2 comments about Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning.

1. A Person who just starts to learn something about Islamic culture should read it. For people who knows a lot the catalogue at the second part of the book would be helpful but it is also not complete.



2. I love this book. It gives you a very good insight to muslim architecture and is at the same time easy to read and entertaining. As an orientalist in a postgrad study program I got to read books on the subject that are much more confusing or that are written in a slightly boring style. This book is a thorough introduction that never just stays on the surface of the matter. It does not give you a chronological account of architecture history, but answers a lot of questions like "Why it was built like it was built?" In the back part of the book you find plans and short descriptions of the most important buildings, in the first part you find a lot of good photographs and even better articles on single subjects like materials or building techniques. But the most important thing: It's NEVER boring.

1 comments about Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects, 1860-1940.

1. I have to first say thank you to the author for giving us this exhaustively researched book. I expecially appreicated that the house was most always pictured with the description. The historical B&W photos are great. The book also lets you know if the house is still in extant, that is KEY in a book of this kind. I was amazed at how many survived and saddened at those that didn't. Your heart will pound as you look down to read if the beautiful house you are looking at survived. I think it is sad that so many know about the great houses of Newport and the Hudson River Valley, but forget about the greatest collection of all: The Gold Coast of Long Island. I hope if this book does nothing else,it makes developers think for a second before tearing down history. We will never see houses in America like this again. Job well done, indeed.

3 comments about Broadway Theatres: History and Architecture.

1. William Morrison's book covers 74 theaters from 1873 to 1932, including those demolished as well as those still standing. Most theaters get two pages of coverage, consisting mostly of b&w photos of both the exterior and interior. The accompanying text emphasizes noteworthy performances. This book is a nice overview of the topic, although I preferred van Hoogstraten's "Lost Broadway Theaters," which gives more information about the interior layouts, but doesn't cover theaters that are still standing.



2. This book serves as a great photo album of the many legitimate theatres, which were constructed over the last century in New York. The style of this book is almost identical to Nicholas Van Hoogstraten's LOST BROAWAY THEATRES, which makes me question its necessity (some of the photos are duplicated). However, Morrison's book has some omissions that I feel are inexcusable. Two major theatres are missing: The CENTRAL, Broadway and 47th St and The ASTOR, Broadway and 45th ST, along with several minor ones. Also there are some errors in text such as when Morrison claims the ERLANGER became the ST JAMES in 1951, in fact the name change was decades earlier. Another error occurs when Morrison states the HOLLYWOOD (later HELLINGER) sealed its Broadway entrance in 1934, this actually occurred when the house went "legit" during late 40s. Never mentioned in any of these books is the PICADILLY (later WARNER, where sound movie were introduced in 1926) and COLUMBIA (later MAYFAIR and DEMILLE) Theatres, which started as stage houses but spent most of their existence as movie houses. I do not understand the continued emphasis being placed on NY's Broadway theaters without ever giving the great Times Square movie palaces (ROXY, PARAMOUNT, CAPITOL, etc) their due. Because of their vast size and popularity, the movie palaces, attracted more people to the Times Square area than the legitimate stage can ever hope to. New York's movie palaces were the largest, most expensive and arguably the finest ever built and I feel it's about time their place in Times Square's history is properly acknowledged. BROADWAY THEATRES by William Morrison offers a fine overview of its topic for those who are marginally interested. But for others expecting more insight and accuracy, Morrison's book should only be used as a starting point.



3. Ever sat in a Braodway theater and wondered about the history of the place and what shows had played there before? This book tells you. I took it with me on a recent trip to New York and discovered that one of the buildings in which I was doing business (The Hippodrome) was built on the site of the late Hippodrome theatre, where many spectacular productions, including Billy Rose's Jumbo, where staged. Morrison obviously is an expert in both theatrical history and architecture, making his essays on the individual theatres informative and lively. The play is what we go to see, but the house in which it's staged is often critical to a play's success--as Morrison demonstrates on page after page. Broadway Theatres: History and Architecture has made a great addition to my theatrical library.

