Books on urban development... anybody read any?

[Kiwiwriter47 472]

How you create cities and run them is a fascinating subject to me as a city PR officer and a SimCity builder, and a historian, so I like to read books on those subjects.

I found a few that are helpful:

The Power Broker, by Robert Caro. This is the Pulitzer-winning biography of the man who wrecked New York's mass transit systems and replaced them with superhighways, building up a power empire, covering up his racism.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. She shot Moses and his plans to build a superhighway through Manhattan's Houston Street like the Red Baron nailing Snoopy.

WPA Guide to New York City/WPA Panorama of New York City. 1939. Federal travel guides to New York and rich with history.

How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis. I hit the roof when I read this as a teenager. I hit the roof again when I read this as an adult, realizing that nothing had changed. In fact, the "new-law tenements" stink as much as the "old-law tenements." And sweatshops still make people sweat.

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. If it isn't in there, you don't need to know about it for the city's history. They did a new volume: "Greater Gotham," for 1898 to 1910. Just as big as the first one, but only 12 years. Holy moley!

The Great Bridge, by David McCullough. How they built my favorite bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge. Engineering, people, politics, crime, and color.

The World Beneath the City, by Robert Daley. How New York got water, gas, electricity, sewer pipes, and some of the great characters involved with them, like Smelly Kelly.

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, by George Washington Plunkitt. "A series of practical talks on practical politics by New York State Senator George Washington Plunkitt, delivered from his rostrum, New York County Court House's Bootblack Stand." Except for the portion on gas and excise, it's as true now as it was in 1893.

Architect's Institute of America Guide to New York. Walking tours and analysis of architecture. Caustic.

NYPD, A city and its Police, by James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto. The history of the police -- a tale of politics, peril, payola, padding, and enormous courage and valor, from the 1840s to 9/11 and beyond

So Others Might Live, a history of the New York Fire Department. (I don't have it in front of me, so I can't give the author). Does the same for NYFD, with less issues of corruption and more issues of culture, particularly politics, race, and societal changes, leading up to female firefighters and the horrors of 9/11.

Report From Engine Company 82, by Dennis Smith. A first-person, up-close of the life of firefighters in the South Bronx during the dreadful "war years" of the early 1970s, where "The Bronx Was Burning," and Dennis and his colleagues had to put it out. It says a LOT about the interaction and intersection of firefighters and their neighborhood: class, race, poverty. More than fire is combustible.

Report From Ground Zero, by Dennis Smith. His story -- and those of other firefighters -- of the city's response to the 9/11 attacks and the weeks thereafter. Gripping stuff about government and people in action in a municipal and national crisis and inaction in that same crisis.

Behind the Green Lights, by Detective Cornelius Van Willemse. He was an NYPD detective in the early 1900s. Very different force back then, but not so different a New York.

Blue Blood, by Edward Conlon. The memoir of a Harvard graduate who became a New York cop and worked in housing projects in The Bronx. His family comes from law enforcement, so he brings an interesting perspective to the situation.

Blue on Blue, by retired NYPD Deputy Chief Charles Campisi. He was head of the Internal Affairs Bureau, and he really shook things up. He presided over the Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima fiascoes. He tells a lot about how IAB really works and what it does, and you learn a lot about the culture of the police, New York, and the politics therein. One point he makes repeatedly: they do integrity stress tests on street cops -- leaving out money and fake drugs at "crime scenes," offering them "bribes," or turning in "purses full of money," and 98 percent of the time, the officer being tested passes it, not even knowing he has been tested.

I'd like to get a first-rate history of London, my mother's family's home town, one of my other favorite cities in the world (along with San Francisco and Christchurch, New Zealand), but I haven't been able to find a good one yet.

If anybody knows of good books on "how to run a city" or "histories of cities," I'd like to hear them.

If anybody wants to see a good pun, I can accommodate them, too! 

[Propfam 2,292]

Unfortunately, I don't have any books to read and recommend. So, I'm really sorry.

[Kiwiwriter47 472]

3 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Unfortunately, I don't have any books to read and recommend. So, I'm really sorry.

That's okay...nobody's grading you! 

[philforhockey51 4,211]

City Planning a book by Burnham for Chicago is mentioned in this video I just watched and I'm curious to have a look

 

[RobertLM78 1,598]

They're sort of intended for younger people, but even curious minded older folks will find David Macaulay's books interesting:
https://www.amazon.com/City-Story-Roman-Planning-Construction/dp/0395349222/

https://www.amazon.com/Underground-David-Macaulay/dp/0395340659/

[Propfam 2,292]

On 24/3/2021 at 7:24 AM, philforhockey51 said:

City Planning a book by Burnham for Chicago is mentioned in this video I just watched and I'm curious to have a look

 

Ah, Kings and Things. Nice content!

[Odainsaker 2,135]

The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meaning Through History by Spiro Kostof.

The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form Through History by Spiro Kostof.

I think if I were looking to recommend a textbook for SimCity players to inspire their urban layouts, it would be The City Shaped with its breadth of historical examples.  I recall that Will Wright instead often references for game design Urban Dynamics by Jay Forrester and the The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch.

 

Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake by Edward Seidensticker.

Tokyo Rising: The City Since the Great Earthquake by Edward Seidensticker.

(Both volumes have been combined into Tokyo from Edo to Showa 1867-1989: The Emergence of the World's Greatest City.)

 

Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan by Rem Koolhaas.

 

[alvinofdiaspar 26]

On 2021-04-30 at 12:06 AM, Odainsaker said:

The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meaning Through History by Spiro Kostof.

The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form Through History by Spiro Kostof.

I think if I were looking to recommend a textbook for SimCity players to inspire their urban layouts, it would be The City Shaped with its breadth of historical examples.  I recall that Will Wright instead often references for game design Urban Dynamics by Jay Forrester and the The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch.

 

Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake by Edward Seidensticker.

Tokyo Rising: The City Since the Great Earthquake by Edward Seidensticker.

(Both volumes have been combined into Tokyo from Edo to Showa 1867-1989: The Emergence of the World's Greatest City.)

 

Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan by Rem Koolhaas.

 

You have definitely named all the great classics!

[PixelPerfect 551]

On 2021-04-30 at 12:06 AM, Odainsaker said:

I recall that Will Wright instead often references for game design Urban Dynamics by Jay Forrester and the The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch.

I read on Wikipedia that Will Wright was partly inspired by Christopher Alexander's work, and — having heard that name mentioned before in software engineering and even the history of wiki technology itself — I bought a copy of The Timeless Way of Building (1979) and A Pattern Language (1977), which attempt to formalise how places become livable, from entire towns down to individual buildings. I find myself agreeing a lot with his ideas and vision: pattern 3 talks about City Country Fingers, the interweaving of urban and rural areas; pattern 8 suggests a Mosaic of Subcultures, as opposed to a homogeneous melting pot; pattern 9 is Scattered Work, distributing the places that people go to work so that work is never far from home; pattern 12 suggests a Community of 7000; pattern 21 suggests a Four-Story Limit; &c. My experience with the SimCity series is that it kind of overlooks the formation of communities and of individuals living within said communities, so I found the books to be a refreshing jolt from my infatuation with skyscrapers and megalopolises.

In fact, I was so intrigued by the author's ideas that I made a short video essay that I hoped would renew interest in his work among younger generations. I'm hoping to make more video essays in the future, and this thread gives me some reading material that I might refer to!