A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America

by Vishaan Chakrabarti, Norman Foster (Foreword), SHoP Architects (Illustrator)

In "A Country of Cities," author Vishaan Chakrabarti argues that well-designed cities are the key to solving America's great national challenges: environmental degradation, unsustainable consumption, economic stagnation, rising public health costs and decreased social mobility. If we develop them wisely in the future, our cities can be the force leading us into a new era of progressive and prosperous stewardship of our nation. In compelling chapters, Chakrabarti brings us a wealth of information about cities, suburbs and exurbs, looking at how they developed across the 50 states and their roles in prosperity and globalization, sustainability and resilience, and heath and joy. Counter to what you might think, American cities today are growing faster than their suburban counterparts for the first time since the 1920s. If we can intelligently increase the density of our cities as they grow and build the transit systems, schools, parks and other infrastructure to support them, Chakrabarti shows us how both job opportunities and an improved, sustainable environment are truly within our means. In this call for an urban America, he illustrates his argument with numerous infographics illustrating provocative statistics on issues as disparate as rising childhood obesity rates, ever-lengthening automobile commutes and government subsidies that favor highways over mass transit. The book closes with an eloquent manifesto that rallies us to build "a Country of Cities," to turn a country of highways, houses and hedges into a country of trains, towers and trees.
Vishaan Chakrabarti is the director of Columbia University's Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE). In March 2012, Chakrabarti became a partner at SHoP Architects, where he will be working on such projects as the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn. An architect and planner, Chakrabarti has worked in both the public and private sectors: as a top executive at Related Companies; a director at the New York City Planning Commission; an associate partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; a transportation planner for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

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

252 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2013

Reviews

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with dramatically building more high or "hyper" density in our cities. Where I am at now in Minneapolis, I see a city that is investing in rail based public transit matched with increasingly taller and bolder real estate developments. Chakrabarti sets forth the vocabulary to embrace and promote urbanism in America. From sustainability and economic expansion to equity and happiness, this set of urban ideology is valid in my opinion, but in this book felt scattered (like a quick scroll down of the Atlantic Cities blog).

Denver's skyline as envisioned by SHoP Architects is meant to be fanciful, yet moves the conversation from infill development to actual city building. "A Country of Cities" is apart of a generational rethink of how urban life is becoming, once again, the American Dream.

[Matt S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars because he points out excellent opportunities for FIT redevelopment and the need for reinvesting in infrastructure. Second star for advocating rail.

The rest. Well, the rest is self-aggrandizing, hen-pecked, pseudo-facts that would require a cultural and political overhaul in order to even consider. There is so much opportunity in the narrative wasted by being an entire regurgitation of Edward Glaeser with sketches done by his architectural firm. At this point, I have to list issues.
-Celebration of SHoP architects works, including the Barclays Center, an urban arena so poorly designed it's losing half of its professional sports offering in less than 10 years.
-Vast oversimplification of real estate development. Severely limited view on what constitutes pricing for development and what turns into rent. Wholly ignores ongoing maintenance and real estate taxes, focuses entirely on income tax.
-Hypercritical of the Mortgage Interest Deduction. What else incentives anyone to own and self-maintain, a lower individual cost, higher GDP inflator, as individual owners hire small businesses to conduct work you can't maintain yourself. Further, I challenge the notion that only the hyper-rich take the deduction. Maybe it appears that way, but what a crock, anyone with a mortgage will take the incentive on their taxes.
- Uses intentionally inflammatory language flippantly. Aside from the discussions on race, there are several references to oil wars. I don't see the connection.
-Ignores major catalysts for sprawl, namely organized crime and political corruption which disemboweled major metropolises. Further, municipally controlled transit authorities or quasi-government organizations like the Port Authority of NY/NJ which he fails to mention he worked for except on the dust jacket, are HIGHLY inefficient and have a clear history of appointing people into positions who have no expertise or business being there. This level of comparable ineptitude isn't replicated in any other developed country.
-Makes many, many questionable comparisons. Worst is Sam & Louisa. Sam's trip to the store took him 45 minutes door to door. Louisa's trip to the same store in a densified area via public transportation likely took 3-4 times that much because the reality is, Louisa probably had to walk a half mile to the bus or tram. When she got there, she likely had to wait 25 minutes for the tram that goes to the store she's looking to go to. When she got there, she shopped, turned around, waited 35-40 minutes because she 'just missed' the tram that goes back to her neighborhood, got on the right one, got off and realized she had too many things to walk the distance and called a cab to cover the gap. Meanwhile, Sam went to and fro, worked out, made dinner, and added all the food waste to his compost pile that he can have because he isn't so close to his neighbors that everyone complains and the municipality cites him for blight.
- He glosses over things like air quality alerts
-He ignores things like supply chain
-My Biggest Complaint, and something that occurred to me as I was so angrily trying to digest the content of this giant bedtime story, What Counts Toward a City's GDP!? Is it finance? Is it banking? Is it the headquarters of a major company counting all of its production as a company being pushed out of its corporate headquarters? If any of this is the case, its actually a double counting of GDP, as suburbia, where the financed, speculated, and the actual corporate product is used, is being counted there as well. Further, what are banks and financiers funding, yes projects in a city, but what, three banks perhaps Mezz out a single development that yields return? Everything else is projects in the sprawl he so notably hates. Our cities are not manufacturing hubs anymore, they are service and consumer monsters. I don't know what else to say.

