Over the past several decades, the renewed (and evolving) practice of placemaking has made dramatic progress towards a more endearing, adaptable and resilient future, fueled by some of the most astute thinkers of our time. Here's a collection of our favorites.
Reflections on Seaside: Muses/Ideas/Influences
Dhiru Thadini, Leon Krier, Joseph P. Riley Jr. | March 2021
With essays by Robert A. M. Stern, Andrés Duany, Deborah Berke, Steven Holl, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Ray Gindroz, Scott Merrill, Steve Mouzon, Susan Henderson, and Hazel Borys
Transect Urbanism: Readings in Human Ecology
Andres Duany and Brian Falk | ORO Editions, 2020
The definitive reference on the Rural-to-Urban Transect
Three Pieces of Glass: Why We Feel Lonely in a World Mediated by Screens
Eric O. Jacobsen | Brazos Press, 2020
Smart phones, TVs and windshields increasingly make us voyeurs in our own lives. Places hostile to pedestrians don't help.
The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness
Emily Anthes | Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020
Packed with interested insights, particularly during a year spent indoors.
Plan Canada || Celebrating 100 Years / Célébrons ces 100 ans
David Gordon FCIP, RPP, Principal Editor | Kelman, 2019
30 articles by 35 contributors celebrate 100 years of city and town planning in Canada.
Space & Anti-Space: The Fabric of Place, City and Architecture
Barbara Littenberg and Steven Peterson | ORO Editions, 2019
Density alone a city does not make.
Bridging Silos: Collaborating for Environmental Health and Justice in Urban Communities
Katrina Smith Korfmacher | The MIT Press, 2019
How communities can collaborate across systems and sectors to address environmental health disparities
Neighborhood
Emily Talen | Oxford University Press, 2019
A scholarly dive into how the neighborhood is the unit of walkable urban places
Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution
Janette Sadik-Khan with Seth Solomonow | Viking, 2016
The brave story of making New York City walkable and bikeable
The Past and Future City: How Historic Preservation is Reviving America's Communities
Stephanie Meeks with Kevin Murphy | Island Press, 2016
Arguments for historic preservation as a tool to deliver livability
Transit Street Design Guide
National Association of City Transportation Officials | Island Press, 2016
How-to guide for prioritizing pedestrians and transit in street design
The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World
Andrea Wulf | Vintage, 2016
A celebration of the father of environmentalism's vision and ongoing influence
The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life
Jonathan F.P. Rose | Harper Wave, 2016
Five elements of great cities: coherence, circularity, resilience, community, and compassion
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond | Crown, 2016
Stories of eviction and its scars in Milwaukee
Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
David Maraniss | Simon & Schuster, 2016
Portrait of 1960's Detroit, and how it symbolizes lost dreams of the American city
Where We Want to Live: Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities
Ryan Gravel | St. Martin's Press, 2016
Atlanta's Beltline as an inspiration to go beyond neighborhood plans to big infrastructure commitments
Places of the Heart
Colin Ellard | Bellevue Literary Press, 2015
Cumulative effects of immersion in boring buildings can be seriously hazardous to one’s health
Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action for Long-Term Change
Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia | Island Press, 2015
Community-based placemaking handbook, not always sanctioned by local government
A Black Urbanist
Kristen Jeffers | Blurb, 2015
How to get the inequity of walkable urbanism into the hands of the people
City on a Grid: How New York Became New York
Gerard Koeppel | Da Capo Press, 2015
Purpose of the NYC grid: "Each individual should be poetically the owner of the capital of the world." Roland Barthes via Gerard Koeppel
Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation
William A. Fischel | Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2015
History and impacts of United States zoning regs
Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation
Sonja Hirt | Cornell University Press, 2014
European perspective on history and impacts of United States zoning regs
People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think About Greener, Healthier Cities
Kaid Benfield | Island Press, 2014
25 essays making sense of where we live, better than "green," "sustainable," and "smart growth" labels ever could
Cognitive Architecture: Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment
Ann Sussman and Justin Hollander | Routledge, 2014
Psychology and neuroscience can help architects and planners take human nature seriously when designing buildings and places
Charter of The New Urbanism
Congress for the New Urbanism | CNU, 1999, Second Edition 2013
Principles of urbanism
Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns
John Massengale and Victor Dover | Wiley, 2013
Street design manual that takes its cues from today's great walkable urbanism to build tomorrow's livable places
New Media for Designers + Builders
Stephen Mouzon | The Guild Foundation Press, 2013
User-intensive e-book provides a road map for revising the communications efforts of the design and construction community
Urbanism Without Effort
Charles Wolfe | Island Press, 2013
The effortless most often comes from the authentic, which are the dots this book connects, both verbally and with beautiful photography
Reshaping Metropolitan America: Development Trends and Opportunities to 2030 (Metropolitan Planning + Design)
Dr. Arthur C. Nelson | Island Press, 2013
Compelling demographic and statistical evidence of walkable places dominating the next generation of development
Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb
June Williamson, Ellen Dunham-Jones | Island Press, May 7, 2013
How sprawl can be redeveloped into more resilient, livable places
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
Charles Montgomery | Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013
Journalist Charles Montgomery tackles city planning via the user experience. Wielding satisfying story-telling with solid urban design analysis and case studies, he hones in on what matters to most of us: happiness. Our own, and those we care about.
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
Jeff Speck | Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012
A commonsense user’s manual on making walkable places: streets matter
Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development
Robert Gibbs | Wiley, 2012
Savvy combo of the retail numbers required to make the nationals' business models pencil, along with how to organize shopping into walkable neighborhood formats, with a tenacious mix of local entrepreneurs
Made for Walking
Julie Campoli | Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012
12 neighborhoods in the U.S. & Canada where one can live comfortably without a car point out needed transportation reform
Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space
Jan Gehl | Island Press, 2016
Pointers on designing invigorating public space
Sprawl Repair Manual
Galina Tachieva | Island Press, 2010
Companion to SmartCode Sprawl Repair Module
Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up
Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, Jean-Paul Fitoussi | The New Press, 2010
Figuring quality of life, well-being, and satisfaction into our economic governance decisions
13 Ways to Kill Your Community
Doug Griffiths | Frontenac House, 2010
Down-to-earth, pragmatic Alberta Legislative Assembly member representing a largely rural constituency reviews townbuilding as a theoretical saboteur hellbent on destroying his community
Cities for People
Jan Gehl | Island Press, 2010
Transforming urban environments based on how people use spaces
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Rebecca Solnit | Penguin Books, 2010
Our best acts are the exception rather than the norm and disasters often shake us into community building.
Light Imprint Handbook: Integrating Sustainability and Community Design
Thomas Low | Civic by Design, 2010
Sustainable stormwater and natural drainage practices in community design
The Language of Towns and Cities
Dhiru Thadani | Rizzoli, 2010
Exquisitely illustrated urban planning & design dictionary
The Original Green
Stephen A. Mouzon | New Urban Guild, 2010
Unlocking the mystery of true sustainability
The Smart Growth Manual
Andrés Duany, Jeff Speck, with Mike Lydon | McGraw-Hill, 2009
Challenges and best practices for urban development
Canons of Sustainable Architecture and Urbanism
Congress for the New Urbanism | CNU, 2009
Principles of sustainable urbanism
The Architecture of Community
Leon Krier | Island Press, 2009
Indispensable beacon of principle and methodology
New Urbanism: Best Practices Guide
Robert Steuteville, Philip Langdon | New Urban News, 2009
Sourcebook on the ideas and techniques of the New Urbanism
The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream
Christopher Leinberger | Island Press, 2009
The developer and financier's perspective on sustainable urbanism
The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age
John Michael Greer | New Society Publishers, 2008
Handy post-industrial how-to guide: "the community, not the individual, is the basic unit of human survival."
