Urban

Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? Author James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields....

This 10th anniversary edition of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller includes a new introduction and afterword by the author. Chronicling the lifelong friendship between a busy sales executive and a disadvantaged young boy that began with one small gesture of kindness, this is a “ray of...

From one of the world’s top experts on the economics of skyscrapers—a “fascinating” (Daily Mail, London) and “informative” (Publishers Weekly) account of the ever-growing quest for super tall buildings across the globe. The world’s skyscrapers have brought us awe and wonder, and...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the hosts of The War on Cars podcast, a searing indictment of how cars ruin everything—and what we can do to fight back When the very first cars rolled off production lines, they were a technological marvel, predicted to make life easier and better for all Americans...

London Orbital is Iain Sinclair's voyage of discovery into the unloved outskirts of the city....

In Places of the Heart, Colin Ellard explores how our homes, workplaces, cities, and nature - places we escape to and can’t escape from - have influenced us throughout history and how our brains and bodies respond to different types of real and virtual space....

In this wide-ranging, character-driven audiobook, science-journalist Emily Anthes takes us on an adventure into the buildings in which we spend our days, exploring the profound and sometimes unexpected ways that they shape our lives....

Turkey's greatest living novelist guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets, and waterways of Istanbul - the city of his birth and the home of his imagination....

Forget online dating, matchmakers, and awkward setups. In this insightful essay, Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World, exposes the secrets behind the latest solution for finding love in the twenty-first century....

Visionary Oxford professor Ian Goldin and The Economist's Tom Lee-Devlin show why the city is where the battles of inequality, social division, pandemics and climate change must be faced....

The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known--and cautiously avoided--by most of Baltimore. But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter...

The explosive account of the arson wave that hit the Bronx and other American cities in the 1970s―and its legacy today. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” This phrase was supposedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, and it...

In The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time and Our Planet, Carlos Moreno delivers an exciting and insightful discussion of the deceptively simple and revolutionary idea that everyday destinations like schools, stores, and offices should only be a short walk or bike ride away from home...

No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, “another world.”....

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the...

A surprising and revealing look at how today's elite view their own wealth and place in society. From TV's Real Housewives to The Wolf of Wall Street, our popular culture portrays the wealthy as materialistic and entitled. But what do we really know about those who live on "easy street"? In this...

Great cities are complex, chaotic and colossal. These are cities that dominate the world stage and define eras; where ideas flourish, revolutions are born and history is made. Through ten unique cities, from the founding of ancient capitals to buzzing modern megacities, Paul Strathern explores...

What is visible to the naked eye has been exhaustively raked over; in Underground London, acclaimed travel writer Stephen Smith provides an alternative guide and history of the capital. It's a journey through the passages and tunnels of the city, the bunkers and tunnels, crypts and shadows. As...

In London in the Time of Dickens, you’ll get the unique opportunity to experience the British capital through the eyes of a literary master whose work is inextricably tied to the city and its rich history....

Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground - the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings....

Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability....

Un viaje por todo el mundo y una exploración reveladora de cómo las ciudades pueden hacer—y hacen—que seamos más felices. 'Ciudad feliz', de Charles Montgomery, está revolucionando la forma de concebir la vida urbana. Tras décadas de expansión descontrolada, más personas que nunca...

John Roebling was one of the 19th century's most brilliant engineers, ingenious inventors, successful manufacturers, and fascinating personalities. Raised in a German backwater amid the war-torn chaos of the Napoleonic Wars, he immigrated to the US in 1831, where he became wealthy and acclaimed...

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities....

Thubten Chodron offers a commentary on one of the great Tibetan Buddhist poems, The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, which shows, clearly and practically, how to eliminate the causes of anxiety, fear, and depression and to create the causes of joyful liberation for oneself and all others.