BOOK REVIEWS
Books are important. CharacterTowns.org selects and discusses current publications and works from previous generations that still hold wisdom for contemporary city-building. The review also includes published reviews and Youtube links to discussions by or about the author. Books are selected from the attached Suggested Readings.
The Little Theatre on the Square: Four Decades of a Small-Town Equity Theatre
by Beth Conway Shervey The Idea of Theaters in Small Cities and Towns. Exploiting remnant single screen theaters as venues for live performances or, in some cases, first run movies is an opportunity not to be missed. Who knew there exists a “little theater movement” as cited below? The Little Theater on the Square points […]
The Little Theatre on the Square: Four Decades of a Small-Town Equity Theatre by Beth Shervey PhD
The Idea of Theaters in Small Cities and Towns. Exploiting remnant single screen theaters as venues for live performances or, in some cases, first run movies is an opportunity not to be missed. Who knew there exists a“little theater movement”. The Little Theater on the Square points the way. Performances of travelling shows, local performances, […]
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by Mr. Friedman examines the history of the world from a political, sociological, economic and demographic perspective and then builds a scenario of the future using the principles of “realpolitiks” to determine which nations will rise in the current century. As with all predictions, his […]
The Next Hundred Million, America in 2050
The Next Hundred Million, America in 2050 by Mr. Kotkin examines the future and finds that suburbs hold the key to America’s resurgence with new ideas and approaches for the ever-popular form of habitation. Retro-fitting the suburbs based on many urbanist principles finds an outlet in many instances where pedestrian connections, open space systems and […]
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria has written thoughtfully and widely on geopolitics and global society. He also discusses issues in a refreshingly interactive way with world leaders on CNN. His recent book, The Post-American World, despite its gloomy title, forecasts a happy ending to the next leg of the American journey. One of Mr. Zakaria’s catchy catch phrases is “the rise of the […]
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
A WORD FOR SOCIOLOGY. CharacterTowns.org is a big fan of sociology and sociologists. City planning cannot do justice to its main mission without an appreciation for the discipline that studies how people get along with one another, individually and in groups. Max Weber is one of a handful of sociologists who add value to the […]
The Resilient City, How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster
Small city and town planning benefits for the insights in this book. The Resilient City, How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster[2010] is the story of survival. The authors reveal how 12 cities around the world have survived natural and man-made disasters. As a result, they are now better places for residents, businesses and visitors. The […]
The Resilient City. How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster by Vale, Lawrence J. and Thomas J. Campanella
The Resilient City was published over ten years ago. It established a term, coined a phrase and set many cities into action. A great read. The Resilient City provides a tour of disasters that destroyed cities around the world from Washington D.C. in 1814 to Warsaw, Hiroshima and Berlin in World War II to the many disasters […]
The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream by Steve Case
FROM AMAZON… #1 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER Steve Case, cofounder of America Online and Revolution and New York Times bestselling author of The Third Wave, shows how entrepreneurs across the country are building groundbreaking companies, renewing communities, and creating new jobs—in the process reimagining the American landscape and bringing people together around a shared future. […]
The Sanitary City; Environmental Services in Urban America from Colonial Times to the Present.
The Sanitary City by Martin V. Melosi, Ph.D. [2010], appreciates the history of water and sewerage systems as a major part of the remedy to tame yellow fever and cholera, the measles, the plague and other communicable diseases that attacked city populations and killed thousands of people. The number of deaths was astounding. The success […]
The Seamless City
Mayor Baker, through his leadership, has experienced the transformation of an old-style town to a vibrant 21st century city with abundant character. Neighborhoods, downtown, museums and parks are testimony to the impact a leader can have.[embeddoc url=”https://www.charactertowns.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-Seamless-City.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”] FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail
The Small Town Planning Handbook
The Small Town Planning Handbook [2007].
This Handbook is very useful for all towns, and specifically for small towns. The contents include chapters on strategy, comprehensive planning, economic development planning, neighborhoods, downtowns and special districts covering all the relevant physical dimensions of city and town planning.
The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future (Strong Ideas) by Ben Green
Implications for Character Towns: Be Careful. Character towns are usually smart cities. The smart enough city: putting technology in its place to reclaim our urban future is a timely book. While “smart cities” as an idea is getting a lot of play, every good idea can be overdone. Programs, budgets, experiments and projects are emerging […]
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces is Mr. William H. Whyte’s classic study of small urban spaces and the things that make them great. The study of pedestrian life started with this small book initiated with the 1971 beginning of his Street Life Project in New York City. Since then, a science has been developed […]
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte,
As Mr. Whyte describes, his book is a “pre-book”. His intent was to conduct his research fronted by his Street Life Project and then publish his findings. Thankfully, a funny thing happened on his way to his initial goal. He came upon a rich lode of insights and data produced by his cameras, his interviews […]
The Swamp, The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise by Michael Grunwald
Chapter One, Grassy Water “The First 300 Million Years (Abridged)”, p14. “The Everglades showed up…around the time the Egyptians started building the pyramids.” “The story of how the Everglades formed stretches back a bit further. It began with a bang about 300 million years ago, after the fish but before the birds, with the cataclysmic […]
The Third Wave; The Classic Study of the Future.
