Iinks and other resources

A guide to books and resources on cities, and on sustainable planning and development.

Sustainable planning, transportation and development

• Living Streets: www.livingstreets.org.uk - the champions of streets and public spaces for people on foot. They work on practical projects to create safe, vibrant and healthy streets for all.
• The Living Streets Manifesto: www.livingstreets.org.uk/manifesto.htm
• Project for Public Spaces: www.pps.org - PPS is a nationally and internationally recognized urban design organization, especializing in planning and designing memorable places and spaces in urban areas.
• Also from PPS:

  Great Public Spaces

  Urban Parks Online

  Better buildings, better places

  Great streets - transportation and livable communities

  Downtown NYC: rebuilding Lower Manhattan

• The Insitute for Transportation and Development Policy: www.itdp.org
• The Citizen Planner
• The Pedestrian and Bicyle Information Center at www.bicyclinginfo.org
• The New Rules Project - a comprehensive resource for policymakers, organizations and activists looking for innovative public policies enacted around the world: www.newrules.org
• Carbusters: www.carbusters.org - a project of the World Carfree Network, it is a website for activists and campaigners and others in the grassroots global carfree movement. Carbusters.org, Car Busters magazine, and the Car Busters Monthly E-Bulletin assist people around the world taking on car culture and promoting alternative ways of life. World Carfree Network promotes walking, cycling and public transport - and ultimately the transformation of cities, towns and villages into human-scaled, pedestrian environments rich in public space and community life.
• The Congress for the New Urbanism: www.cnu.org

Books

• The Death and Life of Great American Cities - by Jane Jacobs, Random House - first published in 1961, this book helped inform the movement that would eventually end the destructive practices of highway building and "urban renewal" in cities areas throughout the U.S.. Jacobs introduces her book this way: "This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city planning and rebuiling, different and even opposite from those taught in everything from schools of architecture and planning to the Sunday supplements and women's magazines ..."
• Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream - by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, North Point Press - a kind of year 2000 sequel to Jane Jacobs's book, tackling some of the specific causes behind the continuing decline of our urban environment, from the role traffic projections and state standards play to the ways in which things can be improved.
• Crabgrass Frontier: the Suburbanization of the United States - by Kenneth T. Jackson, Oxford University Press - detailed history of housing and transportation policy in the U.S., includes in-depth examination of redlining and other discriminatory FHA and mortgage-industry policies.
• Urban Planning and the African American Community - Edited by June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf, Sage Publications - collection of academic papers focusing on the impacts of urban planning on African American communities, includes topics like exclusionary zoning, environmental racism, and the history of racial zoning in the early 20th Century.
• The Old Neighborhood - Ray Suarez, Simon & Schuster - examines the story of the changes affecting neighborhoods in the central cities.

You can order these books online from Ruminator Books »

Planning organizations

• www.cala.umn.edu/design_center/dcaul.html - The University of Minnesota's Design Center for the American Urban Landscape is actively involved in urban design projects in the Twin Cities area.
• www.smartgrowth.org - The Smart Growth Network addresses numerous aspects of smart growth, including economics, transportation, environment, financing, and implementation.
• www.metrocouncil.org - Website for the Twin Cities' Metropolitan Council.

Design guidelines

• The Chicago Bikelane Design Guide (1.2 Mb) - how the City of Chicago manages to fit cars, permament on-street parking, and bikelanes on 55 ft wide streets (Lake Street is 60 ft wide).

Planning consultants

• www.calthorpe.com - One of the principal New Urbanist and transit-oriented development (TOD) planning firms.
• www.dpz.com - The firm founded by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zybek, who along with Peter Calthorpe have studied the role of design in revitalization of central city areas.