1 comments about Land and Natural Development (LAND) Code: Guidelines for Sustainable Land Development (Wiley Series in Sustainable Design).

1. Balmori and Benoit are visionaries on the all-important issue of land development. Their commonsensical approach should guide the behavior of all land policy people--real estate agents, bankers, regional and local zoning commissions AND developers. Doing the "green" thing is cheaper and better, always.

No comments about Creating Central Park (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

No comments about Indicators for Urban and Regional Planning: The Interplay of Policy and Methods (Rtpi Library Series).

3 comments about Rural by Design: Maintaining Small Town Character.

1. You can still buy this book from the American Planning Association (www.planning.org) for about $60, even though Amazon, and other book stores, have it listed as "out of print."



2. The bible on proper planning. I wish more planners would read it. I am an average citizen who wanted to learn more about smarter land use plans and this book really has great ideas. It is expensive, but well worth the price. Shows how poor our current clear-cutting practices are compared to the beauty of an open space subdivision design. Buy this-you will really learn a lot!



3. This is a great book, the best ever written, I am sure, on the very important topic of helping maintain, and sometimes create livable communities in rural areas. The only handicap for owning the book is the rather huge price, $ 86.00, and not discounted by Amazon. We would like to have all our county planning commission members have a copy of the book, but can't afford to do so.

5 comments about Great Leap Forward / Harvard Design School Project on the City.

1. While this book is packaged in some degree of sensationalism, such as mentioning that the most prolific architect in Dongguan city is a gambler, and highlighting the negative externalities of foreign direct investment in the region in question, it is the most stunning and compelling analysis I have seen of the PRD. This book is a fascinating introduction to Chinese economic policy and history, and a recommended read for anyone who doesn't know that 1/3 of everything you own that's "Made in China" came from the factories made possible by the topic of this book.
   
   It's the next best thing to actually visiting the place, which I also recommend.



2. After reading all the reviews, I still decided to buy this book. Surprisingly, I think this is a great book, perhaps, in a different way. Some of the people think this is the book with artless pictures and off-track information. In fact, I have to admit that people who are not familiar with china and its culture may have some difficulties to find connection to the book. In my point of view, this book raised some strong questions about the consequences of China's dramatic economic transformation, that the architecture in China would be so egregiously post-modern is interesting. Beside, it also explains the reason behind the replication culture consequentially occur after the red cultural revolution is valuable.



3. It's great that people are starting to look at this topic, but this book reeks of a quick-hit, let's-publish-a-book-after-a-seminar job. The title itself says it all: the Great Leap Forward was a Maoist economic project in the late 50s that left up to 30 million people dead. How can one use this term, which refers to one of the great human tragedies of the 20th century, as a cute title for a book? The GLF wasn't cute. It has nothing to do with architecture or urban planning. Using it in this cavalier way belies a complete ignorance of the past 50 years of Chinese history. Sorry if this seems like nitpicking, but I can't take a book seriously that doesn't take its topic seriously.



4. The previous reviewer was disappointed with this volume after reading Koolhaus' books. While the 3 volumes of the Project of the City are under his (loose?) direction, these are actually all anthologies of writings by individuals connected to the Harvard Design School, each book on a separate theme: metropolis (Mutations) shopping (Guide to Shopping) and the Pearl River Valley, this volume. I knew nothing about this region of the world until reading an article in Mutations about it.

   Did you know that just one of the cities in this region went from a population of 30,000 to 3.9 million in 15 years? And this growth was accomplished basically without any city planning department? Or that architectural plans for a 40 floor high rise take less than 2 months to complete?

   All of the Project on the City books have many similarities, which you can consider a strength (my opinion) or a weakness (previous review). Take a huge subject (PRV, shopping...) provide millions of factoids about it, present those fact in a cacophony of words, graphs, photos (and with Mutations, there is even a CD of avant electronic music). I liked that about S,M.L.XL and I like it in this series. A treatise on architecture and urban planning in the PRV I never would have read. Just too obscure and potentially boring a subject. But after reading and carefully studying all the photos in this book, I'm left with a large, jumbled set of distinct impressions about the PRV, which raise all sorts of questions about the role of architects and planners in developing countries (or in the US, for that matter).

