270 p.

This was an interesting book to have read. I enjoyed how she brought together the various anecdotes and statistics throughout the 20th century. I also enjoyed all of the building and neighborhood layouts.

However, I felt that this book expected to be preaching to the choir. Her main thesis was that smaller village-like mixed-use communities, with production, consumption, and habitation areas close together, would allow women more freedom in their lives. Although it traced patterns of the "industrial," "haven," and "neighborhood" housing strategies, I did not feel that it made a nod towards arguing that these cover all of the relevant territory (I'm not quite convinced on this), that they are that closely linked to gender/family structure stereotypes (this I happen to buy), and that they are not as strongly related to class and race/nationality considerations (this I doubt).

Neither did she give more than short-term anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of neighborhood housing; it would have been good to provide some triangulation. I realize that not many experimental communities of this type have survived long-term (due to political pressures), but it would be wise to acknowledge that these communities may be successful due to self-selection, the short terms of many of the systems, the excitement surrounding new ventures, etc., and shore up the potential of the strategies with other supporting theories, models, and findings. For example, the fact that people living in mixed-use neighborhoods tend to be more healthy due to walking suggests that people will take advantage of these services and have the potential to be involved in a community. In this way she tends to come across as writing too much for a civic planning audience, one that already has experiences to revisit in light of her framework, rather than for laypeople, who have much thinner experience. Her writing style, on the other hand, is clear and unambiguous to this layperson.

Important and recommended, but supplementation would be good. ( )