The most recommended books about urbanization

Who picked these books? Meet our 12 experts.

12 authors created a book list connected to urbanization, and here are their favorite urbanization books.
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Book cover of Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization

Coll Thrush Author Of Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire

From my list on urban Indigenous lives.

Why am I passionate about this?

I came to Indigenous history through the experience as a settler growing up at the edge of a reservation. I also love cities as “texts,” and the ways in which urban places never fully erase what came before. These two interests led me to urban Indigenous studies. Urban and Indigenous histories are often treated as though they are mutually exclusive, when in fact they are deeply entangled with each other: for example, the majority of Indigenous people in the United States live in urban areas. These works capture the rich history of migration, political organizing, and cultural production that has taken place in Indigenous cities.

Coll's book list on urban Indigenous lives

Coll Thrush Why did Coll love this book?

This edited collection of cutting-edge essays by scholars from across North America captures the profound diversity of Indigenous urban experience.

Ranging from Indigenous cities that existed prior to European arrival through the colonial period to the recent past, this anthology explodes the notion that Indigenous and urban histories have little to do with each other.

By Kent Blansett (editor), Cathleen D. Cahill (editor), Andrew Needham (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Indian Cities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From ancient metropolises like Pueblo Bonito and TenochtitlAn to the twenty-first century Oceti Sakowin encampment of NoDAPL water protectors, Native people have built and lived in cities-a fact little noted in either urban or Indigenous histories. By foregrounding Indigenous peoples as city makers and city dwellers, as agents and subjects of urbanization, the essays in this volume simultaneously highlight the impact of Indigenous people on urban places and the effects of urbanism on Indigenous people and politics.

The authors-Native and non-Native, anthropologists and geographers as well as historians-use the term "Indian cities" to represent collective urban spaces established and regulated…


Book cover of Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability: International Frameworks, National and Local Governance

Matthias Ripp Author Of A Metamodel for Heritage-based Urban Development: Enabling Sustainable Growth Through Urban Cultural Heritage

From my list on understanding that cultural heritage can be part of the solution to climate change.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career in tourism but soon discovered my passion for urban heritage. Working as a site manager for a world heritage site, I gathered extensive insights on various levels of heritage management and urban governance from many colleagues around the world. Today there is no single project or meeting that does not address the challenges of climate change. Obtaining my Ph.D. late in life, in Heritage-Based Urban Development, I quickly became convinced that the traditional ideas of what cultural heritage is do not reflect the situation today and hinder giving cultural heritage a role in climate change prevention and adaption, beyond the narrative that it has to be preserved. 

Matthias' book list on understanding that cultural heritage can be part of the solution to climate change

Matthias Ripp Why did Matthias love this book?

The key contribution of this book was the systemic understanding of cultural heritage. The collected articles and case studies represent a holistic and integrated concept of cultural heritage. Seeing cultural heritage as a social and political construct, as the authors describe it, opened the door for two new approaches:

First, the integration of different types of heritage that are usually treated separately, e.g., intangible heritage, tangible heritage, etc. And, second, starting to focus on the social parts of cultural heritage, basically the role of people. In my personal view all heritage is only relevant if it is relevant to people, and this book helped me to shape this conviction.

I truly admire how the author connects the different government levels and doesn't shy away from the obvious complexity this brings forward. This big-picture approach is a refreshing alternative to many case-focused articles and books and naturally speaks to my…

By Sophia Labadi (editor), William Logan (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

More than half of the world's population now live in urban areas, and cities provide the setting for contemporary challenges such as population growth, mass tourism and unequal access to socio-economic opportunities. Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability examines the impact of these issues on urban heritage, considering innovative approaches to managing developmental pressures and focusing on how taking an ethical, inclusive and holistic approach to urban planning and heritage conservation may create a stronger basis for the sustainable growth of cities in the future.

This volume is a timely analysis of current theories and practises in urban heritage, with particular…


Book cover of The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience

William Barney Author Of Rebels in the Making: The Secession Crisis and the Birth of the Confederacy

From my list on an offbeat look at the Confederacy.

Why am I passionate about this?