5 comments about Working with Handplanes (New Best of Fine Woodworking).

1. You can find some usefull piece of information in this book. The illustrations are great.
   
   Because this book is composed of a series of articles you feel that the text is disorganized and sometimes hard to follow.
   You also keep feeling that you read the same stuff over and over again, plane with the grain, tune your plane.
   
   This is not a bad book just not my style.



2. I have a collection of Taunton Press books and won't stop until I get them all. Most of them are collections of articles from their magazine Fine Woodworking. Can't go wrong giving this as a gift....



3. I have read many books from the New Best of Fine Woodworking series and this is among the best of them. Though this is really just a collection of articles written by many different authors surrounding the general theme, there is a lot of very valuable information here. As always with Taunton, the writing/editing is excellent and the color photographs and illustrations are quite good. In my mind, this "collection of articles" approach is even more valuable than a book by a single author. The reason for this is that as you read expert advice from many woodworking pros, you get the sense that they don't all agree on everything. In my mind this is one of the most important lessons to learn... woodworking methods and techniques are an extension of the woodworker and as such there is no single "right way" of doing things.
   
   As for downsides to this book, it can get a bit tedious to read about tuning a block plane for the fifth time if you grasped the concept the first time it was mentioned. Fortunately there is a lot of information given beyond just the basics of tuning and maintaining your planes, including actual techniques to employ in various situations.
   
   All in all, I highly recommend this book as an excellent resource to all beginner to intermediate woodworkers interested in beefing up their hand plane skills and anyone else interested in a tool that mankind has been using for thousands of years...



4. Readers should note that this book is part of a series that is a collection of articles by various authors. So, as a previous reviewer has stated, you sometimes will revisit a topic from a different author's perspective. That said, I really enjoyed this book. I began using hand planes about a year ago and had mixed results. After reading 'Working with Handplanes' I had a better sense of my planes and their use. I took the advice and "tuned-up" a new plane that I was fairly happy with. The result was a plane that performed substantially better.
   
   It seems that for most woodworkers the use of handplanes is a lost art. That's too bad because planes have been around for centuries and are still around simply because they work well. If you're interested in using planes I highly recommend this book as a starting point to have your plane work as it should.



5. In general, the book has good information, nice and illustrative pictures all over the place however, the order of ideas is mix since it does not follow the introduction made in each chapter, it goes back to block planes very often and the pictures in the pages do not follow the author explanation.

1 comments about Basics Design Methods (Basics).

1. I've just received this book and would highly recommend this along with Basics design ideas. For very lttle money these two little books will serve you well through your career, because they are rooted in architectural thinking, not fashion ridden trends, they will always be a resource for making your current project into a genuine place.

5 comments about House: A Memoir.

1. This book interested me as a native Clevelander and a former resident of Cleveland Heights. It also happened that I had recently sold an old house (in Atlanta) and had happily cast off the annoyances of homeownership.
   
   For Ruhlman, the old house that he & his wife buy becomes imbued with many meanings of home. Ruhlman grew-up in the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights and the house becomes a meditation on growing up in suburban Cleveland and being able to recapture some of that life as an adult and for his children. Cleveland Heights once rivaled Shaker Heights for prestige, but was never as carefully as planned a city and always had a socially and economically more diverse population. Shaker Heights is a beautiful suburb, but Cleveland Heights is somehow more comfortable and real. Much of Cleveland Heights predated zoning laws (which became established in law because of a court case in the nearby suburb of Euclid, Ohio), yet the basic layout of things has endured and has proven to be just as livable today as it was decades ago. Partly for privacy reasons, Ruhlman doesn't give too much detail about his immediate neighborhood, but in doing so, he fails to give Clevelanders and non-Clevelanders a real sense of place and context. Cleveland Heights is filled with leafy streets and an ecelctric mix of "traditional" architectural styles, with the odd modern, sometimes architecturally significant, interloper. The broad boulevards include tudors, french provincials and federal style homes. The side streets include various kinds of "colonials" including "dutch colonials", bungalows, "California" contemporaries and small scale tudors. Near the commercial strips, one finds the frame 2 and a half family wood framed "Buckeye front" houses that are unique to Cleveland. I have coveted many a Cleveland Heights street and home.
   
