Where - and how - we live determines much about what we know.
These are books about making cities, but also books about how cities have made us, whether it’s our own hometown or somewhere on the other side of the planet. These are books that examine how cities change, and sometimes end up alienating the people who built them. There are plenty of brand-new books on this list because they reflect what people are thinking about today, which, in light of current events, may be very different from what they were thinking about just two weeks ago.
For the entire list of 101 try this link >> Curbed's Best City Books
Urban Classics
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte
"Even after 36 years and the proliferation of pop-up urbanisms, no book brings the nooks and crannies and plazas and sidewalks around you into sharper focus. Short, well-illustrated and written with a slightly raffish tone, it’s a smart, enduring delight." —John King, architecture critic, San Francisco Chronicle
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
"Ask almost any urban planner, and he or she will cite Death and Life as a major influence. Jane Jacobs herself called it an 'attack' on established ideas of city planning at the time; she advocates smartly for dense, diverse cities." —Sara Polsky, features editor, Curbed
Civilizing American Cities: Writings On City Landscapes by Frederick Law Olmsted
City-dwellers take natural refuges like Central Park as a given, but pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead willed these great public spaces into existence, convinced of the value of nature during a time of rapid industrialization. The book collects his plans for masterpieces such as Chicago's Jackson Park with his eloquent writing on landscapes across the U.S. We rightfully marvel at new parks and landscape designs, but Olmstead truly planted the seed for a greener urban America.
Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life by Richard Florida
A deft read that turned the term "creative class" into a development buzzword, this sociological study of our cities, and an engaging look at why we choose where we live, unravels how global economic forces have impacted our urban centers. Seeking happiness has profound effects.
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
This seminal 2000 book offered a persuasive argument for why sprawl killed the U.S.—and ideas for what Americans could do to fix it. Sixteen years later, it remains to be seen if the country heeded this advice.
Why We Build
Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi by Timothy Pauketat
Over 1,000 years ago, the largest human settlement north of Mexico was this thriving community of "mound builders" near present-day St. Louis. Widely considered to be the first North American city—with a population as large as London at the time—Cahokia eventually vanished but left behind an ambitious and utterly urban footprint.
Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of New Architecture by Justin McGuirk
"This is an engagingly-written, continent-wide introduction to the ways in which a couple of generations of Latin American architects and urban planners have contended with issues such as social housing, transportation and even the border. It offers a lot of lessons to us here in Los Angeles about flexibility, ingenuity, and social equity—of poor neighborhoods that offer as much (or even more) dynamism than our tony emerald lawn zones." —Carolina A. Miranda, staff writer, Los Angeles Times
Cities We Love
Subway by Bruce Davidson
The grafitti may be erased, the block may be gentrified, and boomboxes are few and far between, but at least this stunning photobook allows for a temporary time warp back to the hip-hop era. Published in 1986, Bruce Davidson's photographic ode to the origins of a global movement capture a time when it was a simple homegrown culture shaped by the city.
Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz
"Hollywood native Eve Babitz published her first two books of memoirish fiction in the 1970s, but her work has been essentially lost to the cultural memory for decades. It's being found again (via reissues by New York Review Books), just in time, when Angelenos are tired of the dour Joan Didion view of our city. Babitz knows all of LA's faults, but she'd rather spend her energy ecstatic with its easy pace, surreal juxtapositions, and natural and unnatural beauty. It has to be mentioned that Babitz's godfather was Igor Stravinsky; that she is the girl playing chess nude with Marcel Duchamp in the famous photo; and that's she's slept with Jim Morrison, Steve Martin, Ed Ruscha, and Harrison Ford, but all that's just bait—it's the prose, like diamond-encrusted barbed wire, that hooks you." —Adrian Glick Kudler, west coast features editor, Curbed
Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
Joseph Mitchell is best known for his New Yorker profiles of the sorts of New York City residents who are rarely profiled, and this volume collects much of his work. Mitchell’s pieces often covered disappearing corners of New York, and his writing inspired preservationists to fight for the protection of the city’s history.
A History of New York in 101 Objects by Sam Roberts
"Building off a New York Times feature that solicited reader input on the tchotchkes that best represent New York, Roberts’s 2014 book is a compact, yet thorough, history of the greatest city in the world. The objects featured are wonderfully diverse—oysters, subway tokens, the Domino Sugar Refinery sign, and the bagel all make appearances—and the stories are compulsively readable. It’s proof that you don’t need to read a dense, 1,000-page book to get a sense of what makes a city a city. I love you, Robert Caro, but…" —Amy Plitt, editor, Curbed NY
Changing Places
he Future of the Suburban City: Lessons from Sustaining Phoenix by Grady Gammage Jr.