   To me the revolutionary things about S.M.L,XL was its insistence that architecture is not best discussed in articles. Even articles with accompanying photos. That is way too static, too two-dimensional a method of transmitting information, and not well suited to how we absorb information in the 21st century. Rem's recent books gives us a cacophony on information simply jumping off the page. The Project on the City books continue those ideas, and I think do a good job of it.

   I subtracted a star because of Rem's highly annoying joke of "copyrighting" words that contain key concepts in his writings. This is particularly annoying since some of the writers in this anthology are clearly puzzled by this requirement and lack even the minimal style and humor with which Rem unfurls this trick in his own writing.




5. I looked forward with great anticipation to this book. Koolhaas' "Delirious New York" was a fascinating work, and "S,M,L,XL" was both interesting and a great argument against hard drives. This book was a major disappointment. It doesn't delve very deeply at all into it's subject matter (the Pearl River Delta area of China) and most of it's "important ideas" are sophomoric. I would say the most irritating thing about this book (other than the totally artless and pointless photographs that litter the book) are the code phrases (highlighted in red) that read like a grad student's compendium of inanities. Don't waste your money.

No comments about Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities.

3 comments about Beneath the Metropolis: The Secret Lives of Cities.

1. I highly recommend this book to anyone curious about the history and underworkings of the great cities of the world. It gave me a new appreciation for what goes in to the planning, creation and development of a major city.



2. I almost started by stating this book isn't for the average reader. But, I'm an average reader, and frankly I found the information within it fascinating. Coincidentally I lived in N.Y.C., and have a little more experience with its underground infrastructure than just having been a straphanger (subway rider). Mr. Marshall has a no nonsense writing style, and his research has resulted in much interesting information regarding what's buried beneath our feet. The history of how, and why things got, and get buried in the first place makes the book all the more enlightening. Especially the consideration that things get buried as a result of debris that accumulates over time, and how history is lost, and then sometimes rediscovered in the process of modernization.



3. A beautiful book, monumental piece of research, with clear and engaging prose and a great mix of maps, illustrations, capsule histories, lively facts, and timelines. If you ever stood over a manhole or at the dark edge of a subway tunnel and wondered, "What's down there?" then this book will tell you. Beneath the Metropolis describes what's underneath 12 world cities -- New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Mexico City, Paris, London, Rome, Cairo, Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow and Sydney. With pith and concision, Marshall details the infrastructure, the archeology and the geology. In Paris, we learn about the fossilized bones and the beautiful sewers and subways. In Rome, we tour the ancient ruins and rickety subway (did you know there was one?). In Beijing, we learn about the vast network of cold war tunnels that few visit. Marshall uses each city's underground to trace its history, politics and economics. It's a pleasure to learn how successful cities, like London or Paris, can take different approaches to infrastructure. As a fellow author and former Columbia classmate, I admire and envy Marshall's success in wrestling such a huge topic into a pleasurable masterpiece. Beneath the Metropolis is destined for many a reader's nightstand as well as planning and political offices and classrooms.
   
   --Christopher D. Ringwald, author of A Day Apart: How Jews, Christians, and Muslims Find Faith, Freedom, and Joy on the Sabbath (Oxford, 2007)

1 comments about Repairing the American Metropolis: Common Place Revisited (Samuel and Althea Stroum Books) (Samuel and Althea Stroum Books).

1. Review by Tigran Hasic (Reproduced by permission from the Nordic Journal of Architectural Research)
   
   Just when you thought that what you are looking at is nothing more than another book on anti-sprawl in America, along comes Douglas Kelbaugh's new book "Repairing the American Metropolis". This refreshing work is written with formidable ease of style, recherché lucidity and academic strength, as well as many years of practical experience. In a nutshell, this book offers a completely new reconsideration of contemporary American architecture, design, planning and policy making, as well as ways how to revitalize and repair our cities. All of this evolves in a metropolitan sustainable vision where cities would be ecologically, socially and spatially acceptable again. Aristotle's axiom that `we come to the cities to live the good life' could not be more correct in the context of this book.
   