   The book moves back and forth between a number of narratives. It begins with the straightforward acquisition of the house. At points, it digresses into Ruhlman's past and that of his wife, whose reluctant transplantation to Cleveland is a recurring theme, and their marriage. There's a long digression into scholarly work about suburbs that's overwritten, needlessly academic, and just doesn't work. Ruhlman tries to defend suburbia, but isn't very convincing. Shaker Heights & Cleveland Heights were streetcar suburbs and Shaker still has the streetcars. They have the density and layouts to permit neighborhood business districts and neighborhood life to exists in ways that are more "urban" than suburban and certainly different from much of post WWII suburbia. Cleveland Heights is the kind of place where "suburbia haters" wind up buying a house.
   
   Some of the best parts of the book deal with buying the house and restoring it. I found myself jealous of his home inspector, a man who found the kinds of very expensive plumbing and drainage problems that my inspector missed. Instead, I would up redoing an already remodled bathroom and spending thousands on french drains. The book become somewhat jarring because we don't get more of the evolution of the house from "wreck with good bones" to home. OTOH, one of the most interesting seques is the reconstruction of the house's history. This leads Ruhlman to contact former occupants, who put him in touch with other people who spent time as visitors or residents of the house. One former resident even returns for a visit.
   
   Ruhlman ultimately ties up most of the loose ends, although we aren't privy to how things came together, in his marriage, or in the restoration of the house. In stories like this, one expects to read of ill-timed cost overruns, periods of primitive existence, and follies in home imporvement. Instead, we get a little mortaring, some painting, and a steady stream of rich people's castoffs from Ruhlman's mother in Florida.
   
   Still, the book reminded me how a house becomes caught up in many other things in one's life, and most of the time, that's a good thing or at least a useful thing. For some people I know in Atlanta, the house is their excuse for staying there--almost like a bad marriage. For Ruhlman, the house was a way to keep the marriage together, although his wife didn't always see it that way. The book would have been better if we hadn't been lectured about urban planning and if we could have seen how the house's history, it's restoration, and Ruhlman's marraige get pulled together.



2. My husband is a native Clevelander, and we met in the city before moving to Florida shortly after our marriage. We were there 2 years when I read a review on this book, and it was one of the catalysts in bringing us back to Cleveland, snow and all. Michael Ruhlman is a gifted writer, and this is clearly his love letter to his home and neighborhood. I loved it, although I'm not sure if it will be as well-received by people who do not know and love Cleveland Heights the way I do! Fascinating.



3. As a native Clevelander, this book about an old house right around the corner from where I went to college really hit home (no pun intended). I enjoyed reading about the history of Cleveland and the venerable neighborhood where the Ruhlman family live, and sympathized with them as they undertook a massive home remodeling. A good mix of history, house and family issues. Definitely would recommend this one, along with the author's other books.



4. Ruhlman's latest book focuses on his family's renovation of a hundred year old Victorian home in the Cleveland Heights section Cleveland. Ruhlman manages to weave a history of suburbia, and America's tense relationship with its very idea, with a personal remembrance of renovating something from the studs. His discussion of the history of the Cleveland Heights section as well as his own home's owners helps to bring the area to life; I found it to be an interesting look at a city that is struggling to regain some of it's urban power. The changing nature of suburbia is the backbone for much of what he writes - how America, an ever moving nation, has changed it's view on not only suburbs but also on the very notion of home and family. He also discusses the problems this presents for him, questioning why he and his wife are choosing to subject themselves to living in the attic of their new home while contractors built what must be one of the most beautiful kitchens in the world! Ruhlman does not shy away from the tensions that are laying under the surface of his life. And even if he does not flesh them out fully or always understand his desire for this massive Victorian structure, he is honest in his confusion.
   In a few instances Ruhlman can get a bit preachy about what it means to have a home. In some ways he invest too much in the actual physical property rather than what makes his house a home: his family, his wife, his neighbors, even his cooking. That would be the only slight drawback to an otherwise excellent read, one that has you thinking about the nature of urban development as well as laughing about the ups and downs of major renovations.