From a youth devouring the books of Bruce Catton to my formative years as a historian, I’ve been fascinated by the Civil War, especially the thinking and experiences of southerners who lived through the cataclysmic war years. In my teaching and writing, I’ve tried to focus on the lived experiences, the hopes and fears, of southerners who seemingly embraced secession and an independent Southern Confederacy in the expectation of a short, victorious war only to become disenchanted when the war they thought would come to pass turned into a long, bloody stalemate. The books I’ve listed share my passion for the war and open new and often unexpected windows into the Confederate experience.

William's book list on an offbeat look at the Confederacy

William Barney Why did William love this book?

Here is the best introduction to how the Confederacy transformed itself into a mirror image of the South’s traditional portrayal as a static agricultural society based on states’ rights. To meet the demands of waging the Civil War, the Confederacy underwent rapid industrialization and urbanization directed by a strong centralized bureaucracy in Richmond. New and expanded roles opened up for southern women challenging the prerogatives of male patriarchy. How many of these changes would have become permanent had the Confederacy survived is an open question, but the Confederacy decidedly was not an extension of the Old South.

By Emory M. Thomas,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The purpose of this book is to show that the Confederacy not only enacted an external revolution (in terms of its war with the Union), but that it also experienced a very significant internal revolution. Provides an explaination of what things within Southern society were revolutionized and in what ways.


Book cover of Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy

Greg Woolf Author Of Rome: An Empire's Story

From my list on new books about the Roman Empire.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an historian and archaeologist of the Roman world, who has lectured on the subject around the world. This summer I am moving from a position in London to one in Los Angeles. One of the attractions of Roman history is that it is a vast subject spanning three continents and more than a thousand years. There is always something new to discover and a great international community of researchers working together to do just that. It is a huge privilege to be part of that community and to try and communicate some its work to the widest audience possible.

Greg's book list on new books about the Roman Empire

Greg Woolf Why did Greg love this book?

The monuments we see when we visit Rome were constructed under the emperors. But Rome was already a great metropolis before they began work, one that was architecturally unique and built on a scale to dwarf most ancient cities. What this book does is reconstruct the great building projects of the Republic, beginning with the original fourth-century walls of Rome and the first aqueducts. It asks (and answers) questions like: Where did they get the stone? Who provided the labour? How long did it take them? And what technologies did they use? This was a Rome built without marble, without concrete, and not a royal foundation, but one managed by generations of magistrates riding the wave of a slow economic boom. Completely fascinating.

By Seth Bernard,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Building Mid-Republican Rome as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Building Mid-Republican Rome offers a holistic treatment of the development of the Mid-Republican city from 396 to 168 BCE. As Romans established imperial control over Italy and beyond, the city itself radically transformed from an ambitious central Italian settlement into the capital of the Mediterranean world. Seth Bernard describes this transformation in terms of both new urban architecture, much of it unprecedented in form and extent, and new
socioeconomic structures, including slavery, coinage, and market-exchange. These physical and historical developments were closely linked: building the Republican city was expensive, and meeting such costs had significant implications for urban society. Building…


Book cover of Critique of Urbanization: Selected Essays

Dora Apel Author Of Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline

From my list on cities and urban decline.

Why am I passionate about this?

As I watched abandoned buildings, homes, and factories spread throughout neighborhoods in Detroit while photographers came from everywhere to photograph the ruins, I became fascinated with why we are drawn to ruins, what role such imagery plays in our collective imagination, and how ruins today are different than, say, Greek ruins. I am also interested in the politics behind the ruins and the role of capitalism in creating our declining cities. I have written several books on visual culture and politics, engaging with issues of race, trauma, memory, war, and capitalist globalization.

Dora's book list on cities and urban decline

Dora Apel Why did Dora love this book?

Brenner blew my mind by explaining that the idea of the city as a circumscribed and autonomous space is an obsolete nineteenth-century concept. He made me realize that the boundaries between city, suburb, and rural space are superseded by capitalist urbanization and industrialization across the planet—under the oceans, across the land, and even in the atmosphere—and that it is utterly degrading the environment for purposes of commodification.