   Repairing the American Metropolis is a follow-up to the author's highly successful earlier book Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design. This earlier work, illustrated by a number of workshops and charrettes, is a tour-de-force about how we can develop community and create sustainable places in face of fragmented growth and development. Kelbaugh's work on charrettes has been cited and copied around the USA and abroad as a model for community design. The new book continues on the same line of thinking but lifts the whole discussion to an even higher intellectual level, but in an understandable and overwhelmingly logical and persuading manner.
   
   Backdrop for the whole discussion lies in the fact that America is becoming more and more a suburban nation, as portrayed and discussed in the book Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and Decline of American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck. With more than 50% of population living outside of the city, we are witnessing the breakdown of community and civic life, people-friendly neighbourhoods - cities as we used to know and love them.
   
   It is not surprising that Peter Calthorpe, one of the founders of New Urbanism in America is thinking on the same lines as Kelbaugh. Calthorpe and Kelbaugh wrote the national best seller in urban design in 1998 entitled "The Pedestrian Pocket Book", in which they have argued for walkable neighborhoods, pedestrian communities and transit oriented development (T.O.D.) as well as for bringing back the sense and quality of place. They are not pushing for the disappearance of the automobile but rather for designing livable communities and repairing the old ones, while realizing that too much traffic not only destroys the urban quality of place but also damages the occupant of the car. Many of these ideas were later incorporated into New Urbanism. Along with Andres Duany, Peter Calthorpe and others, Kelbaugh has been one of the pioneers of this movement.
   
   The discourse in this book evolves around the notions of community, sustainability and the role of design. The book is divided into five sections that flow tightly and move all the time from the general to the specific and backwards: suburban sprawl, Critical Regionalism, typology, New Urbanism and public policy. Kelbaugh presents the case of the high costs of sprawl, how Critical Regionalism can be an answer to the growing forces of homogenization, commodification and banalization. It also addresses the importance of architectural typology to sustainable urbanism. He blends all chapters in a historical, architectural, design, planning, policy and sociological discussion that flows together well and that can be read well as separate parts as well as one single work.
   
   Andres Duany, one of the founders and spiritual leaders of the New Urbanism movement could not put it more correctly when he says that this book is "The most sophisticated critical presentation of the New Urbanism to be found anywhere." What he was actually referring to is a highlight of the whole book, Chapter 4, New Urbanism vs. Everyday Urbanism and Post Urbanism. Much less critical and openly assertive than some other proponents of New Urbanism, Kelbaugh nonetheless gives a sophisticated and strong critique of CIAM and failures of The Modernist architecture and planning principles that destroyed good urbanism and created zoned and fragmented communities dominated by vehicles and inhumane urban design. That notwithstanding, he comes up with a brilliant critique on New Urbanism, restating its principles in a highly intelligent way. At the same time he defends New Urbanism. Vicious attacks on modern architecture as failing on multiple levels - human, aesthetic, social and environmental - are not to be found here, but rather a lucid and realistic analysis of the state of the city.
   
   It is unquestionable (even the worst critics of New Urbanism cannot deny it) that the movement has revived enthusiasm for the city's potential and possibilities. It represents the antithesis (despite occasional lapses into gated communities) of community isolation, alienation, and spatial fragmentation, all in favor of livable places. Finally in Chapter 4 he presents the Three Paradigms: New Urbanism, Everyday Urbanism and Post Urbanism. Basically what Kelbaugh argues very convincingly is that New Urbanism ("idealistic, civic and structuralist") is not the "only game in town". There are "competing emerging urbanist paradigms" that have gained momentum at this moment in history. Aside from New Urbanism and the conventional suburban development that continues to enwrap the American metropolis - Everyday Urbanism ("informal, populist and non-structuralist") and Post Urbanism ("heterotopian, sensational and structuralist") exist in parallel, side by side.
   
   In the final chapter (Chapter 5) on Public Policy, Kelbaugh sets out a new metropolitan agenda where he points to a need for new and reformulated public policy. He presents seven policy initiatives for immediate action in America: (1) Get development priorities right; (2) Get automobiles under control; (3) Get transit on track; (4) Get planning; (5) Get more granny flats and live-work units (6) Get funding and taxing right; and (7) Get governance right. These are ready-made nostrums that, if adopted, would stop urban sprawl, create environmentally sustainable cities, public life, calm traffic and regenerate the urban, social and cultural realm. Instead he sees them as `enabling strategies' that could help local government to address problems and seize opportunities.
   