5. The movie, 'House' in which Kevin Kline starred was not based on this memoir. His house was built in a tree. Here, the Ruhlmans give a detailed account of their acquisition of a 100-yr-old place in Cleveland and how their lives were changed drastically. It is in a neighborhood meant for the city's elite, an aristocratic Anglo Village, but that was long ago. Sounds like the Fort Sanders area here.
   
   Chuck played 'This Old House' recorded by Rosemary Clooney about a worn out, tuckered out place and no one who has the time to fix the shingles. The house on the cover of this book has shingles. Unless there is a resident ghost, no old house is as good as a brand-new one. Years ago, I tried to save Tennessee Hall in Pulaski, and my group of old-lady residents of the town were treated to a meal in the college president's exclusive dining room of the cafeteria. The dean, a Methodist minister, told me, "You can't go home again" -- everything changes. I was going to prove him wrong by returning to my hometown 'to die' but I soon learned that he was right. There is no going back.
   
   The cost is too prohibitive to rehabilitate old, worn out houses and ancient downtown buildings. The plumbing and wiring are antiquated, meant for a different era. In Pulaski, a gazebo was built out of three tall antebellum columns (the 4th crumbled during demolition), all that is left of our historic Tennessee Hall. It was my first residence as a college girl and later as wife of a teacher with two small sons when it was used as a boys dorm. One student always whistled the song, 'Mrs. Robinson,' when he saw me.
   
   Houses are like people, some age gracefully but others die in accidents (fire); a few have a variety of lives when a gullible rich family gets duped into renovation. For some, owning a house means they have made it -- achieved what their parents did, but at what a price? Others move constantly. My dad was one of the movers and shakers, until his old age. These past 25 years, so have I been unable to find a 'home' -- so I guess the lure of the open road can be an inherited instinct, like hyperthyroidism as a medical problem or osteoporosis handed down from grandmothers.
   
   Houses give a sense of permanence which is an illusion. On a local talk show, a volatile caller upset some folks by proclaiming that only land owners should be allowed to vote. A house gives false protection from harm, but a castle had a moat to keep out intruders; burglars lurk right around the corner. And you can't control who your neighbors are or how they conduct their personal lives or the company they entertain in their own homes.
   
   Lincoln said that we are all created equal, but the poor suffer the indignities because of their social status or lack thereof, and the rich are selfish individuals and not all are happy. A house does not make a home. It is the people who live there and love there (sometimes born there) who make the place a home. It is not rich furnishings or expensive ornaments. It is contentment and being relaxed and eager to 'come home.'
   
   All the Ruhlmans wanted was to possess a place of their own to call 'home' no matter the price, financially or emotionally. He has written other books, about cooking, and numerous articles for 'Gourment' and 'Food Arts.' He must be a master chef.

4 comments about Event-Cities 3: Concept vs. Context vs. Content.

1. Item recieved well packaged, on-time, and as described. Will do business with again.



2. If the architecture of Frank Gehry, has been described as a movie composed entirely of special effects, then Tschumi's is like special effects that don't quite come off. Herbert Muschamp, the modernist cheerleader who is the architecture critic for the NY Times, began his review of Tschumi's Lerner Student Center at Columbia University by saying "By now, everyone knows that Bernard Tschumi's new Lerner Hall is a dud." And City Journal described his work as ""an agitated, irrational mix of limestone, brick, metal, and glass... giving the impression of a building on the edge of a nervous breakdown." Journalist Robert Locke has written, ""Tschumi's theoretical writings, the basis of his reputation, are a tangled mess that alternately induces dizziness and puzzlement as to whether the author actually knows what philosophy is, or merely heard it described by someone in a bar once ...... The worst of this stuff is so self-evidently empty as to defy attack". - It only remains for you to ask yourself whether you are one of those fools who will be taken in by this confidence trickster who has ruined the cities we live in, or whether you will move on to more intelligent reading. [Hint: Try Louis Kahn. It's a good start!]



