The most recommended books about urban sprawl

If you are a word nerd like me, this is for you.

Every country has its own way of naming its suburbs, and often more than one way. Do-it-yourself settlements in the desert around Lima, Peru were barriadas until the government decided that pueblos jovenes or “young towns” sounds better.

Turkish gecekondu for new neighborhoods translates as “built over night.” The bidonvilles of North Africa are literally “tin can towns.” I won’t kid you, the chapters are written by academics, but they take you on a tour of improvised settlements around the world.

Read this book if you care about cities. True, you may want to throw it across the room at times (I did),  but it is one of the most influential books of the 20th century and you should know your enemies. Written shortly after World War I when automobiles were beginning to clog streets, its author Le Corbusier had good intentions. He thought narrow crowded streets should be replaced by apartment towers set on green lawns. He used concrete boldly, opened up the interiors of buildings so light could flood in, and insisted that residences be far away from industry and commerce. But while the model can work for luxury housing, it doesn't work when neighborhoods are destroyed to build these high-rise blocks, and separating work from home by automobile-only roads means urban sprawl. 

David Mapstone is a failed PhD academic who comes home to Phoenix, Arizona, where an old friend with the sheriff’s department takes pity and finds him a job solving cold cases. It turns out he’s good at it, but he is less successful in coping with the urban sprawl that has nearly obliterated the best parts of his hometown. In Concrete Desert, the first in Talton’s series, Mapstone reconnects with an old flame when she asks him to solve the mystery of her missing sister. While doing so, he stumbles on an eerie connection with an unsolved mystery from forty years earlier. We especially liked this book and the whole series because of the author’s skillful depiction of the old and the new, and the best and the worst, of a city in the process of gobbling up an American desert. 

I cannot stop loving this book, which graphically depicts a city growing up around a small farm country cottage. While the storyline concerns the fate of the tiny house, the thrill is watching the steady mushrooming growth of vehicles, electric lines, street cars, street lamps, apartment buildings, elevated and subway trains, and finally skyscrapers as they surround the home before it is able to make its satisfying escape back to the country. The art is warm and cozy, befitting a book that has a gutsy cottage as the main character.

This is similar to Wild Isles – a vast celebration of nature incorporating fiction, non-fiction, and poetry – but this time with its focus on the beautiful wild North of Britain.

It’s exciting to see so many different aspects of the area brought out and the inclusion of lesser-known contemporary writers such as Katie Hale, Loren Cafferty, and Graham Mort alongside greats such as William Wordsworth and Charlotte Brontë. 

So often neglected, so often stereotyped, the North is viewed here by those that know it, through clear eyes but with understandable adoration. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the moors, the dark green and grey wilds inhabited by curlew, kite, and hare.

This is the place where the Brontës created their epic romances and where contemporary writers sought solace during lockdown. The land continues to be a source of inspiration and it is gratifying to see it celebrated in this… show more.

Adam Rome examines an underappreciated topic in environmental history: the environmental costs of the ever-growing American suburbs. Mass migration to the suburbs coincided with the rise of the environmental movement. That convergence was followed by political controversy, and ultimately codes, regulations, and guidelines. Rome is a great storyteller who reveals important shifts in growth management and environmental policy. 

I was hooked from the very first page, when the author reports a brief conversation with a top-of-the-heap oil-man who thought the idea of a philosophical book about food ridiculous. Sitopia asks how the lessons learned from the past might be applied to the way we might live now.

Her first book, Hungry City, is a panoramic sweep of human history from hunter-gatherer cave-dwellers to urban sprawl, bringing an architect's understanding of the development of cities. The first book established the author's reputation as philosopher, cultural historian, and prizewinning food writer.

Booksellers don't know where to put her on the shelves. If Hungry City asks the questions, Sitopia (a made-up word from the Greek for food + place) looks for the answers.

This book is intelligent and brave - and she writes like a dream. 

When I read nonfiction books about the challenges we face in our communities, nations, and world, I want to know not just what the problems are but how to solve them. In other words, I want the book to be solutionary.

This book begins by articulating the problems with our agricultural systems, but the lion’s share of the book is about how we address those problems effectively. Monbiot’s ideas are both visionary and practical. I found myself thrilled to read someone so powerfully explore the steps we can and must take to build a regenerative future. 

I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did. Charles Marohn comes from an engineering background, which makes his urban design approach very interesting.

This book has changed the way I look at cities and towns. I drive past a new big box store with its huge parking lot and think, what a waste of economic opportunity. I can’t count the number of people I have recommended this book to. 

An architectural historian motivated by simple curiosity concludes that sprawl is not new and is a worldwide phenomenon. Highbrow critics have always condemned suburbanization until the next generation ends up living in it and trying to preserve it against further suburbanization. Bruegmann’s wide-ranging book is a sprightly send-up of the anti-sprawl sentiments throughout history and across the globe. Greenbelts to contain sprawl turn out to be especially toxic to sensible urban development.