I could go on but I feel I shouldn't waste further emotional and mental capital on this book in this forum. Read it I guess. The pictures are nice and the sentiment is something to consider, but it's merely aspirational.

[Alejandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exquisite overview of the subject I am most passionate about, written by someone I’ve admired for a long time.

Ties economic factor very well. As a self-declared “manifesto”, it is expectedly over-optimistic and perhaps doesn’t do the best job at keeping those less enthusiastic about urbanism than me interested.

Some fun stats from the book:

The economic output of the city of Chicago is greater than that of 42 states.

“The suburbs are not a mere reflection of the way people want to live, or even a reflection of true market forces, but a synthetic consequence of history.”

The largest federal subsidy is the mortgage interest deduction, subsidized homeownership to outrageous degree.

“Housing the wealthy in luxury urban condos, balanced by the construction of affordable housing for the less affluent, is better for the environment than encouraging rich people to move to 15,000-square-foot McMansions with five-car garages in the suburbs.”



Cheesy in a dad way at times. Can’t wait to meet this guy one day.

[Howard Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Chapter 6, three brief sections from the end, I thought that I'd been sold a well-designed and -written informercial. By the end, I was 95% sure I'd been wrong, and if I *had* been sold, it was worth it.

Chakrabarti, in this near-final section of his call for "densification," discusses the importance of housing and the three factors determining its pricing: The cost of land, the cost of construction, and cost of capital (interest on land purchase and construction loans, for instance). It was his elaborating the second -- and his firm's (SHoP Architects) use of modular construction components ("like so many Lego pieces") at Atlantic Yards here in NYC -- that I started to think that the culmination of the book was to sell readers on SHoP and one of its principals (Chakrabarti). [***Ed.: I have learned that Chakrabarti joined SHoP well after book was conceived. SHoP did produce the book's graphics. Wish Goodreads had half-stars--would bump my review up to 4.5 out of 5.]

It did, but it did so more through the author's persuasive argument earlier and also his call (a "Manifesto") in the final chapter for an "urban coalition" to build "an urban ark that delivers us to the safe harbor of prosperous shores." How could a Christian like myself not resonate even a little to the idea of helping construct a vehicle to float on the rising tide of foreign oil?

While the book deserves a second, and closer, read, a few reflections at this point are:

- Chakrabarti is academic without being dry

- He is a visionary without being impractical

- He is political without being strident

- He extols Western virtues without ignoring Eastern traditions, values and successes

Perhaps the main reason I can't give it 5 stars (yet, without a second read), is that I am unclear how central he sees the role of the U.S. federal government in his vision. For instance, on page 178 in a suggested policy to help jump-start an "Infrastructure of Opportunity," he calls for the federal government to have power to override state legislatures that block cities wanting to enact congestion pricing. I'm all for congestion pricing, was sorry to see NYC Mayor Bloomberg fail because of Albany's opposition, but am hesitant to give Washington the kind of ultimate power Chakrabarti is suggesting, even to achieve the end we both want.

Most certainly such veto power over state legislatures wouldn't be limited to small-fry city legislation like congestion pricing, and even without congestion pricing NYC has counter-moved Albany (and positively influenced local vehicular traffic) by increasing pedestrian malls and bike lanes.

One last thing: the book has more than 120 footnotes (in the span of 223 pages with multiple illustration spreads and full-page graphs; i.e. a relatively high note:page ratio) quoting quite eclectically and liberally. I learned early to be suspicious of books that didn't footnote; this is not one of those.