3. this book is phaaaat. You know like a cold ice cream on a summers day. Man it is better than poppie's chicken. dogg



4. This monography of Tschumi is very interesting and show well the conceptual approach in his works. the design of the book is also made by Tschumi himself. We can like or don't like these esthetism, I mean the black and white pictures with low resolution. But nevertheless, this book is a full monography of all the project until the beginning of the 90's. there is a new book planned to follow this one "Event-cities 2". So I believe these two books would be good to have in your own library if you want to have a full coverage of tschumi works.

5 comments about The Hamptons: Life Behind the Hedges.

1. I love this book! Reading it over this past winter brought back all the great feelings of being in the Hamptons. I love the fact that the beautiful photographs don't focus on just the ocean, but show hamptons life behind the scenes. The photographs of the gardens and artist's studios are especially nice. This is a great collectable book and I highly recommend it as a gift.



2. We live in the city - downtown. We have three children and wish/dream about getting out of town on a weekend and letting the children run and play on the grass in the country or sand on a beach. This book puts you there and without any of the sense of overwhelming and intimidating wealth that would take away from the beauty and feeling the Hamptons can offer. The photos are beautiful and the subjects are different and interesting. I truly do love this book and have given many as gifts to friends from out of town who have heard so much about the east end of the Island but have yet to visit.



3. This book is very nice, but fo not buy it when you are looking for a book which takes a look inside these beautiful houses. It only shows the outside and ,i think, too many pictures of the gardens. It is really a nice book but i thought there would be many pictures of the houses and not so many detailed pictures of gardens...



4. My husband and I are beginning to collect books related to second homes as we dream about and plan our own great escape. Our favorites are Better Homes and Gardens SECOND HOME, FAMILY HOUSES BY THE SEA, CABIN FEVER, and Better Homes and Gardens COTTAGE STYLE. This book on the Hamptons is our newest purchase, and it has great photos. The best book in terms of combining the dreamy photos with helpful insights to guide our own second home planning, though, is SECOND HOME.



5. From tag sales to spectacular homes. The photography is true to life. The scenery of flora, ocean landscapes, sunsets and to the history of a town that is small yet so BIG. A delight to see behind the hedges of wonderful homes, decor and art.

5 comments about American Shelter : An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the American Homes.

1. I'm looking into returning the book itself, just because I already own American Shelter from 1981, and it is the EXACT SAME BOOK. If you don't already own it, it is a great reference.



2. In the world of architectural field guides, there is a division between the guides that rely heavily on photographs and those that use line drawings to represent buildings. Photographic field guides are good in that you can see actual historic homes. This is a valuable thing for people who like me live very far away from historic areas and rarely see a building over a hundred years old.
   
   However, the great problem with photographic field guides is that it is often times difficult to understand a building style by looking at one or two representative photographs. What's worse is that often times the eye is drawn to details like electric lines or automobiles. One can spend more time trying to identify the decade the photo was taken than on concentrating on the image. For this reason, I prefer field guides that use line drawings to represent buildings. In my opinion, line drawings are a better tool for teaching the different architectural elements that come together to form a style.
   
   Of the field guides that use line drawings, Lester Walker's "American Shelter" is the very best. It is the best for two reasons. First because of the sheer number of styles he identifies. In this book he details 103 styles whereas a typical field guide will usually identifies 20-30 unique styles. Second and foremost, Lester Walker is a very talented artist. His drawings are not hyper technical like the Historical American Building Survey (HABS) drawings which one finds in some field guides. They have a lot of personality which seperates them from what I call the illustrator school of architectural drawings.
   
   I have been collecting field guides for a number of years and this is my favorite guide. That is not to say that there are not other very high quality guides. However, if you need to purchase just one field guide, this is the one. Hopefully, this book will inspire you to start collecting architectural field guides which in my opinion is a most worthy hobby.



3. I purchased this book while I was an undergraduate studying city planning. This book has been on my shelf since it was published and I still use it quite frequently today. This is a fantastic reference for anyone interested in housing, architecture and urban design. In fact, I highly recommend this book to any planning students with a housing or preservation focus. You will not regret having made the investment!



