Andres Duany

doesn't waste time sneering at horrible, dehumanized exurban sprawl but takes an idealistic look at how suburbia can be reclaimed and saved or at least how new developments can avoid the usual drab horrors. a very hopeful book that deserves a larger readership than new urbanists.

Anti-sprawl polemic, with plenty of pictures and statistics to make the case that building bigger houses further out is killing us—and this was well before the mortgage crisis! The authors tout New Urbanism instead, which relies on control-freak design to mix uses and make sure neighborhoods “feel” like neighborhoods. Good popular writing about designing the built environment, and persuasive pictures of suburban deadness versus urban/new urban liveliness; though the authors’ show more proposals are at least as manipulative as Coca-Cola ads, they’re manipulating you for a good purpose.non show less

Terrific analysis of how too much of the visual landscape of the United States turned into highway hell, of what the alternative might be, and of how these might be achieved. Perceptive, witty, and mind-bending.

The Smart Growth Manual is a technical text meant for planners and people concern with the way physical space is used in our cities. It essentially details the elements of smart growth (anti-urban sprawl) and what smart growth looks like when it is applied from a regional down to a street and building level. To me this text is more of a supplement to Suburban Nation (written by the same authors) than it is a stand alone text as the why we should do smart growth is discussed more in Suburban show more Nation than it is in The Smart Growth Manual. Despite this, the text is an important pick up as the Smart Growth perspective gains steam its important to understand it particularly in terms of the implication towards the issues of inner city revitalization. show less