What are the hot new books on sustainability and cities right now?

April 12, 2022 6:22 PM

Just what's in the title, academic and general interest are welcome. I realize this is very general, so feel free to share whatever you like that even remotely fits.
posted by Toddles to Science & Nature (11 answers total)

Donald Shoup writes and posts a lot about parking and the profound impact parking policy has on the urban space.

Jens von Bergman posts a lot about housing in Vancouver - including some focus on how various rules and bylaws impact what gets built.

These are twitter links, not books, but both accounts include links to websites and books and other writing.
posted by lulu68 at 7:36 PM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

The War on Cars is a great Podcast and Twitter Feed. Neither of these are books, but they often refer to books and involve people who have written books.

I would also recommend Walkable City Rules.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:48 PM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Pablo Sendra and Richard Sennett's Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City, a valuable approach to democratizing and open-sourcing urban space to make the city more adaptable even despite authority. A book I keep dipping into and adding more and more scribbles and Postits to.
posted by unearthed at 2:01 AM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives by Melissa and Chris Bruntlett fits the bill: "The book is organized around the benefits that result from thoughtfully curbing traffic, resulting in a city that is: child-friendly, connected, trusting, feminist, quiet, therapeutic, accessible, prosperous, resilient, and age-friendly." . Their previous book is also good, although it's from 2018, so not so 'new'.
posted by snusmumrik at 2:26 AM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Moving to sustainable sources of heat energy is hugely important in achieving net zero, and has been relatively under supported compared to efforts on say renewable electricity. 'Heat and the City' is a large UK research project that addresses multiple aspects of delivering low carbon hat, including addressing energy efficiency, demand reduction and renewable heat. Their publication page and homepage.
posted by biffa at 3:18 AM on April 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Chuck Marohn's Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town and Dan Parolek's writings on missing middle housing.
posted by smich at 6:54 AM on April 13, 2022

Raquel Rolnik's Urban Warfare: Housing under the Empire of Finance

Samuel Stein's Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State

And In Defense of Housing by David Madden and Peter Marcuse.

All Verso Books, which has a deep bench of books on urban studies but has been rocking it in the housing justice section of late.

Julian Agyeman's work on just sustainabilities is super accessible, though I especially love the edited book Incomplete Streets, which isn't new new, but I assign a bunch of chapters to my students.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:15 AM on April 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Checkout the Talking Headways book club list at Bookshop.org. I believe all the books have been discussed on the podcast, if you want to check out those episodes before committing to the book.
posted by bread-eater at 2:00 PM on April 13, 2022

Under the sky we make, Kim Nicholas.
posted by sulaine at 5:01 PM on April 13, 2022

Dan Immergluck has a book coming out this fall that I'm super excited about: Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta
posted by hydropsyche at 5:05 PM on April 13, 2022

Another book well worth reading is Landscape Citizenships - the focus is community and social resilience in the face of change and disruption, about the people and places at society's edges, whatever, wherever and whoever you consider as/at an edge.

Authors are all landscape architects plus multiple other disciplines.
posted by unearthed at 4:43 PM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]