4. If you ever have reason to write (fictionally or otherwise) about American architecture (chiefly domestic), you shouldn't miss a chance to add this volume to your shelves. (It's included in the file I always send to Old-West mavens wanting to know what they should read.) Chapters range from two to eight pages in length and cover everything from the earth lodge of the Southeastern Plains Indians to the projected space station now three years past due. Typically, each includes the time and region in which the original style was most abundant, a few paragraphs explaining its history and salient features, and a number of finely detailed pen-and-ink sketches portraying exterior details and often cutaways and floor plans. The book can also be used as a field guide to help you decide what kind of house you happen to be looking at. From log cabins to Frank Lloyd Wright, Mount Vernon to the humble Quonset hut, every major kind of American house is here. This is an item that cries to be brought back into print. Until it is, don't miss a chance to pick up a used copy if you're afforded one.



5. I own the poster American Shelter by the same author, and wanted to see the explanations behind the dates and titles. As an architectural historian, I've studied many of these styles, but there are some new variations of house styles that are not part of any other reference book. This book has fun graphics and easy to follow descriptions. For the trained historians, architects, etc., this book is an amusing addition to your collections. To the architectural housing enthusiasts, this could be a helpful resource.

3 comments about Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development.

1. As a rural resident trying to help my town control predatory developers and manage issues of growth and land use, this book is a potent tool, a fact that is clearly disturbing to some who stand to profit handsomely from sprawl, like the automobile and oil companies, the large-scale construction industries, millionaire developers, automobile manufacturers, and big-box national retailers.
   
   It's interesting that Diane Bast has written a negative review without mentioning, either here or in her Amazon.com profile, that she holds the title of Vice President of Internal Affairs for the benign-sounding (and Richard Mellon Schiafe-funded) "Heartland Institute," whose work she cites here.
   
   She also fails to mention that her husband Joseph L. Bast is also founder, president and CEO of the Institute, whose board of directors includes representatives from General Motors, Exxon-Mobil, and Philip Morris, along with various banks and insurance companies. The Institute has also over the years received substantial funding from the tobacco industry, among other large multinational companies. Of course, none of these board members mention these affiliations on Heartland's flowers-and-little-kids adorned official website, because that would be giving the real purpose of the organization away.
   
   I doubt that such an organization would subsidize any research which would support public transportation or de-emphasize converting far-flung farmland or open space into cookie-cutter subdivisions, so Ms. Bast's citations are unsurprising given her unmentioned affiliation to that organization.
   
   As for Mr. Cox, a quick check of his consultancy website reveals his purpose is to denigrate comprehensive planning efforts (because they supposedly put constraints on private ownership and the so-called "free market") and to promote gasoline-powered transportation over rail, public transportation and other environmentally- friendly alternatives. (In the 1920s and 30s, a consortium of carmakers and tire manufacturers bought up and dismantled existing electric trolley systems in major cities, and Mr. Cox and his colleagues are apparently dedicated to making sure that such systems stay dead.)
   
   In fact, despite Ms. Bast's derision of "politics" as a factor in the costs of sprawl, the Heartland Institute has been more than willing to use politics to its own corporate ends, including coordinating the blast-faxing of legislators to oppose or overturn anti-smoking, pro-environmental and health-care regulatory legislation that could cut into the profits of its benefactor companies. Despite her sprinkling her review with references to the poor and minorities, her organization believes in unfettered corporate power, first and foremost. I believe the reader should take that into account when reading her comments.
   
   The fact remains that sprawl enriches developers, car manufacturers, oil and real estate companies much, much more than individual homeowners, who find that as gas hits $3 - $4 a gallon and above, and their property taxes jump as overburdened small towns try to cope with the sudden need to build new schools and keep formerly little-used town roads in repair, that their "affordable" homes cost them more to own than they imagined -- and that the only part of the supposed wealth they generate is when they sell them, long after the strip-mall, big-box and cookie-cutter developers have pocketed their profits and gone elsewhere.
   