Character towns can benefit from Toffler’s work.The Third Wave; The Classic Study of the Future was written by Alvin Toffler in 1980, over 30 years ago. It still offers ideas and insights useful in designing today’s small cities and towns. Mr. Toffler is an incredibly smart guy with a deep and fertile understanding of the […]
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
FROM AMAZON…“It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail
The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance
Sustainable development is surpassed by the ideas in The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, their sequel to Cradle to Cradle. Building on their unique and fascinating approach they move beyond making things less bad; their approach is to make things good. Buildings, landscape and products in character towns can not only […]
The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
William McDonough is the best thinker and doer of our age. His work with Michael Braungart on Cradle to Cradle followed by this book offers an effective way to view the world and its ecosystem and economy. His creative combination of biology and technology yields practical concepts and products thatdon’t make things better, they make things good. […]
The Vancouver Achievement, Urban Planning and Design
Vancouver achievements in urban planning benefit small cities and towns by offering valuable lessons as artfully described by John Punter, UBC Press, 2003. Vancouver’s achievements in urban planning and design are instructive. The author does a good job of describing conceptual ideas supported by specific actions that implement the concepts. [embeddoc url=”https://www.charactertowns.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Book-Review-John-Punter-Vancouver.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”] […]
Thinking in Systems, A Primer by Donella H. Meadows
Stepping into Thinking in Systems turns out to be a big step; a step entering the world of Donella Meadows. Dr. Meadows has created a way of thinking about the world in terms of a single system of systems that have limits. Her work on The Limits of Growth team in the early 1970s for the Club of Rome […]
Tomorrow-Land, The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America [2014].
Tomorrow-land by Joseph Tirella gives us a page turner; you want to read every page in this book and every paragraph on every page. The story is valuable. The stream of the book is the conception and execution of the New York World’s Fair that ran for two years in Queens, 1964 and 1965; but the […]
Transportation for Livable Cities by Vukan R. Vuchic
Profession Vuchic has produced a useful book that examines the history and current [1999] state of livability transportation thinking. His use of photos, lists and figures greatly facilitates an understanding of his ideas and conditions affecting the topic. His extensive use of the experiences of international peer cities emphasizes his point that we in America […]
Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser
How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier Mr. Glaeser is an unabashed advocate of the importance of cities. This doesn’t mean he approves of the current state of our cities, but in fact, his study offers useful and insightful ideas to better our inventory, as listed below. His final words […]
Triumph of the City, How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier
Triumph of the City, by Edward Glaeser, [2011] happily demonstrates that the author is a big fan of cities. The city’s purpose, as he sees it, builds on Mumford’s 1961 foundational work with another half century of well-observed experience to extend and expand upon the basic conclusions. His tour of world cities provides lessons applicable to contemporary […]
ULI’s Infrastructure 2008.
“A reference that examines trends in transportation and road networks in the United States and abroad, this resource details how to finance their construction and maintenance with both public and private funds, the effect of these investments on the existing environment, innovative ways countries across the globe have built these systems, and infrastructure’s essential role […]
Uncertainty, Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science by David Lindley
A seemingly unrelated book relative to planning and designingsmall cities and towns; however, not so fast. The “uncertainty principle” presents a concept of universal usefulness; the bookhelps understand how “thinkers” think; a useful skill. As noted in the review by Scientific American, for those believers in“quantum” theories, “one can extract one bit of information only at the […]
Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan
Long before the internet, 1964 to be exact, McLuhan was one of a group of smart people thinking and writing about an Age of Anxiety; a time when communication was becoming instantaneous, when sequential activities merged into single events. Electricity was finally paying off with faster movements of information and communication and it was changing […]
Urban Land Use Planning
Urban Land Use Planning [1995].
Urban Land Use Planning, the book, has evolved and grown as a body of thought for over a half century. The Fourth Edition of Urban Land Use Planning presents the classic approaches to planning theory, city planning and practice. The Fourth Edition is chock full of tables and charts and checklists that provide the framework for comprehensive planning and planning for neighborhoods, downtowns, schools and parks. The fifth edition continues to improve the thought-process.