City and regional planners talk constantly about the things of the world-from highway interchanges and retention ponds to zoning documents and conference rooms-yet most seem to have a poor understanding of the materiality of the world in which they're immersed. Too often planners treat built forms, weather patterns, plants, animals, or regulatory technologies as passively awaiting commands rather than actively involved in the workings of cities and...

Over half the world's population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking.The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns. Yet much of the dialogue on these issues is disconnected from the public domain.

This New York Times Critics' Pick follows the story of reluctant activist Daniel Goldstein as he struggles to save his home and community from being demolished to make way for a professional basketball arena and the densest real estate development in U.S. history. Along the way, he falls in love, gets married and starts a family while living in a vacated building located at the heart of the project site.Over the course of seven years, Daniel spearheads...

Land-use policy is at the center of suburban political economies because everything has to happen somewhere but nothing happens by itself. In Suburb, Royce Hanson explores how well a century of strategic land-use decisions served the public interest in Montgomery County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Transformed from a rural hinterland into the home a million people and a half-million jobs, Montgomery County built a national reputation for...

Uncovers the politics involved when a city recruits and implements a presidential convention. Political party conventions have lost much of their original political nature, serving now primarily as elaborate infomercials while ratifying the decisions made by voters in state primaries and caucuses. While this activity hasn't changed significantly since the 1970s, conventions themselves have changed significantly in terms of how they are recruited,...

Despite its Harry Potter-like title, The Book of the Cave of Treasures is actually a rich seam of Jewish and Christian apocryphal lore, by means of which its 5th century author frames the story of Jesus in a truly cosmic context—as the inevitable conclusion of God's redemptive plan for humanity, set in train since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Along the way we are treated to a feast of extra-Biblical details: of the life of the Patriarchs;...

The history of the United States is often told as a movement westward, beginning at the Atlantic coast and following farmers across the continent. But cities played an equally important role in the country's formation. Towns sprung up along the Pacific as well as the Atlantic, as Spaniards and Englishmen took Indian land and converted it into private property. In this reworking of early American history, Mary P. Ryan shows how cities--specifically...

This program examines one of the world's largest urban redevelopment schemes and schows how a run down area of a city can be renewed. Sydney is Australia's largest city. The population of over 4 million is spread over one of the largest suburban areas of any city in the world. The State Government has a policy of urban consolidation to increase the densities in inner suburbs and reduce urban sprawl. The program examines the growth of Sydney and also...

"After decades of sprawl, many American city and suburban residents struggle with quality of life issues related to traffic and its accompanying pollution and time drain, divided neighborhoods, and a non-walkable life. Architect Ryan Gravel argues that this can change. Cities have the infrastructure and capability to create a healthier, more satisfying way of life by remodeling and augmenting different parts of cities to connect neighborhoods and...

Making and Dwelling is the definitive statement on cities by the renowned public intellectual Richard Sennett. In this sweeping work, he traces the anguished relation between how cities are built and how people live in them, from ancient Athens to twenty-first-century Shanghai. He shows how Paris, Barcelona, and New York City assumed their modern forms; rethinks the reputations of Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, and others; and takes us on a tour of emblematic...