   There is a biological analog to unfettered and out of control growth. It's called "cancer." Cancer eventually kills its host. Sprawl kills community life and saps a region's vitality. This book lays out the evidence in black and white.
   
   For more information on the Heartland Institute, go to www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute.



2. According to an article by Wendell Cox, senior fellow for The Heartland Institute, this book rehashes the tired claims about suburbanization (pejoratively called "urban sprawl") being unnecessarily costly. In fact, however, Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development (by Robert Burchell, Anthony Downs, Barbara McCann, and Sahan Mukheri) relies on prospective data that is soundly refuted by reality.
   
   The book is an outgrowth of a study led by Burchell, which concluded that more compact (less suburban) development could save $225,000,000,000 in government spending over 25 years. The study made the all-too-common error of concluding that many zeros after a number make it significant. They do not. It will probably take the average reader at least 225,000,000,000 nanoseconds to read this article. $225 billion over 25 years is less than $30 per capita each year. This is a pittance in comparison with overall government expenditures, which have risen more than 100 times that fast over the past 25 years after adjustment for inflation.
   
   Aside from the shock value, the validity of the numbers is questionable. In fact, the suburbs are not more expensive. Joshua Utt and I published research analyzing Bureau of the Census data for more than 700 municipalities concluding that actual (not theoretical) per-capita public expenditures are lowest in the newer suburbs. Even sewer costs were found to be lowest in the newer suburbs. The principal reasons are that politics, congestion, and labor costs drive costs higher in more compact development.
   
   Sprawl Costs' weakest assertion may be that more compact development would reduce the cost of an average new house $16,000, a conjecture that ignores economic reality. To accomplish the more compact development Burchell et al. would prefer requires stringent regulation, such as urban growth boundaries, greenbelts, and other limits on development. Rationing land, like anything else, results in higher prices. Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko, in work published by Harvard University, reported that the principal cause of differences in housing affordability among U.S. metropolitan areas is zoning and land regulation.
   
   The current "housing bubble" is most pronounced where there is strong land rationing-places like California, Portland, and the Northeast, from Boston to Washington's Virginia and Maryland suburbs. In the past five years actual house prices in those areas have risen $200,000 more than the average in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston, growth dynamos where there is little land rationing. In just five years, the conjectural $16,000 savings over 25 years have been consumed 12 times over by the actual excess price increases in areas that have implemented the very strategies required to compel the compact development advocated by Burchell et al.
   
   Moreover, with minority home ownership in the U.S. a full third below the Non-Hispanic White homeownership rate, the cost-increasing effects of land rationing are today denying opportunity and blocking the ladder to the economic mainstream. Of course, the higher prices will also drive other millions out of the homeownership market.
   
   All of this shifts wealth from young to old and poorer to richer in a perverse trickle-up economy. The American Dream is under threat. A nation of renters will be less affluent.
   
   None of this is to suggest that suburbanization should be the favored form of urban development. Instead, people should be allowed to live and work where and how they like. Anti-suburban interests have yet to find a compelling reason why this should not be so.
   
   Sprawl Costs misses the economic opportunities and wealth that have been created by broad home ownership, made possible by building new houses on inexpensive land in the suburbs. It is not surprising that virtually all urban growth in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand has been suburban for decades. Consumers know better. What Burchell et al. perceive as costs are really benefits.
   
   Wendell Cox (cox@heartland.org) is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.



3. I just heard one of the authors on talk radio out here and must say that I was blown away by the amount of money sprawl costs every year. Just making a list of the items that tap into our tax dollars is staggering: schools, highways, sewers, electricity, water. And if you watch a new housing development going into the desert, this fact is so obvious---much of the bill must be paid by all the rest of us, how else could they afford all those big costs. So I know the argument for sprawl is that if we didn't have it, housing prices would go through the roof. But one sensible point this author made is that with a very limited change in the way we live, would result in a massive savings to our government spending. So I hope people will listen to this message cause it seems to make sense to me. Looking forward to reading the book, and I hope government officials will as well.