By Neil Brenner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Critique of Urbanization as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Urbanization is transforming the planet, within and beyond cities, at all spatial scales. In this book, Neil Brenner mobilizes the tools of critical urban theory to deconstruct some of the dominant urban discourses of our time, which naturalize, and thus depoliticize, the enclosures, exclusions, injustices and irrationalities of neoliberal urbanism. In so doing, Brenner advocates a constant reinvention of the framing categories, methods and assumptions of critical urban theory in relation to the rapidly mutating geographies of capitalist urbanization. Only a theory that is dynamic-which is constantly being transformed in relation to the restlessly evolving social worlds and territorial landscapes…


Book cover of Refugee Cities: How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan

Neil Crawford Author Of The Urbanization of Forced Displacement: UNHCR, Urban Refugees, and the Dynamics of Policy Change

From my list on urban refugees.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m interested in the lives and experiences of refugees and the policies and processes that support, protect, and obstruct them. I’m also interested in cities–how and why they attract people, the dangers and prospects they offer, and the unique way in which humanitarianism happens (or doesn’t happen) there. I’m an interdisciplinary academic who has spent years researching these issues and more. 

Neil's book list on urban refugees

Neil Crawford Why did Neil love this book?

A rich historical account of the experiences of Afghans living in urban Pakistan from the 1970s to the post-2001 ‘War on Terror’ period, this book provides a fascinating discussion of urban informality, what it means to belong, the role of citizenship, and the engagement and absence of the state in cities.

The book utilises ethnographic observations and interviews but also valuable archival data–raising important considerations of who gets remembered, as well as underscoring that urban refugees are not a new phenomenon. 

By Sanaa Alimia,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Refugee Cities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans

Matthew Pressman Author Of On Press: The Liberal Values That Shaped the News

From my list on power of the press to shape history.

Why am I passionate about this?

Journalism and history have been my dual obsessions since high school, and my work for the past 13 years has focused on the intersection between them. The pressures of journalism, its tremendous impact, and the extraordinary characters who tend to be drawn to the profession are endlessly fascinating to me. In my time as a PhD student, professor, researcher, and book review editor for an academic journal, I have read hundreds of books about American journalism and its past (maybe over 1,000 now that I think about it, but I haven’t kept count!). I’ve also reviewed several for the Washington Post. These are some of my favorites.

Matthew's book list on power of the press to shape history

Matthew Pressman Why did Matthew love this book?

There are lots of books about the stories newspapers published, but there are not so many books about what newspapers meant to people—and to the cities whose names they bore.

This book, which examines the press in four major U.S. cities around the turn of the 20th century, shows how newspapers helped Americans understand who they were in a modernizing country. I love that it doesn’t focus only on weighty national affairs and politics. Instead, Guarneri shows the influence the press had on things like gender roles, suburban growth, and social class.

The images alone—news stories, illustrations, and advertisements from the period—make this book so much fun to flip through. 

By Julia Guarneri,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Newsprint Metropolis as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At the close of the nineteenth century, new printing and paper technologies fueled an expansion of the newspaper business and publishers were soon reeling off as many copies as Americans could be convinced to buy. Newspapers quickly saturated the United States, especially its cities, which were often home to more than a dozen daily papers apiece. Using New York, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Chicago as case studies, Julia Guarneri shows how city dailies became active agents in creating metropolitan spaces and distinctive urban cultures.Newsprint Metropolis offers a vivid tour of these papers, from the front to the back pages. Paying attention…


Book cover of Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America

Ai Hisano Author Of Visualizing Taste: How Business Changed the Look of What You Eat

From my list on a new understanding of your sensory experience.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of the senses. When I first traveled to the United States, I was fascinated and overwhelmed by the smell and sound of the streets entirely different from my hometown in Japan. Since then, every time I go abroad, I enjoy various sensory experiences in each country. The first thing I always notice is the smell of the airport which is different from country to country. We all have the senses, but we sense things differently—and these differences are cultural. I wondered if they are also historical. That was the beginning of my inquiry into how our sensory experience has been constructed and changed over time.

Ai's book list on a new understanding of your sensory experience

Ai Hisano Why did Ai love this book?