[Cayden Fitzgerald]

In "A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America", Vishaan Chakrabarti proposes a case for a society that functions better if populations were concentrated more densely in urban environments. Chakrabarti argues, through many statistics and artfully crafted illustrations, that America has become a victim of suburbanization, and many of the institutional policies that have been introduced to support it. The challenges faced by today’s America: poverty, unemployment, rising gas prices, and excessive health-care costs, are all a result of a society that has been coerced into thinking that a suburban lifestyle is a just one. Chakrabarti goes on to prove why dense urban centers could be the remedy to decades of land misuse by stating how, and why, cities are better equipped to deal with social, economic, and environmental issues, and gives thoughtful examples on how this could supplant America’s current lifestyle. Chakrabarti’s hope, in the end, is to form a revolutionary coalition that takes our cities back. By doing so, our society would solve many of the backwards policies that exist today and our country of cities would be better off in the long run.

Giving specific examples of how, we as a society, came to be in our present suburban-centric state, Chakrabarti details the ways that we have come to live in separate places across the nation that are accessible only by the wasteful commute of a car. Through romanticizing suburbanization in the movies during the mass exodus period of 1940 – 1990, the Mortgage Interest Deduction, and nationwide attitudes shifting towards the idea of owning a patch of grass to call their own, "A Country of Cities" calls out how why suburban beliefs have come to be so widely accepted. Chakrabarti demonstrates why this type of living has proven to be detrimental to society by some eye-opening examples. Showing that crime in the suburbs actually outpaces that of urban centers and how climate change has dramatically worsened in the years since suburbanization has increased, he gives compelling examples as to how this is not the right way for us to live. Furthermore, the cost of housing has outpaced the median income in the U.S. as a result of fiscal zoning brought about by sprawl. Increasing sprawl, as argued again and again, has had numerous negative impacts as a result of people thinking that their actions have no consequences.

Conversely, as he spends the majority of the book conveying, Chakrabarti proves his case as to why we should live in dense urban environments. These dense cities stimulate economic activity, productivity, creativity, and sustainable living. To achieve these though, there needs to be the right infrastructure in place. First, governmental policies need to shift from their current stances of encouraging oil consumption and the mass construction of single-family homes through the Mortgage Interest Deduction. Second, and most compelling, are Chakrabarti’s case studies that show successful international places that are shown as urban centers to be admired. The distance of high speed rail in China, for instance, outnumbers the U.S. by a startling number of 6,649 miles to 0, and their expenditures on such an endeavor has totaled $300 billion to America’s $8 billion. Chakrabarti argues that this is no coincidence in the uprising of China’s presence on the global scene. If the U.S. were to concentrate their efforts on promoting environmentally conscious transportation, such as high speed rail, through important infrastructure investments, cities would be given a much greater chance to grow and succeed. Interestingly enough, the author displays how dense environments are actually better suited to pay for such infrastructure by showing that the per capita cost of funding these improvements actually decrease as places become denser. With these dense environments, certain construction activities can be undertaken to promote healthy living, economic development, efficient commutes, and even preservation of historic buildings. Through strong hyperdensification, as he calls it, these dense environments could integrate multiple use types as proposed by the great Jane Jacobs.

These hyperdense cities created by this new, aggressive way of looking at urban planning has multiple impacts on the way that people within these cities live and learn. Chakrabarti states that these types of cities promote healthy living through explaining how multiple medical studies show the correlation between increased commute times and obesity. Additionally, these dense cities attract urban professionals that are not only highly skilled, but also help encourage – of all things – love. Citing a 10-year study of over 2 million Swedish couples, a rate of separation developed that displayed how people who commuted more than 45 minutes actually experienced a 5% higher rate of breakup. More seriously, urban professionals are drawn to dense urban places because it gives them more opportunity to pursue their dream job at a much higher wage than suburban counterparts, and are allowed to live a much safer place. In one outstanding statistic, Chakrabarti notes that since 1976 homicides in large cities (classified as having 100,000 residents or more), have decreased by 20% more than the suburbs. It is all of these reasons, in combination with inviting, walkable, stimulating places to live that Chakrabarti sums up his reasoning for solidifying our cities, which are already in place, into denser organisms.