   The American project since WWII has been to opt for mobility and freedom while the European ideal has been place and urbanity. Unfortunately the European suburbs are not testimony to that fact. Although this book has not focused on the international context, it still has relevance to the European situation. The European metropolis will also have to go through a number of revitalizations (especially in the suburbs) as a consequence of all the eradications and negative changes left behind after the WWII. Kelbaugh's book represents an important primer in that respect.
   
   At times written in an overwhelmingly provocative, compelling and convincing style, this book reminds one of the colossal and influential work on urbanism and town planning, Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Kelbaugh's reasoning and ideas places him in the forefront of the current American and international urbanism debate. Repairing the American Metropolis is certainly one of the finest books on the subject that has come out in the last decade, written in a crisp, readable style accessible to architects, planners, urban designers, decision makers, real estate developers and laypersons alike.
   
   Douglas Kelbaugh is the Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and former principal in Kelbaugh, Calthorpe & Associates in Seattle and in Kelbaugh & Lee in Princeton, New Jersey. In the foreword, Alex Krieger of Harvard Graduate School of Design describes it as "a fundamental reconsideration of contemporary American architecture and planning." Professor Kelbaugh's, in many respects dialectical work shows a person who understands today's realities, the constraints that we are faced with in our cities, options we have, and the need to proactively return to the authentic qualities of community and dwelling. He sums it up well by saying at the end of his book:
   
   These changes and reforms are essential because the alternatives are stark, and the consequences of inaction are apocalyptic. It will be worth both our grittiest and noblest efforts. And as we repair and revitalize our architecture, neighbourhoods, cities, and regions, we may build common places for ourselves along the way.

1 comments about Urban Planning Today: A Harvard Design Magazine Reader (Harvard Design Magazine).

1. URBAN PLANNING TODAY is part magazine, part newsletter, and part book report on the latest problems and debates facing urban planning. Here various contributors provide articles on projects from different backgrounds and goals in urban and regional planning, juxtaposing development strategies and issues with criticism and legal notes. Any with an interest in successes, failures, and evolving perspectives will welcome this addition to a college-level collection strong in urban studies.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch

1 comments about Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World.

1. You often hear in academia that cultural analysis should be better integrated with political economy. Usually this means that the latter should disappear beneath 'political' readings of popular cultural texts. But Branding New York actually achieves this feat, showing how neoliberal New York arose after the fiscal crisis of the mid-seventies through a cultural project that defined New York City as the stomping ground of the 'new class' (i.e. 'yuppies', epitomized by the readership of New York magazine) and a safe space for business and tourists. This counterrevolution required real work, not so much because the forces opposing it were well organized (they were not) but because such phenomenon as graffiti (which Greenberg writes sympathetically about as an effort by inner-city youth to assert their right to the city and to be heard), crime, exploitation films like 'Escape from New York', and even serial killers kept interfering with the image makeover (even the cops got into the act--angry about budget cuts, they produced leaflets warning tourists to stay away from 'Fear City'). Greenberg shows the way elite organizing drives to remake NY as a desirable locale for financial business (not its main function in an earlier era when it was dominated by manufacturing) converged with the cultural struggle through the I Love New York campaign, a wildly successful logo and jingle which was underwritten by governmental agencies (its first iteration had a slightly touching, desperate undercurrent, as Broadway casts donated their labor in an effort to lure enough tourists to keep their shows going; a later version just emphasized all the tax breaks and other favors businesses could now receive).
   The cultural work that Greenberg describes has now become the 'common sense' predominant in New York, notwithstanding 9-11 (which she devotes a coda to). Much--perhaps a majority--of the city languishes in low paying jobs, lousy schools, a public transit system still getting cut even as population and ridership increases, etc. But New York is now a 'great place to live' for a predominantly white, relatively affluent class, and a great place to do business for financial and real estate interests that get a sympathetic ear from city government beyond the wildest dreams of the seventies. A new cultural struggle will need to be waged if the city is to be remade as a genuinely inclusive space that lives up to the potential of its multicultural population. Greenberg's book should be read closely by anyone interested in doing so.