What's New

July-August 2003

Built Environment/Urban Design

City Branding: Image Building and Building Images. Rotterdam: NAI Uitgevers, 2002.

City branding, the planned image or brand of a city, now forms a challenge for architects and urban planners. How do you position a city in a culture dominated by globalization? What are the priorities for inhabitants, companies and investors? Group Portraits of Young Architects 2002 brought together four occasional groups of architects, which each developed a project for two cities in the Netherlands based on city branding.

Disaster Planning

Arrowood, Janet C. Living with Wildfires: Prevention, Preparation, and Recovery. Denver: Bradford Publishing, 2003.

This comprehensive and straight-forward book includes detailed information on how to landscape your property to create a "defensible space," and what to do if you have to evacuate.

Growth Management

Tracy, Steve. Smart Growth Zoning Codes: A Resource Guide. Sacramento: Local Government Commission, 2003.

Based on the Local Government Commission's research of more than 150 "smart growth" zoning codes from across the nation, this guidebook will help planners design a zoning code that encourages the construction of walkable, mixed use neighborhoods and the revitalization of existing places. Each chapter analyzes a critical issue — such as design, streets and parking — and highlights exemplary codes from across the country. The guidebook comes with a CD-ROM that contains copies of some of the best zoning codes in the United States and other resources.

Planning History

Beauregard, Robert A. Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. New York: Routledge, 2003. 2nd ed.

Upon its initial publication in 1993, the book was hailed as a breakthrough book that introduced discourse analysis and an appreciation of the shaping power of representation into American urban studies. Beauregard has identified a pervasive discourse of decline about American cities, one that shaped the policy response to the perceived "urban crisis" of the postwar era. The discourse also had a powerful influence on how Americans viewed their cities. In chronologically organized chapters, he details the dominant features of this discourse as it shifted over time, simultaneously uncovering the deeper unease that lay beneath the surface of the discourse — fears of national decline and the decay of civilization itself. He also considers the absences in the discourse regarding race and poverty, and assesses their negative impact on both public policy and urban social life. This second edition has been thoroughly rewritten and now includes an account of the boom years of the 1990s.

An interesting review by Andrew Stevens in Newtopia magazine; seems the study of cities is not just for Marxist sociologists anymore.

Revell, Keith D. Building Gotham: Civic Culture and Public Policy in New York City, 1898-1938. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2003.

"This fresh look at the origin of various forms of planning in New York City at the start of the twentieth century represents the 'new institutionalism' in history at its best. Revell's realism, balance, and sanity offer an antidote to recent scholarly nihilism about public action without romanticizing the roles of corporations, experts or elected officials. Building Gotham is powerful, nicely and imaginatively researched, and very well written." —Robin L. Einhorn, University of California, Berkeley

Planning Outside the United States

Faludi, Andreas, Ed. European Spatial Planning. Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2002.

Planning Theory

Dear, Michael J., Ed. From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory. Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage, 2002.

From Chicago to L.A. begins the task of defining an alternative agenda for urban studies and examines the case for shifting the focus of urban studies from Chicago to Los Angeles. The authors, experienced scholars from a variety of disciplines, examine: the concepts that have blocked our understanding of Southern California cities; the imaginative structures that people have been using to understand and explain Los Angeles; and the utility of the "Los Angeles School" of urbanism.

Public Health and Planning

Frank, Lawrence D., Peter O. Engelke, and Thomas L. Schmid. Health and Community Design: The Impact of the Built Environment on Physical Activity. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003.

A comprehensive examination of how the built environment encourages or discourages physical activity, drawing together insights from a range of research on the relationships between urban form and public health. It provides important information about the factors that influence decisions about physical activity and modes of travel, and about how land use patterns can be changed to help overcome barriers to physical activity.

Redevelopment

von Hoffman, Alexander. House by House, Block by Block: The Rebirth of America’s Urban Neighborhoods. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

For 60 years, federal policy has attempted with little success to solve the problems of housing and poverty in America's inner cities. Yet increasingly, local organizations are picking up where Washington has left off. In a series of dramatic and colorful narratives, von Hoffman shows how these groups are revitalizing once desperate neighborhoods in five major cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.

A review from the Village Voice.