While Chakrabarti asserts, time and time again, hyperdense cities are the only solution for many of our nation’s problems, he concludes at one point – most famously – “if you love nature, don’t live in it”. This quote seems to be the perfect counter for people who argue that they want their own space, their own land to roam free. Chakrabarti believes that these types of people are entitled to this type of land use, but it must come at a price. This price needs to be substantially greater than the price it costs to live in efficient, productive cities. The only sustainable model for America’s future success is that of hyperdense, urban living that is encouraged by many players including the government and, most importantly, society.

[Janna Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book definitely gave me some interesting things to think about. As someone who REALLY doesn’t like suburbs, his call to do away with them is music to my ears...haha.

I probably would have given it 4 stars, if it hadn’t been for the ridiculous profusion of largely unnecessary charts and “infographics” throughout the book. And yes, infographics is in quotes on purpose. Whoever created these graphics seems to have forgotten that the point of an infographic is to make the material easier to understand.

It was fairly dry reading, which is probably why it took me several months to finish (thank goodness our library allows unlimited renewals as long as no one has a hold on it), but overall, I enjoyed it.

[Desi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book on my subway commute in like a week. I dream of hyper density and high speed, as an immigrant who cannot drive and is still searching for community. I loved the evocative visions of future cities and anguished at the painful reality of American urbanism. Poetic language was mixed a little too much with information, the inconsistent tone was distracting. The graphics were visually fun but not rigorously quantified, organized, or labeled. But also I admit that I am an energy scientist and a much harsher critic than most. It also was a little verbose. Many paragraphs felt repetitive without contributing anything new.

[Ben Downey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author lays out his vision for a city in which the people in our suburbs move into a densified city with subways and trains and walkable downtowns. He argues that this would bring prosperity, sustainability, equity, and wellness to our cities.

Beautifully illustrated. Well thought out, but ultimately unconvincing for this introvert who would rather move his family out of the suburbs into a small town.

[Anai Chess · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Country of Cities makes an unconquerable argument and plants mental seeds you’ll want to grow.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best 30 or so pages of this book, defending high-rise urbanism, would make an excellent magazine article. Chakrabarti points out that many American urbanists "tend to be enthralled with density yet enraged by real estate development"- and tall buildings in particular. He argues that high-rise buildings can be more environmentally efficient where they facilitate the densities required for large-scale transit use, as in Hong Kong or midtown Manhattan. Moreover, he suggests that low-rise buildings might not be adequate to meet public demand for newer office space or new housing, and that the tax revenue generated by new offices and residents may finance the infrastructure necessary to support them. By contrast, low-rise medium-density neighborhoods, despite their walkability and quaintness, may create the worst of both worlds compared to true cities and suburbs- dense enough to make driving a hassle, yet spread out enough that many of their residents feel the need to drive.

Unfortunately, the early chapters of this book include an enormous amount of sloppiness, both as to facts and as to reasoning. To name a few examples:

*Chakrabarti repeats the old chestnut that streetcars were ruined by a conspiracy of corporations who bought up streetcar lines and then substituted buses for streetcars. This theory has been repeatedly debunked; had he bothered to spend a few minutes on Google he would have learned this.
*To support his claim that cities are more productive, he asserts that 3% of United States land is responsible for 85% of gross domestic product. But his own charts show that this 3% includes not only compact cities but car-dependent suburbs of those cities, thus making this fact irrelevant to his argument.
*He claims that "outsourcing" and the decline of the U.S. educational system were responsible for the decline of economic growth in the 1970s. Is he unaware that energy prices exploded in the 1970s? And he is aware that college education actually became far more common in the 1960s and 1970s? At best, he is presenting a highly unorthodox assertion as if it was settled fact.
*He claims that American prosperity has "declined steadily" since the 1970s when one of his own charts showed that median incomes increased between 1970 and 2000 (though not in the last decade) (p. 190).
I cheerfully concede that all of these claims are irrelevant (or nearly so) to his main argument. But if the reader cannot trust Chakrabarti's use of facts on irrelevant issues, how can you trust his use of charts and facts on the issues that really matter to his claim (such as the environmental virtues of more compact development)?

[Brady Dale · Rating 1 out of 5]

From a roundup review I did at the end of 2013 on NextCity.


What I wrote about this book:

This is one of the most designed books I’ve ever read. It has 228 pages of text, though much of it is given over to enormous infographics and two-page pullquotes. All the graphic work comes from SHoP Architects, who did a remarkable job. And SHoP stands to gain quite a bit if Chakrabarti’s thesis wins more favor. This is not just a book about the happiness of cities. It’s about as many people as possible living as close together as they can — real, serious, Manhattan-like density, the kind of density SHoP makes its income from. (These are the architects behind, for example, the high rises planned to go up behind Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.)

