But
regardless of the format you prefer, 2012 was a good year for books on urbanism. Which gives us a long list of possible
reading materials for 2013.
Let’s start
with the Planetizen list of the top ten urbanism books of 2012. “Walkable City” is the stand-out on the list,
but I’m also intrigued by “Urban Planning for Dummies”. As Planetizen notes, “Seeing a ‘Dummies’ book about urban planning is
actually a testament to the fact that the field of urban planning has arrived
in the public consciousness.” And I hope
to find time for “Straphanger” and “Too Much Magic”. The author of the latter, James Howard Kunstler,
often goes beyond my beliefs, but is always entertaining.
As 2013
dawns, the hot book in urbanism is “Walkable City”. Author
Jeff Speck is an urban planner who didn’t begin his career with a focus on
walkability. However, when he dug into
questions of how to improve urban function, he found walkability to be a
surprisingly frequent solution. So he
finally yielded to the inevitable and wrote a book on the subject.
The book has
been remarkably well-reviewed. More
importantly, it has spawned numerous other articles and inquiries into the
nature of walkability. If there will be
an urbanism game changer in 2013, it’s probably this book.
A surprising
omission from the Planetizen list is the ten-year anniversary reissue of “The
Rise of the Creative Class” by Richard Florida.
His argument that a successful city is the result of a critical mass of
creative people has gathered a following in the years since his initial book. But the argument remains controversial to
many. The suggestion that people writing
software at Starbucks is more important to civic vitality than old-line
manufacturing or good government challenges too many shibboleths to be easily
accepted.
Another
author of note is Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Several years ago, Taleb wrote “The Black Swan”, an argument that human
history is disproportionately influenced by events that were completely
unexpected. His most striking example
was that on September 10, 2001 no one expected world history for the following
decade to be dominated by the repercussions of terrorists flying airplanes into
buildings.
Having
introduced “black swan” into the planning lexicon, Taleb next tried to answer
the question that he had effectively posed, how to build systems,
organizations, and communities that survive black swans. He offers his thoughts in “Antifragile”,
which was published in 2012. Not surprisingly,
he finds urbanism to be one of the answers.
Indeed, StrongTowns specifically endorses “Antifragile”.
And on the
subject of StrongTowns, Charles Marohn published his own book in 2012,
“Thoughts on Building StrongTowns, Volume 1”.
And yet,
with all these great candidates, we still haven’t gotten to the Kaid Benfield’s
favorite new book. Benfield, writing for
the National Resources Defense Council on the best of 2012, notes the value that Speck
and Marohn provide, but gives the nod to Pastor Eric Jacobsen and his book “The
Space Between” on the relationship between urbanism and Christianity. (I wrote about Jacobsen
several months ago.) Benfield finds that
Jacobsen adds a fresh and provocative voice to the conversation.
A few weeks
ago, I said that I would devote myself to reading about climate change over the
holidays. And I did. I’m enjoying the learning, but the holidays
being what they are, I didn’t get as far into my climate change library as I
had hoped. So I’ll continue with climate
change for another couple of weeks. But
Florida, Speck, Taleb, and Marohn are all on my reading table, awaiting my
attention. And I should be adding
Jacobsen and Kunstler to the stack.
I hope you
join me in reading at least one of these books.
Urbanism may be complex, but learning about it can be rewarding. Whether from an electronic book reader or dead
trees.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
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