No comments about J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities.

No comments about Embodied Utopias (Architext Series).

1 comments about Modern Urban Housing in China (Architecture).

1. 'Modern Urban Housing' is a thorough history of housing in China, although there is a definite bias towards what ocurred in Shanghai and northern China. Except for editing and the conclusion by P. Rowe, this book was written entirely by mainland academics, so there is 'precise' statistic after statistic that ends up overloading the reader rather than helping to clarify and provide context. It also bogs the reading down and is not mitigated by their review of of China's contemporaneous political events wherein thay are seemingly writing so as not to offend the party overseers (although this is my own bias speaking). Since this is for westerners, this book would have been helped by a more active collaboration with a westerner from the beginning.
   
   However, there is little else out there in English for people who would like to learn about this subject and the illustrations/photos are plentiful enough and serve to illuminate the writing.

1 comments about Linkages In The Landscape: The Role Of Corridors And Connectivity In Wildlife Conservation.

1. The world has seen unprecedented land clearing in the last half-century, with widespread conversion of forest to agriculture and other uses. This forest conversion has led to a significant loss of species around the world. For many species, much of the remaining habitat is fragmented, with scattered forests in a landscape otherwise occupied by humans.
   
   Various theories, such as island biogeography theory, suggest that this fragmentation is bad for species survival. One natural solution is to try to connected these islands of forest through wildlife corridors, greenbelts, and similar strategies. Though this solution sounds perfectly reasonable in theory there is little evidence whether it works or not.
   
   This is the question that Bennett addresses in this book. He does not present original research on the effectiveness of these linkage strategies but does a good job bringing together existing research on the topic. The book is intended primarily for students and for practitioners, but is accessible to a general audience interested in these questions.
   
   Bennett makes a convincing case that the usefulness of linkages strategies varies significantly by habitat and especially by species. For example, many birds can thrive in a fragmented landscape because they can move from one forest to another. At the other extreme, snails don't really benefit from linkages at all. The entire book goes through such examples, presenting the advantages and disadvantages of linkages in the landscape, successes and failures, challenges, and the evidence both for and against them.
   
   This is a very helpful book. Its overall coherence suffers somewhat from reliance on other people's studies, not all of which are directly comparable. But it's a good place to start.

No comments about Starting From Zero: Reconstructing Downtown New York.

1 comments about City Publics: The (Dis) Enchantment of Urban Encounters (Questioning Cities).

1. Across various British cities, Watson studies the changing and complex roles of public spaces. Readers from other countries might see much that is familiar here. Examples of public spaces include aquatic centers and bath houses. The latter are increasingly uncommon, and hark back to a time when many houses and tenements had no bathing facilities, only toilets. In the US, bath houses are quite rare, with the notable exception of gay sites in some cities.
   
   Watson also explores various groups of the public, where these groups might be considered somewhat invisible. That is, they might have a minimal visibility, like the elderly or gays. For both, issues of safety are often a consideration. The young are also studied. For them, the public places might be parks, swimming centers and libraries. The book also gives sample drawings by several kids, of areas they like or do not like.

No comments about Ornaments of the Metropolis: Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture.

No comments about Architecture, Power and National Identity.

No comments about As I Was Saying, Vol. 1: Texas, Pre-Texas, Cambridge.

1 comments about In What Style Should We Build?: The German Debate on Architectural Style (Texts & Documents).

1. That's a very usefull selection of essays on theory of architecture for research the architecture of Semper context.