Fans pick 100 books like City

Every biographer must do battle with Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, a monumental account of urban planner Robert Moses, whose God-like power redesigning postwar New York City effectively remade the capital of the twentieth century. Over the course of 1,336 pages, Caro details Moses’s world-making vision while also acknowledging problematic issues, such as Moses’s reported use of racial slurs and his remapping of roads and overpasses to exclude poorer communities.

Today, half a century since its first publication, The Power Broker remains one of the greatest English-language biographies. It's also a landmark in showing how world-historical change can begin with aesthetic power. Like all foundational texts, its comprehensive documenting of both the ambitions and the prejudices of that era also lays a path for future insight. In gesturing toward Moses’s faults, this magisterial work also leaves room for subsequent generations to re-examine the problems of the past. 

This eye-opening book was a revelation to me as a young student of architecture. It provided the keys to how cities really work. Its observations are as relevant and fresh today as they were when it was published in 1961. For me and many in my generation, it helped us to see and appreciate the organic, human-centered dynamics of neighborhoods, introducing the powerful concept of “organized complexity,” which made sense of things we saw but failed to understand.

I met Jane in Toronto in 1968 where she became a lifelong friend and mentor until her death in 2006. It remains a foundational text for me in understanding urban life and my life’s work. 

While her Death and Life illustrates how cities work, this book helps explain how the economy of a city really works.

Jacobs uses very simple language to make urban economies understandable: her contrast between Manchester and Birmingham shows how one city fails and the other flourishes; her illustration of how the manufacturing of bras emerged from the earlier corset illustrates her observations about new work added to old; she illustrates how Rochester, N.Y. went from a diverse economy of many technological advancements to one all-consuming Kodak dependent making the city totally dependant on one company.

All her illustrations reflect how new small things turn into big economic systems and the importance of diversity in an economy.

This book, more than any other, helps us understand how the US lost its efficient and widespread rail network and became totally reliant on cars both in cities, between cities, and throughout the country. It illustrates why the mass transit landscape of our country looks and functions the way it does.

Most people today do not understand the elaborate and efficient mass transit system we had that was destroyed and how countrywide transit was purposely and needlessly destroyed to create dependency on the car. One can't help being envious when visiting a European nation—or even Tokyo—where expansive transit systems make car dependency unnecessary.

For urban planning, this book is a must to understand the subject matter. Jill Grant does an excellent job blending the theoretical and applied aspect of new urban planning.

When discussing urban design, this book is an excellent reference for both students and practitioners alike. We used this book as a reference in City Planning for the Public Manager because the book had an applied aspect which is very useful to a wide audience in the field of city management.  

David Harvey has been writing about how capitalism shapes city life since the global revolutions back in 1968.

What I learned from his book Rebel Cities is that we need a laser-like focus on how capitalism makes and remakes urban life, normally for the worse. Unless we realise this we don’t know what we are up against and what effective solutions look like.

What I really like about this book is that it encourages us to see that cities and their citizens are rebelling all over the world – and this means building alternatives to corporate capitalism power that is ultimately pushing our climate and natural world beyond safe limits.

This is one of my favorite books to introduce to my students because it makes a powerful statement about the need for spaces within cities where people can come together to share their everyday experiences. Klinenberg shows how libraries, parks, churches, schools, and other public places represent the “social infrastructure” of a community that serve both functional needs and social purposes that can help overcome social exclusion and unite communities.

I have been hooked on reading the fascinating stories of ordinary people that Brandon Stanton captures in his Humans of New York social media posts since he started over a decade ago.

His posts reveal that every single person we pass on a daily basis has a story to tell, a challenge they’re facing or have overcome that we will never know; Brandon actually stops to ask them. It amazes me how in a few minutes he’s able to gain the trust of people so they feel comfortable to reveal the most vulnerable and intimate sides of themselves.

Brandon writes each story with honesty and respect and without judgment. And we all feel a little more connected and a little less alone.

I love photography books but, my hands-down favorite is Humans of New York. New York City is truly America’s melting pot, a gourmet stew of nationalities, personalities, fragile seniors, young billionaires, paupers, and everything in between. The city has much of what’s right with the world and its burst of humanity can all be seen in this book.

Unlike many photo books, this one has no excess verbiage. Stanton lets the pictures or their subjects tell the stories. There are hairstylists, hipsters, mommies, cute kids, teens with tattoos and purple hair, and a guy busking in the park with his viola while wearing a pink gorilla suit. The caption reads: “Damn liberal arts degree.” The author created this as a summer project and ended with 300 pages of delight. 

With keywords like "history of Oklahoma" and "basketball," this book seems an unlikely candidate for one I love.

Sam Anderson’s deftness as a writer, however, makes it a great read, even for a non-sporto coast dweller like me. He interweaves a story of the OKC and the NBA, describing the tension between “boom” and “process” that shaped both. Trust him, trust the process.