Book Time #3: American Urbanist Starter Pack
Over the years of reading and writing about cities, from time to time people have asked what books should they read to learn more. In that spirit, I decided to create this American Urbanist Starter Pack.
The goal with this starter pack is to recommend about five approachable, non-intimidating and reasonable length titles that provide an overview of the major subjects and themes. From there, people can dive deeper into their own particular interests, whether it's housing, transportation, race relations, urban planning, whatever.
Needless to say, this is not an attempt to provide anything even remotely resembling a comprehensive guide. My Urbanist Gems list on Bookshop is some 35 titles, for example, and I wouldn't even say that is comprehensive.
It is also not a Best Of or Top Five list. I love all these books, but as you'll read below I selected them in part because they complement each other.
Finally, a word about two books that do not appear on the list despite being possibly the most well-known books about American cities, Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Robert Caro's The Power Broker, two books from a more blessed era when books didn't have subtitles the length of another small book.
You do not need me to tell you to read those books, although I certainly can as they are both on the Urbanist Gems list. More to the point, Death and Life is a brilliant critique of a planning regime that, by and large, no longer exists, and some argue has actually swung too far in the other direction. It is a fascinating book to read and discuss today, but I think better done later in one's urbanist journey.
As for The Power Broker, it is longer than all the books on the starter pack put together. You'll learn more about American cities from these books than you will from The Power Broker alone. But you'll be seeing The Power Broker in a future starter pack, that's for sure.
Speaking of, if you like this starter pack, or the idea of starter packs, or have ideas for other starter packs you'd like to see, let me know! I'd love to hear from you.
Now, it's Book Time.
Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Kenneth Jackson
There are two main aspects to urbanism: Where things are and how we get between them. Using slightly more technical language, we call this land use (housing, zoning, etc.) and transportation. Crabgrass Frontier is your land use primer.
Despite approaching its 40th anniversary, Crabgrass is the best primer I’ve come across on how a nation divided between urban and rural created and then subsidized a mass migration into a third category of place, suburbia. It was an immense government project of social engineering, not a “vote with your feet” phenomenon. Crabgrass allowed me to appreciate just how much the cards have been stacked against American cities for generations. [Buy on Bookshop.]
Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, Peter Norton
Fighting Traffic is your transportation primer.
Similarly to Crabgrass, it documents the single biggest shift in transportation during the 20th Century that has fundamentally re-shaped American cities. There are several excellent works on the history of the car, but for urbanism purposes, Fighting Traffic is the most essential, because it is specifically about how cars elbowed their way into American cities despite being wildly impractical for them. It has less to say on how to reclaim that space, but that’s not the author’s fault. We’re still trying to figure that out. [Buy on Bookshop.]
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Thomas Sugrue
And/Or:
White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, Kevin Kruse
The phrase “inner city” has long been a derogatory euphemism for Black people, danger, and high crime rates. I don’t think anyone can be an urbanist in America without a solid grasp of the modern history of race relations and how it has impacted American cities. The Origins of the Urban Crisis is narrowly about Detroit, but it tells a broad story, one that can apply to most any American city, especially of the northeast and midwest industrial flavor. For a more sunbelt perspective, White Flight is an excellent companion work that echoes similar themes. As deep-dive case studies, both complement Crabgrass Frontier as well. [Buy The Origins of the Urban Crisis on Bookshop // Buy White Flight on Bookshop.]
Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age, Lizabeth Cohen
In Origins and/or White Flight, you’ll learn about how white Americans left cities in huge numbers mid-century. In Saving America’s Cities, you’ll learn about the counterforce to rehabilitate and reverse the decay of urban America. This effort is generally referred to as Urban Renewal, which encompasses a huge swath of federal, state, and local programs.
In your urbanist journey, you’re going to hear a lot about urban renewal, most of it derogatory and accusatory, and generally along the lines of “it was racist and dumb." There’s a lot more to urban renewal than that, which is absolutely critical to understand if we’re going to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
I recommend starting with Saving America’s Cities because it approaches the subject more humbly by focusing on Ed Logue, who doesn’t neatly fit into the hero or villain narrative so often presented in Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs type recountings. It’s an enlightening book on what actually went wrong—and in some cases what went right—with urban renewal and how it applies to efforts to make cities better today. [Buy on Bookshop.]
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, Henry Grabar
Grabar’s recent book on parking rounds out the starter pack nicely because it combines the land use and transportation challenges facing American cities today. Plus, it is engaging, funny, and sharply written. [Buy on Bookshop.]
You can also find the American Urbanist Starter Pack as a list on Bookshop.