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The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution
Consider your surroundings. Maybe you’re in a house or in an apartment building. Maybe you’re at a desk in an office building, or in a café looking out on a lively main street. The urban landscape is not simply the backdrop to your life. It determines, to a remarkable degree, what kind of life you’re able to live. Today, the horizons of American life are constrained by a built environment that has not significantly changed since the 1970s.
American cities used to constantly evolve, experimenting with new urban designs and ambitious infrastructure projects, from railroads and subways to public housing and shopping malls. But now we keep pursuing the same 20th century urban development plans—freeways, downtown office towers, suburban housing developments. This pattern is why Americans are so dependent on their cars, why housing is so expensive and homelessness is at crisis levels, and why downtowns are struggling and communities are fraying.
In The Unfinished Metropolis, Benjamin Schneider argues that city-building is a lost art. We need to embrace new transportation technologies, new types of housing, new ways to use streets other than for cars and parking. In this insightful and entertaining tour of the built environment, Schneider explores common urban designs that shape our lives and color our cultural office parks, apartments, single family homes, and transit systems. He explains how these forms came to be, why they no longer function as promised, and introduces readers to the advocates and professionals around the country who are working on transformative new solutions. Learning from past mistakes, we can remake our cities and create better lives for ourselves and future generations.
American cities used to constantly evolve, experimenting with new urban designs and ambitious infrastructure projects, from railroads and subways to public housing and shopping malls. But now we keep pursuing the same 20th century urban development plans—freeways, downtown office towers, suburban housing developments. This pattern is why Americans are so dependent on their cars, why housing is so expensive and homelessness is at crisis levels, and why downtowns are struggling and communities are fraying.
In The Unfinished Metropolis, Benjamin Schneider argues that city-building is a lost art. We need to embrace new transportation technologies, new types of housing, new ways to use streets other than for cars and parking. In this insightful and entertaining tour of the built environment, Schneider explores common urban designs that shape our lives and color our cultural office parks, apartments, single family homes, and transit systems. He explains how these forms came to be, why they no longer function as promised, and introduces readers to the advocates and professionals around the country who are working on transformative new solutions. Learning from past mistakes, we can remake our cities and create better lives for ourselves and future generations.
320 pages, Paperback
Published October 21, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 30, 2026
Lots of this was a review, but I loved the chapters on transit and industry! Great read
September 19, 2025
Like the more well-known Abundance book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, this book focuses on the need to build more housing and more transit to make cities less expensive and easier to navigate. However, it has more of a "smart growth/new urbanism" emphasis, addressing infill development and walkability. Some of the points that caught my attention were:
*One reason that down-and-outers are often homeless today is the shortage of truly low-end housing. By contrast, in the 1950s, such people lived in SRO (single room occupancy) buildings. Schenider points out that midcentury zoning rules often excluded such buildings, urban renewal demolished others, and in New York, the city offered landlords "incentives to convert their buildings to other uses."
*Schneider points out that zoning is not the only obstacle to new housing. Most cities require apartment buildings to have two sets of stairs, allegedly for fire safety purposes. Schneider points out that the US "fares far worse in terms of per capita fire deaths than peer countries that allow single-stair buildings." He adds that two-stair buildings have less space for actual housing.
*Historic preservationists argue that new housing is ugly and lacks character, while old buildings must be preserved at all costs. Schneider points out that the same arguments were made against Victorian row houses, citing a 19th.-century critic who described them as "nightmares of an architect's brain... piled out without rhyme or reason- restless, turreted, loaded up with meaningless detail."
*Unlike other abundance-oriented writers, Schneider criticizes highway construction, pointing out that road-building and suburbanization have resulted in increased pollution while failing to reduce congestion. He writes that between "1993 and 2017, the largest metro areas saw their highway capacity increase by 42 percent... Yet over that time period, congestion in those same metro areas more than doubled, increasing by 144 percent." He adds that in the first half of the 20th century, government subsidized roads while overregulating privately-owned streetcar companies (for example, by refusing to allow them to raise fares).
*Schneider also discussed intercity rail. While government built infrastructure for cars and airlines, government made rail less profitable by regulating prices and taxing railroad infrastructure such as yards and stations.
*One reason that down-and-outers are often homeless today is the shortage of truly low-end housing. By contrast, in the 1950s, such people lived in SRO (single room occupancy) buildings. Schenider points out that midcentury zoning rules often excluded such buildings, urban renewal demolished others, and in New York, the city offered landlords "incentives to convert their buildings to other uses."
*Schneider points out that zoning is not the only obstacle to new housing. Most cities require apartment buildings to have two sets of stairs, allegedly for fire safety purposes. Schneider points out that the US "fares far worse in terms of per capita fire deaths than peer countries that allow single-stair buildings." He adds that two-stair buildings have less space for actual housing.
*Historic preservationists argue that new housing is ugly and lacks character, while old buildings must be preserved at all costs. Schneider points out that the same arguments were made against Victorian row houses, citing a 19th.-century critic who described them as "nightmares of an architect's brain... piled out without rhyme or reason- restless, turreted, loaded up with meaningless detail."
*Unlike other abundance-oriented writers, Schneider criticizes highway construction, pointing out that road-building and suburbanization have resulted in increased pollution while failing to reduce congestion. He writes that between "1993 and 2017, the largest metro areas saw their highway capacity increase by 42 percent... Yet over that time period, congestion in those same metro areas more than doubled, increasing by 144 percent." He adds that in the first half of the 20th century, government subsidized roads while overregulating privately-owned streetcar companies (for example, by refusing to allow them to raise fares).
*Schneider also discussed intercity rail. While government built infrastructure for cars and airlines, government made rail less profitable by regulating prices and taxing railroad infrastructure such as yards and stations.
March 23, 2026
Was chock full of interesting facts and anecdotes - a good mix of history and proposed solutions. And it's refreshing reading a book that feels so up-to-date on many of the current-day challenges and circumstances faced by urbanists (Trump admin, coming AI wave, Green New Deal, etc.)
I read it as someone who hadn't read much other urbanism literature, but seems like it would also be good for a more advanced reader.
I read it as someone who hadn't read much other urbanism literature, but seems like it would also be good for a more advanced reader.
May 19, 2026
Incredibly dense but I appreciated the solutions-forward vision for an urban future when it’s much easier to be a critic
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews