Urban Studies Texts

July 24, 2005 2:52 PM

Cities and Urban Studies: I'm looking for well-researched books which provide insight into the ever-evolving project of the city and its function(s). Aside from the few classics I'm familiar with--Jane Jacobs' and Ken Jackson's books--can you recommend any exemplary texts? I'm particularly interested in studies of the (post)modern city: issues of future planning, class & diversity, municipal economies, and the role of private vs. public resources.
posted by pinto to society & culture (18 comments total)

I just read The Seduction of Place, and liked it a lot. More architecturally focused, but with a lot to say about how the role of architects within cities has changed over time, within a context of how cities function. He's big on cities as being largely defined by the public aspects, I think. (I actually had a tough time with it; he's covers an enormous range of specific plans and places, so it's easy to get lost in the details, but I think it's worthwhile.) Also, Bourgeois Utopias, or anything else, by Robert Fishman.
posted by claxton6 at 3:17 PM on July 24, 2005

All by James Howard Kunstler--He is very readable, very smart and a wicked sense of humor:
His most recent is on Peak Oil "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century "

"The City in Mind": Notes on the Urban Condition
An anthology for reading pleasure. Louis-Napoleon's renovation of Paris; the fiascos of contemporary Atlanta and Las Vegas; Berlin's travails in the 20th century; Cortes Versus the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan; In search of the classical in Rome; and more. Published January 2002.

"Home from Nowhere": Home From Nowhere explores the growing movement across America to restore the physical dwelling place of our civilization. It offers real hope for a nation yearning to live in authentic places worth caring about.


"The Geography of Nowhere": In The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler, gave voice to the feelings of countless Americans unhappy with "the tragic sprawlscape of cartoon architecture, junked cities, and ravaged countryside" where we live and work. Kunstler argued that the mess we've made of our everyday environment was not merely the symptom of a troubled culture, but one of the primary causes of our troubles. "We created a landscape of scary places, and we became a nation of scary people."
posted by rmhsinc at 4:43 PM on July 24, 2005

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
posted by MLIS at 7:08 PM on July 24, 2005

here's a few classics

Mike Davis - City of Quartz
Joel Garreau - Edge City
David Harvey -- The Urbanization of Capital (1985) and Consciousness and the Urban Experience (1985)
Edward Soja -- Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions.
Saskia Sassen -- The Global City: New York London Tokyo. orig 1991. 2d ed. 2001
Geogre Yudice - The Expediency of Culture (2003)
posted by realcountrymusic at 7:11 PM on July 24, 2005

If you just want to ask Urban Planning kinds of questions, Cyburbia is an urban planning site with a pretty good forum section.
posted by Doohickie at 7:48 PM on July 24, 2005

Definitely Mike Davis--all his work deals with cities. i've linked to his essays here before

there's also great stuff all over on "urban spaces" (google for it) and how they were set up, and/or evolved to regulate everything from sexuality to commerce to aspirations, etc.
posted by amberglow at 8:47 PM on July 24, 2005

Another vote for Mike Davis. Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air also touches on some fascinating related topics about the history of public spaces under modernity/capitalism.
posted by scody at 9:23 PM on July 24, 2005

Mike Davis, Mike Davis, Mike Davis!
posted by box at 10:15 PM on July 24, 2005

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas
posted by rob511 at 1:38 AM on July 25, 2005

And don't forget Lewis Mumford's classics: "The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects", "The Culture of Cities," etc.
posted by Framer at 4:13 AM on July 25, 2005

For some alternative perspectives from Mike Davis ax-grinding, you might consider City Journal or the writings of James Q. Wilson. City Journal is the periodical of the Manhattan Institute, which is probably the leading center of conservative / libertarian thinking on urban issues, although it has of late broadened its focus a bit, with a resulting broadening of the editorial scope of the magazine. Among many other accomplishments, JQ Wilson popularized the "broken windows" theory of urban disorder and its remedies. This theory was perhaps the single most important theoretical basis for the new policing strategies which some believed produce the big drop in crime in New York and other major cities.
posted by MattD at 6:55 AM on July 25, 2005

Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped and The City Assembled
Murray Bookchin, The Limits of the City (apparently out of print; some excerpts here)
Robert Fitch, The Assassination of New York
Michael Kenny and David Kertzer, Urban Life in Mediterranean Europe
posted by languagehat at 7:32 AM on July 25, 2005

As you can tell from this thread, the city is a canvas upon which we project our politics. Although I am a big fan of Davis and Jacobs, I find stuff that makes empirical claims a little more interesting than work which makes ideological suggestions for what *should* be done (even though I agree, for the most part, with those recommendations).
posted by mecran01 at 8:27 AM on July 25, 2005

I'd bookmark this thread if I were at home. Great suggestions.

Not quite what you're looking for, as it's not about the city so much, but Building Suburbia by Dolores Hayden was the last urban planning book I read, and it's a very good history of suburban development over the past two centuries. If nothing else, it gives you the ability to differentiate between the "nice suburbs" built before and between the world wars, and the "hellish traffic jam nightmares" built since. A bit academic and dry, though, for those who lean towards the Kunstler end of the readability spectrum.
posted by chrominance at 9:58 AM on July 25, 2005

Thank you all for these amazing suggestions. Looks like I have quite a bit of reading to do. I've read Kunstler's Long Emergency and while he grinds his axes and comes off as a bit of an alarmist, I find myself agreeing with most of what he has to say. I did just read a review taking him to task for lack of scientific research and a certain mean-spirited delight in his visions of suburban doom. And somehow he manages to justify the Iraq war and come off as ignorant on race in the process.
posted by pinto at 10:24 AM on July 25, 2005

Can't believe nobody's recommended William H. Whyte yet.

Highlights:

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Washington, D.C.: The Conservation Foundation, 1980.

The Last Landscape, Garden City: Doubleday, 1968.

The Exploding Metropolis (Classics in Urban History, Vol. 1), Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958.
posted by GrammarMoses at 11:32 AM on July 25, 2005

William Whyte is indeed great. If you ever have to opportunity to watch the video version of The Social Life os Small Urban Spaces, you ought. Whyte's book is based largely on the film taken of people in the urban environment, and his commentary on the video is amusingly droll.

Pretty much anything by Witold Rybczynski will be good. I recommend City Life, but Home is also good, though it isn't so much about urban planning as it is about how home-building has changed with time and culture.

I have to disagree with rhmsinc; please don't read any Kunstler outside of Geography of Nowhere. If you read that, then you've got his (admittedly narrow) perspective without the excess bile and vitriol.
posted by Avogadro at 11:43 AM on July 26, 2005

Richard Sennett's Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, about how history of the State, Religion, and Science affect how we move in the modern city. A counterpoint to Kunstler's half-empty criticism, but be warned that it is quite phenomenologically based (which is ok, but Phenomenology is quite another topic which has its' own problems).
posted by plemeljr at 12:34 PM on July 26, 2005