Kiechle’s Smell Detective shows how smell, the mute sense, has been in fact quite “talkative.” By going back to the nineteenth-century United States, the book discusses how cities back then smelled and how people living there reacted to it. Olfaction is actually a critical source of knowledge. Smell can tell you a lot about your surrounding environment and other people. It also gives historians clues to understand how people lived in the past. Moreover, smell, like other senses, is not a simply subjective, biological phenomenon. Sensations we experience change over time—imagine smell and sounds on the street today and hundred years ago. It is also cultural and political, too. How people understand certain sensations is a historical product—a certain “bad” small was racialized and associated with a lower class, for example. This book is an excellent way to “sniff” out the history of the senses.

By Melanie A. Kiechle,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Smell Detectives as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What did nineteenth-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the nineteenth-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth. Melanie Kiechle examines nuisance complaints, medical writings, domestic advice, and myriad discussions of what constituted fresh air, and argues that nineteenth-century city dwellers, anxious about the air they breathed, attempted to create healthier cities by detecting and then mitigating the most menacing odors.

Medical theories in the nineteenth century assumed that foul odors caused disease and that…


Book cover of A Social History of Modern Tehran: Space, Power, and the City

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Author Of Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity

From Arshin's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Not applicable

Arshin's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Why did Arshin love this book?

The author takes us on a fascinating journey into one of the most mesmerizingly contradictory megalopolis of the world: Tehran, the capital city of Iran.

From the beautiful anecdotes about “nude watching” in the public baths of pre-modern Iran, to the hustle and bustle in the ultra-modern shopping malls of today, this book is an ode to Tehran and a complete guide into its labyrinthine political and social forces at the same time.

As a scholar, but also as someone who visited Tehran several times, this book will always be a reminder of why this place has had such a unique influence on so many people from East and West, North and South.

All the more, perhaps, because the book was preceded by tragedy as the young author died in an avalanche while mountain climbing at the tender age of 37.

By Ashkan Rezvani Naraghi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Social History of Modern Tehran as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Tehran, the capital of Iran since the late eighteenth century, is now one of the largest cities in the Middle East. Exploring Tehran's development from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Ashkan Rezvani Naraghi paints a vibrant picture of a city undergoing rapid and dynamic social transformation. Rezvani Naraghi demonstrates that this shift was the product of a developing discourse around spatial knowledge, in which the West became the model for the social practices of the state and sections of Iranian society. As traditional social spaces, such as coffee houses, bathhouses, and mosques, were replaced by European-style cafes, theatres, and…


Book cover of The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps

Mike Rapport Author Of Rebel Cities

From my list on the history of Paris.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian specialising in the French Revolution at the University of Glasgow. During my doctorate, my now wife and I stayed in Ménilmontant in the 20th arrondissement. There grew a knowledge and love of Paris that have never diminished. As part of my research, I explore the places and spaces where events unfolded, trying to understand how these sites have since changed and been overwritten with new meanings and historical memories: I have the worn-out boots to show for it. I’m currently writing a book on Paris in the Belle Époque, from the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 to the outbreak of the First World War.

Mike's book list on the history of Paris

Mike Rapport Why did Mike love this book?

Hazan knows every nook and cranny of his city. He exults in the buildings and architecture, but his main subject is the people who wove the fabric of its diverse communities and their histories. He takes us on a historical journey that passes from the salons of the old aristocracy to the artisanal districts where popular, revolutionary activism was born. Hazan makes no attempt to conceal his left-wing sympathies, but he is equally at home admiring the Art Nouveau gems of the well-heeled 16th arrondissement as he is enjoying the vibrant, ethnically diverse northern districts of the city. Hazan’s love of the human life of Paris shines through.

By Eric Hazan, David Fernbach (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Invention of Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Invention of Paris is a tour through the streets and history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author and publisher Eric Hazan. Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur's ear for a story with a historian's command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers and the artists-Balzac, Baudelaire, Blanqui, Flaubert, Hugo, Maney, and Proust, of course; but also Doisneau, Nerval and Rousseau. It is a Paris dyed a deep red in its convictions.…


Book cover of Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization
Book cover of Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability: International Frameworks, National and Local Governance
Book cover of The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience

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