Very Short Introduction Discussions at SNFL: "City Planning" and "Postcolonialism"
Last month, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library hosted the fifth in a monthly series of Very Short Introduction Discussions. February's topic was “City Planning.”
Oxford University Press's Very Short Introductions offer concise overviews of a diverse range of subjects. The books in the series are written by experts in the field who combine facts and analysis with their enthusiasm for the subject to make for engaging and educational nonfiction. They are available to borrow in print form as well as read online with your library card at nypl.org/vsi.
If you couldn’t make it to the live discussion, here are some questions to consider while reading City Planning. Feel free to respond by leaving a comment on this post.
- What was your overall impression: what did you think of this book and its approach to the topic?
- What is “sprawl” and how does it impact city planning?
- Can you think of any parks, green space, or public areas in your neighborhood that would have been the result of a city planning process? What do you think about it? How is it used?
- What’s the difference between gentrification and urban renewal? Can you think of how one or both of those have impacted your neighborhood or surrounding neighborhoods?
- In regard to environmental and social catastrophes, the author writes that “disasters are not a good opportunity for radically remaking a city,” and offers historical examples. Do you agree or disagree? Do you think the pandemic will offer any exceptions to this rule?
- What's your take on the "smart cities" trend, and what does the author think is so great about libraries?
After you’ve finished the Very Short Introduction, you might be interested in continued reading on some of the themes explored in the text. We have made it easy for you by linking the author’s “Further Readings” section to our catalog below as well as highlighting those available electronically.
Interested in attending our next discussion? Register now for the Very Short Introduction Discussion on “Postcolonialism,” happening March 31 at 2 PM.
Further reading from City Planning: A Very Short Introduction by Carl Abbott.
Visualizing cities
- Barber, Peter. London: A History in Maps. London: Topographical Society of London, 2012.
- Hayden, Dolores. A Field Guide to Sprawl. New York: Norton, 2004.
- Knox, Paul. Atlas of Cities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.
- Reps, John. The Making of Urban America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
- Solnit, Rebecca. Infinite Cities: A Trilogy of Atlases—San Francisco, New Orleans, New York. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019.
History
- Fishman, Robert. Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
- [EBOOK] Flint, Anthony. Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City. New York: Random House, 2009.
- Hall, Peter. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. 4th ed. New York: Wiley, 2014.
- Hurley, Amanda Kolson. Radical Suburbs: Experimental Living on the Fringes of the American City. Cleveland: Belt Publishing, 2019.
- [EBOOK] Isenberg, Alison. Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
- Ladd, Brian. Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
- Sen, Siddhartha. Colonizing, Decolonizing, and Globalizing Kolkata: From a Colonial to a Post-Marxist City. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017.
- [EBOOK] Spain, Daphne. How Women Saved the City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Urban form and urban design
- Barnett, Jonathan. Redesigning Cities: Principles, Practice, Implementation. New York: Routledge, 2017.
- Calthorpe, Peter, and William Fulton. The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000.
- Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
- Gehl, Jan. Cities for People. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010.
- Jacobs, Allan B. Great Streets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.
- Speck, Jeff. Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
Communities
- [EBOOK] Massey, Douglas, and Nancy Denton. American Apartheid. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
- Medoff, Peter, and Holly Sklar. Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood. Boston: South End Press, 1999.
- [EBOOK] Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright, 2017.
- Sandercock, Leonie. Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities. New York: Wiley, 1998.
- [EBOOK] Sandoval-Straus, Andrew. Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City. New York: Basic, 2019.
- Talen, Emily. Neighborhood. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Transportation and environment
- Beatley, Timothy. Green Urbanism. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000.
- Cervero, Robert. Beyond Mobility. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2017.
- Downs, Anthony. Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2004.
- [EBOOK] Gottlieb, Robert, and Simon Ng. Global Cities and Urban Environments in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017.
- Newman, Peter, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer. Resilient Cities: Overcoming Fossil Fuel Dependence. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2017.
- [EBOOK] Sadik-Khan, Janette, and Sete Solomonow. Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution. New York: Wiley, 2016.
- Spirn, Ann Whiston. The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
Disaster and resilience
- Bohl, Charles C., David Godschalk, Timothy Beatley, Philip Berke, David Brower, and Edward J. Kaiser. Natural Hazard Mitigation. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999.
- [EBOOK] Klinenberg, Eric. Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. New York: Crown, 2018.
- Savitch, Hank. Cities in a Time of Terror: Space, Territory, and Local Resilience. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2008.
- Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. New York: Viking, 2009.
Megacities and future cities
- [EBOOK] Abbott, Carl. Imagining Urban Futures: Cities in Science Fiction and What We Might Learn from Them. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2016.
- Campanella, Thomas. The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011.
- [EBOOK] Glaeser, Edward. Triumph of the City. New York: Penguin, 2011.
- [EBOOK] Graham, Stephen. Vertical: The City from Satellite to Bunker. New York: Verso, 2016.
- Silver, Christopher. Planning the Megacity: Jakarta, Indonesia in the Twentieth Century. New York: Routledge, 2011.
- [EBOOK] Sims, David. Understanding Cairo. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012.
- [EBOOK] UN Habitat. Urbanization and Development: Emerging Futures. Nairobi: United Nations Human Settlements Program, 2016.
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