Chakrabarti’s idea is that if everyone, or at least vastly more people, lived at much greater density, we’d all be happier and more productive and could let the natural world get back to restoring itself. Yet it’s hard to stomach both his naiveté — he spends whole chapters writing as if he’s simply baffled that the U.S. doesn’t have Tokyo-style trains — as well as his stridency. There’s zero patience here for anything but hyperdensity, dismissing all the great cities of Europe with a stroke.

Personally, I found reason to be skeptical of Chakrabarti’s broad generalizations. For instance, he takes aim at environmentalists for their supposed hostility to cities. This is very strange. I spent four years working for a major environmental organization and was in regular contact with all the rest of them. You’d be hard pressed to find an environmental group that isn’t strongly urbanist. So if Chakrabarti is so wrong about the green community — and he’s way off base — I had to wonder what other groups he mischaracterized.

He does raise this important point, though, which gives city advocates a hard time: How do you get more people into a city, broadly, while compromising with the specific sacrifices caused by any given development?

[Du · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book, in both form and content. Mr. Chakrabarti has created an incredibly thoughtful and well researched book. The thesis is that if Americans lived and worked in a denser urban development, we'd have a stronger and more sustainable economy. He outlines his thoughts about how to implement this vision with simple and complex ideas, which might be off putting on the surface, but really make sense when you strip away the concern for implementation, because he articulates the advantages of the urban-orientated lifestyle vs the existing ways we find ourselves in. Chakrabarti accomplishes this by demonstrating that our current means, promoting suburbia, are flawed and create an unsustainable future.

To convey this message, simple yet powerful graphics and charts are used to aid the reader in understanding many of the figures and statistics used throughout the book. The format alone is worth checking the book out. Basically the text is presented on the right hand page, and the diagrams/illustrations of the facts are presented on the left hand page. With this information you get so much out of reading this book.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is filled with impressive data and beautiful visuals. Supportive data is rampant for dense cities and high speed rail. Although the data are rich I continually had this doubt-filled feeling that resistance will be so strong that the ideas will not come to fruition. The data make so much sense that politicians will have trouble understanding it and these are the people who should/must read this book. Suburbanites will read this and agree as long as their suburb is not critiqued. Airlines and those in auto making will agree as long as airline or auto makers receive their piece of the pie in its current state and rail transportation money comes from some place other than airlines and auto making.

[Laird Bennion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! Should be required reading for anyone that wants to offer their opinions in Design Review meetings or push for NIMBY policies. The gas-tax and mortgage interest deduction sections should be required reading for anyone that's ever watched Fox News. It could use a 2nd edition update regarding high-speed rail and prefab apartment units. Parts of the book read like an ad for SHOP Architects, where the author is a Principal. While they're great architects, it seems shortsighted to constantly be tooting one's own horn when they're striving for national relevance.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars.

I believe that Vishaan’s view of America’s future is one that we should strive towards. One thought was consistently in my head during the entire read: why is it so hard to convince ourselves to build when it was so easy in the past? Have we lost our ability to dream of a better world AND to act on it?

Vishaan provides a great analysis of the relationship between our built environment and our economic issues. Everything is connected, and perhaps the root of all our problems lies in the destruction of the American city.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heavy on the glossiness and graphics. The content aligns with my last 25 years' worth of perceptions of urbanity, but I suppose someone needs to be explicit if people aren't waking up to said ideas... Anyway, the sections on policy seem a bit light, as does most of the rest of the text. But, it is pointing in the larger correct direction, so a good introductory read overall.

[Jeramey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book doesn't introduce many new arguments to the urbanism canon, but it does do a good job of collecting many of the the recent arguments advanced in the past three years.

The well-done drawings on virtually every other page make this book a very fast read relative to its length.

Likely a good introduction to urbanism book.

[Tamara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best argument for urbanization I have read. A+ infographics

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm really enjoy this book, and Vishaan's theoretical views on how cities can change and grow.

[Nina Kasniunas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling argument for high density urban areas... has made me think twice about my disdain for any development that is taller than a midrise.

[Kurt Witten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not too much of a "good read," but a good resource to see the shifting climate in urban migration and how it relates to ministry.

[Christophor Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing, enlightening read that will stay with me as I begin to prepare to run for local office.