Retrofitting Suburbia
Ellen Dunham-Jones, June Williamson | Wiley, 2008
Urban design solutions for redesigning suburbs
SmartCode & Manual v8.0
Andrés Duany, Sandy Sorlien, Bill Wright | New Urban News, 2008
Detailed notes explaining each section of the SmartCode
A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development
Daniel K. Slone, Doris S. Goldstein, Andrew Gowder | Wiley, 2008
Legal guide for planners, developers and architects
Form Based Codes
Daniel G. Parolek, Karen Parolek, Paul Crawford | Wiley, 2008
A guide for planners, urban designers, municipalities, and developers
New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future
Tigran Haas | Rizzoli, 2008
Sourcing from debates at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, examines New Urbanism today and speculates about it’s future
Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature
Doug Farr | Wiley, 2007
Companion to SmartCode Sustainable Urbanism Modules
The SmartCode Solution to Sprawl
Chad Emerson | Environmental Law Institute, 2007
Practical examination of the SmartCode
New Urbanism and American Planning: The Conflict of Cultures
Emily Talen | Taylor & Francis, 2007
Survey of the last hundred years of urbanist ideals and cultures
A Living Tradition
Steve Mouzon | New Urban Guild Foundation, 2007
Architectural traditions of the Bahamas over the past four centuries
Long Emergency
James Howard Kunstler | Grove Press, 2006
Surviving the end of oil, climate change, and other converging catastrophes of the 21st century
Principles of Urban Structure
Nikos Salingaros | Tecne Press, 2005
Concepts from mathematics and physics directly applied to human-scaled urbanist projects
The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards
Allan Jacobs, Elizabeth MacDonald, Yodan Rofe | The MIT Press, 2003
A must read for urban designers implementing the classic multiway boulevard
Solving Sprawl
F. Kaid Benfield | Island Press, 2003
Models of Smart Growth in communities across America
The New Transit Town
Hank Dittmar, Gloria Ohland | Island Press, 2003
Best practices In Transit-Oriented Development
Sidewalks in the Kingdom
Eric Jacobsen | Brazos Press, 2003
Urbanism and Christian faith
New Civic Art : Elements of Town Planning
Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Robert Alminana | Rizzoli, 2003
Encyclopedic reference book on the art and science of urban planning
Place Making
Charles Bohl | Urban Land Institute, 2002
Developing town centers, main streets, and urban villages
Greyfields into Goldfields
Lee Sobel | CNU, 2002
Dead malls become living neighborhoods
Suburban Nation
Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck | North Point, 2001
The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream
The Wealth Of Cities
John Norquist | Basic Books, 1999
Revitalizing the centers of American life
The Great Good Place
Ray Oldenberg | Da Capo Press, 1999
Cafés, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community
The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream
Peter Calthorpe | Princeton Architectural Press, 1995
Manual on regional planning technique
The Geography of Nowhere
James Howard Kunstler | Free Press, 1994
The rise and decline of America's man-made landscape
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jane Jacobs | Modern Library, 1993
"Perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning." -New York Times
American Architecture and Urbanism
Vincent Scully | Henry Holt & Co, 1988
History on architecture and planning
The Elusive City: Five Centuries of Design, Ambition and Miscalculation (Icon Editions)
Jonathan Barnett | Icon, 1987
History of planning since the 18th Century
The Timeless Way of Building
Christopher Alexander | Oxford, 1979
Architectural theory and design
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
Christopher Alexander | Oxford, 1977
250 patterns consisting of a design problems and solutions
The Image of the City (Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies Series)
Kevin Lynch | The MIT Press, 1960
Mental maps we make of cities reveals the character and feeling of the place. This classic looks for reasons some cities make us feel comfortable, and others don't, based on the success of their pathways, boundaries, disconnects, and nodes.
