Planetizen’s annual list of top books covers subjects in all varieties of planning: urban planning, community planning, environmental planning, and more.
The Social Importance of Public Spaces
Palaces for the People takes a meandering journey through what Klinenberg calls “social infrastructure.”
Book Review: State of Resistance
Pastor acknowledges the urgency of the housing crisis and its relationship with — for better or worse — California’s new politics.
Balancing Act: Richard Sennett’s “Building and Dwelling”
City life always wavers along continua that are bounded by unattainable poles, and so dualities run throughout Building and Dwelling.
Urban Utopias Under African Skies
An exhibit by Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez at the Museum of Modern Art invokes urban idealism at the same time that it serves as a foil for poverty and deprivation in the megacities of the developing world.
Planetizen’s Top Ten Books of 2017
Planetizen is pleased to release its list of the best books published in 2017 on the subjects of planning, design, and development.
Searching for Los Angeles in Blade Runner 2049
For all the theorizing about Blade Runner, it’s worth asking not what Scott was saying about the future of Los Angeles (or of cities in general) but rather why he chose Los Angeles in the first place.
Los Angeles Learns to Play Ball: Review of City of Dreams
The all-time championship of uncertainty, politicking, and contentiousness surrounding a Los Angeles sports team goes to none other than the Dodgers.
Death by Gentrification: Review of ‘How to Kill a City’
A few weeks ago, Richard Florida assured me and a roomful of other journalists that “not everything is a neoliberal plot.” Tell it to Peter Moskowitz.
City Books For Non-Planning Nerds
As the library of books on urbanism expands by the year, here are some fun, engaging titles for city nerds and non-nerds alike.
Richard Florida’s Reckoning: Review of ‘The New Urban Crisis
Today, many cities, and perhaps Florida himself, have become victims of their own success.
Planetizen’s Top Planning Books for 2017
Planetizen is pleased to release its list of the best books published in 2016 on the subjects of planning, design, and development.
Art Review: Ed Ruscha and the Great American West
No artist has ever depicted Los Angeles like Ed Ruscha. It’s worth a trip to San Francisco to see the de Young’s retrospective.
A Back-to-School Reading List of Books About Cities
2016 has produced an eclectic, imitative mix of titles to the urban library.
Planners in an Age of Globalization
CP&DR’s Josh Stephens caught up with Khanna at the Milken Institute Global Conference to talk about how city form – and the people who guide it – in California and elsewhere can contribute to these global connections.
Intellectual Tourism, Near and Far: Review of ‘The Geography of Genius’
Organized chronologically, each chapter travels to a different city and investigates a different type of genius, spanning some 3,000 years. There’s a fun, parlor-game quality to anticipation, both of what city will come next and of what might qualify as “genius” for Weiner.
Book Review: From Steel to Slots
Chloe E. Taft explores the transition of Bethlehem, Pa., from Rust Belt company town to gambling mecca.
Fetishizing Families: Review of ‘The Human City’
Kotkin has long been a contrarian and critic of contemporary planning — sometimes a perceptive and welcome one, especially when urbanists, myself included, have gotten too cute or too smug. “The Human City” is probably his most comprehensive critique and surely his most off-putting.