"I used suburban city in the title because it’s a pejorative term. I’m OK with that, since I want readers to understand they shouldn’t think of it as a pejorative term. It’s just a different type of city." —Interview with the author on Curbed
The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us by Joel Kotkin
This compelling pro-suburban argument from a longtime advocate for low-density communities is made even more relevant as city-dwellers are getting priced out of urban metropolises and building their own "urban burbs."
Planning the Future
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck
In the midst of a technological transportation revolution, it's important to remember that one of the most consequential shifts in the last decade has involved walking. By explaining why walkable cities matter and how to make them possible, Speck, an experienced urban planner, shows that walkability is key to today's revitalized downtowns, and should be an important consideration in future urban planning and development.
Cities That Think like Planets: Complexity, Resilience, and Innovation in Hybrid Ecosystems by Marina Alberti
Alberti offers a fresh take on how cities can safeguard themselves against the effects of climate change by offering an ecological approach to urban planning, encouraging urban metropolises to become self-sufficient, hyper-resilient megaregions.
Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
This 2011 book predicts a future where cities (and their residents) start to organize around exurban airports to better participate in the global marketplace.
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner
Written long before the current drought gripping the West, this is a frighteningly prescient look at how the scarcity of water will dictate the social, political, and economic destiny for some of the most populous cities in the country.
Understanding People
Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism by Stephen Graham
"An enlightening overview of the security state's impact on contemporary cities, from overt authoritarian control in war-torn areas to more subtle forms of behavioral influence in places supposedly at peace. Graham shows how military/police/security forces perceive urban places and urban dwellers as subjects to control, and how their inherently undemocratic tactics threaten freedom all over the world." —Nate Berg, journalist and Curbed contributor
Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs
"For any urbanist living through the Age of Trump, Jane Jacobs is a must-read. But not The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Her last book, Dark Age Ahead, where she anticipated our post-fact society and the pillorying of government investment, which she called the "dumbing down" of taxes. She argued that our cities and society writ large were heading toward dangerous crisis, presaging the rise of Trump and Trumpism by a decade." —Richard Florida, author of the forthcoming book The New Urban Crisis
These are books about making cities, but also books about how cities have made us, whether it’s our own hometown or somewhere on the other side of the planet. These are books that examine how cities change, and sometimes end up alienating the people who built them. There are plenty of brand-new books on this list because they reflect what people are thinking about today, which, in light of current events, may be very different from what they were thinking about just two weeks ago.
For the entire list of 101 try this link >> Curbed's Best City Books
Recommended reading from urban experts and Curbed contributors
Urban Classics
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte
"Even after 36 years and the proliferation of pop-up urbanisms, no book brings the nooks and crannies and plazas and sidewalks around you into sharper focus. Short, well-illustrated and written with a slightly raffish tone, it’s a smart, enduring delight." —John King, architecture critic, San Francisco Chronicle
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
"Ask almost any urban planner, and he or she will cite Death and Life as a major influence. Jane Jacobs herself called it an 'attack' on established ideas of city planning at the time; she advocates smartly for dense, diverse cities." —Sara Polsky, features editor, Curbed
Civilizing American Cities: Writings On City Landscapes by Frederick Law Olmsted
City-dwellers take natural refuges like Central Park as a given, but pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead willed these great public spaces into existence, convinced of the value of nature during a time of rapid industrialization. The book collects his plans for masterpieces such as Chicago's Jackson Park with his eloquent writing on landscapes across the U.S. We rightfully marvel at new parks and landscape designs, but Olmstead truly planted the seed for a greener urban America.
Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life by Richard Florida
A deft read that turned the term "creative class" into a development buzzword, this sociological study of our cities, and an engaging look at why we choose where we live, unravels how global economic forces have impacted our urban centers. Seeking happiness has profound effects.
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
This seminal 2000 book offered a persuasive argument for why sprawl killed the U.S.—and ideas for what Americans could do to fix it. Sixteen years later, it remains to be seen if the country heeded this advice.
Why We Build
Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi by Timothy Pauketat
Over 1,000 years ago, the largest human settlement north of Mexico was this thriving community of "mound builders" near present-day St. Louis. Widely considered to be the first North American city—with a population as large as London at the time—Cahokia eventually vanished but left behind an ambitious and utterly urban footprint.
Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of New Architecture by Justin McGuirk
"This is an engagingly-written, continent-wide introduction to the ways in which a couple of generations of Latin American architects and urban planners have contended with issues such as social housing, transportation and even the border. It offers a lot of lessons to us here in Los Angeles about flexibility, ingenuity, and social equity—of poor neighborhoods that offer as much (or even more) dynamism than our tony emerald lawn zones." —Carolina A. Miranda, staff writer, Los Angeles Times
Cities We Love
Subway by Bruce Davidson
The grafitti may be erased, the block may be gentrified, and boomboxes are few and far between, but at least this stunning photobook allows for a temporary time warp back to the hip-hop era. Published in 1986, Bruce Davidson's photographic ode to the origins of a global movement capture a time when it was a simple homegrown culture shaped by the city.
Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz
"Hollywood native Eve Babitz published her first two books of memoirish fiction in the 1970s, but her work has been essentially lost to the cultural memory for decades. It's being found again (via reissues by New York Review Books), just in time, when Angelenos are tired of the dour Joan Didion view of our city. Babitz knows all of LA's faults, but she'd rather spend her energy ecstatic with its easy pace, surreal juxtapositions, and natural and unnatural beauty. It has to be mentioned that Babitz's godfather was Igor Stravinsky; that she is the girl playing chess nude with Marcel Duchamp in the famous photo; and that's she's slept with Jim Morrison, Steve Martin, Ed Ruscha, and Harrison Ford, but all that's just bait—it's the prose, like diamond-encrusted barbed wire, that hooks you." —Adrian Glick Kudler, west coast features editor, Curbed
Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
Joseph Mitchell is best known for his New Yorker profiles of the sorts of New York City residents who are rarely profiled, and this volume collects much of his work. Mitchell’s pieces often covered disappearing corners of New York, and his writing inspired preservationists to fight for the protection of the city’s history.
A History of New York in 101 Objects by Sam Roberts
"Building off a New York Times feature that solicited reader input on the tchotchkes that best represent New York, Roberts’s 2014 book is a compact, yet thorough, history of the greatest city in the world. The objects featured are wonderfully diverse—oysters, subway tokens, the Domino Sugar Refinery sign, and the bagel all make appearances—and the stories are compulsively readable. It’s proof that you don’t need to read a dense, 1,000-page book to get a sense of what makes a city a city. I love you, Robert Caro, but…" —Amy Plitt, editor, Curbed NY
Changing Places
he Future of the Suburban City: Lessons from Sustaining Phoenix by Grady Gammage Jr.
"I used suburban city in the title because it’s a pejorative term. I’m OK with that, since I want readers to understand they shouldn’t think of it as a pejorative term. It’s just a different type of city." —Interview with the author on Curbed
The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us by Joel Kotkin
This compelling pro-suburban argument from a longtime advocate for low-density communities is made even more relevant as city-dwellers are getting priced out of urban metropolises and building their own "urban burbs."
Planning the Future
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck
In the midst of a technological transportation revolution, it's important to remember that one of the most consequential shifts in the last decade has involved walking. By explaining why walkable cities matter and how to make them possible, Speck, an experienced urban planner, shows that walkability is key to today's revitalized downtowns, and should be an important consideration in future urban planning and development.
Cities That Think like Planets: Complexity, Resilience, and Innovation in Hybrid Ecosystems by Marina Alberti
Alberti offers a fresh take on how cities can safeguard themselves against the effects of climate change by offering an ecological approach to urban planning, encouraging urban metropolises to become self-sufficient, hyper-resilient megaregions.
Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
This 2011 book predicts a future where cities (and their residents) start to organize around exurban airports to better participate in the global marketplace.
Written long before the current drought gripping the West, this is a frighteningly prescient look at how the scarcity of water will dictate the social, political, and economic destiny for some of the most populous cities in the country.
Understanding People
Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism by Stephen Graham
"An enlightening overview of the security state's impact on contemporary cities, from overt authoritarian control in war-torn areas to more subtle forms of behavioral influence in places supposedly at peace. Graham shows how military/police/security forces perceive urban places and urban dwellers as subjects to control, and how their inherently undemocratic tactics threaten freedom all over the world." —Nate Berg, journalist and Curbed contributor
Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs
"For any urbanist living through the Age of Trump, Jane Jacobs is a must-read. But not The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Her last book, Dark Age Ahead, where she anticipated our post-fact society and the pillorying of government investment, which she called the "dumbing down" of taxes. She argued that our cities and society writ large were heading toward dangerous crisis, presaging the rise of Trump and Trumpism by a decade." —Richard Florida, author of the forthcoming book The New Urban Crisis
Your local newspaper
Okay, it's not a book. But local newspapers employ the writers who will author the next great book we add to this list. Take a moment to purchase a subscription to a paper near you—or, perhaps, nowhere near you—and get to know a place from the inside out, in real time.
Okay, it's not a book. But local newspapers employ the writers who will author the next great book we add to this list. Take a moment to purchase a subscription to a paper near you—or, perhaps, nowhere near you—and get to know a place from the inside out, in real time.
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