” is out there for purchasing! Congratulations Jay! I encourage everyone seeing this to check the book out and help spread the word. It frankly couldn’t be more timely. #BlackPublicJoy
Great list. A few interesting ones on greening, designing for different perspectives, and public realm. Looking forward to reading. #UrbanismBookClub
Cover of “Killed By A Traffic Engineer.”
This book is potentially one of the most important to come out for better cities in a long time, so of course its in the #UrbanismBookClub — “Killed By A Traffic Engineer: Shattering The Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System,” by @wesmars.bsky.social @islandpress.bsky.social. 9/
Pic of the book cover, published by @islandpress.Bsky.social
I’m VERY happy that @carterlavin.bsky.social has written “If You Want To Win, You Have To Fight: A Guide To Effective Transportation Advocacy,” because books on how to actually change things are TOO RARE. I admit though that I haven’t had a chance to read it yet — have others? #UrbanismBookClub 7/
Sacramento Noir edited by John Freeman, cover shows city skyline with building in foreground and light rail swoosh in front
Book cover: Form Follows Fiasco, Why Modern Architecture Hasn't Worked, by Peter Blake
Today I'm finishing up this anthology of noir stories about Sacramento, whose cover features a reused mixed use building at 12th & K with a light rail swoosh. Next, digging further into "Form Follows Fiasco", a surprisingly accessible postmodern roasting of Modernist architecture. #UrbanismBookClub
A picture of the book ‘Mr Ward’s Map’, showing part of a map of Victorian Wellington (NZ)
I gifted someone this for Christmas, shared and enjoyed the Christmas Eve. #UrbanismBookClub
Write-up explaining that in Iceland, books are exchanged on Christmas Eve and you spend the rest of the night reading. Also, Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country, with most published during the Christmas season.
READ THIS: Still probably the best #ChristmasEve tradition I’ve heard. Iceland definitely does Christmas well — my Reykjavik clients had funny comments about this! Are you planning to curl up with a great new book on cities this #Christmas? Share your pick with us using hashtag #UrbanismBookClub!
GIFT RECOMMENDATION ALERT: If you still have gifts to get for the city lovers on your nice list, check out this GREAT #UrbanismBookClub thread by @modacitylife.com! Plus take a stroll through the hashtag (one of my favs I’ve created) for a lot of great recommendations on the best books on cities!
Stalking your #UrbanismBookClub hashtag for gift ideas for my budding urban designer about to go to college age kid, @brenttoderian.bsky.social — thank you!
So far I have Shade, Messy Cities, and the 15-Minute City. Now looking for something great about transit since he’s so into that too.
Market Towns have a related but different set of problems.
Pop.>10k, big development pressures but declining or zero public transport. Want to visit or live in this lovely town? Bring your car, all of them.
Any towns out there bucking the trend? Good books?
#UrbanismBookClub
A collage of 24 books about urban and transport planning.
If our cities are shaped by stories, then great books form the foundation of knowledge and inspiration needed to build more liveable, inclusive and prosperous places.
These are 24 titles we read this year that informed our approach to changing hearts, minds and streets. An #UrbanismBookClub thread.
Tonight’s #UrbanismBookClub offering is “The Design Of Childhood” by @langealexandra.bsky.social. A GREAT book by an author who WON THE PULITZER PRIZE for a series of articles on the same broad subject in @opinion.bloomberg.com Citylab! Alexandra interviewed me for the book on Vancouver’s work. 6/
Shot of front cover
Shot of back cover
Despite the best efforts of unhinged conspiracy theorists who badly want us to be scared of having more things to walk to near-by, my friend @carlosmorenofr.bsky.social’s very important book “The 15-Minute City,” and the simple concept of proximity, are thankfully here to stay. #UrbanismBookClub 5/
Picture of book cover
Tonight’s #UrbanismBookClub book tackles better city-making from the communications, branding, & public relations spheres. “Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Undermines Our Health & Environment” by my friend @grantennis.bsky.social is a HUGELY important book today. Every urbanist should read it.
Photo of book cover
Photo of table of contents
Tonight maybe my FAVOURITE recent book in the #UrbanismBookClub —“EMERGENT TOKYO: Designing the Spontaneous City” by Jorge Almazan & StudioLab. Even if you’re not as fascinated with Tokyo urbanism as I am, this book is both brilliant & gorgeous. HT to @jasonthorne.bsky.social for recommending it. 3/
Photo of book cover
TONIGHT’S new-ish book in the #UrbanismBookClub is an important one — “Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities” by @veronicaodavis.bsky.social via @islandpress.bsky.social (2023). Foreword by @tamikabutler.bsky.social, cover art by @martyn.bsky.social. Great read. 2/
SOMETHING NEW: Since SO MANY great new books on cities, city-building & urbanism have been published since I did my “Top 100” List back in 2013, on 100 (non-consecutive) days I’ll profile 100 NEWER BOOKS for the #UrbanismBookClub in THIS thread!
Starting today (in no order), with “Messy Cities!” 1/
Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives by Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett Cover illustration is a typical Dutch streetscape
@modacitylife.com's Building the Cycling City for its direct policies, metrics, and goals for improving cities. But their Curbing Traffic is such a nice, accessible read it's hard not to include both in #urbanismbookclub
In the niche of reimagining cities around bicycle transport:
Cycle Space (Steven Fleming, 2013) and Velotopia (Steven Fleming, 2017). The 1st pragmatic. The second conceptual. Both unapologetic! #UrbanismBookClub
Cover of the book For the Love of cities
Honorable mention to #urbanismbookclub but misses the age cutoff just barely. I have a soft spot for For The Love Of Cities which, to me, felt like it was describing this new phenomenon of people wearing their civic pride and city-branded clothes. He described it as "holding hands with your city"
And if #urbanismbookclub is taking fictional submissions -- The City in the Middle of the Night is SUCH a good depiction of how cities are shaped by their environments and the culture we create
Inclusive Transportation by Veronica Davis definitely has got to be on the list. I think it provides an extremely important & thorough look at how our cities have been shaped to exclude and could be done better.
#urbanismbookclub
QUESTION: What are the best books on cities and city-building published since 2013? Explain your answer. It’ll help update the “best 100 city-making books” list below that I published that year. Don’t forget to use the hashtag #UrbanismBookClub, to make the books easily findable forever! (in theory)
On the occasion of Elon Musk pretending that he reads books, I thought I’d reshare my “100 Best Books On City-Making Ever Written” article in @planetizen.bsky.social. It’s 12 years old and needs updating, and got plently of debate back then, but I’d still recommend most of these. #UrbanismBookClub
