The Planning Game: Lessons from Great Cities

by Alexander Garvin

Can planners―or anyone―improve a neighborhood, city, suburb, or region? Planning does work: this book explains how. The Planning Game: Lessons from Great Cities  provides a focused, thorough, and sophisticated overview of how planning works, generously illustrated with 200 colorful photographs, diagrams, and maps created expressly for the book. It presents the public realm approach to planning―an approach that emphasizes the importance of public investments in what we own: streets, squares, parks, infrastructure, and public buildings. They are the fundamental elements in any community and are the way to determine our future. The book covers planning at every level, explaining the activities that go into successfully transforming a community as exemplified by four cities and their colorful motive forces: Paris (Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann), New York (Robert Moses), Chicago (Daniel Burnham), and Philadelphia (Edmund Bacon). The Planning Game is an invaluable resource for planners, students, community leaders, and everybody involved with making better places to live.
235 color illustrations

Genres: Urban Planning, Urbanism, Architecture, Nonfiction, Urban Design, Urban

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

New Yorker Alexander Garvin combines a career in urban planning and real estate with teaching and public service.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. Discusses the mechanics of city planning; the rules, players.
It gets very interesting when Garvin discusses the cities he uses as examples and the prime movers involved in the process. Reading about Haussman/Napoleon III collaboration to build Paris into a world class city was fascinating. He also discusses NYC/Robert Moses, Philly, Chicago. I did lose interest when Garvin discussed Philly.
This is an expensive book. That would probably keep most people from reading it, but it is worth the read.
I also thought the book needed more precise maps. Some of it was hard to follow because of the lack of more detailed maps.

[Alp Çakir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for everyone that would like to learn about the cities discussed in this book or is looking for extensive case studies on how planning can work.

Well written with a good message. However the amount of details on people and streets, which I often didn't know, made me confused.