The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities

by Monocle

In this joyful new book Monocle unpacks what makes a great city, whether you’re looking for a new place to call home or need help fixing your own. How do we make better cities – places that work for people of all ages and backgrounds? How do we make cities that provide the obvious essentials – great transport, good places to work – as well as the softer elements that truly deliver quality of life, from urban swimming pools to rooftop clubs? Since its launch in 2007, Monocle has been passionate about making better places to live. Every year it publishes a Quality of Life Survey, which names the top 25 cities to call home. In addition, across the issues, it has interviewed the best mayors, looked at the metropolises putting pedestrians first and met the people creating the best parks, both pocket and grand. Discover how you too can have a High Line, create the most covetable housing or turn a dirty river into a summer asset. Packed with great images and intriguing reports, this is a book that takes the urbanism debate away from city hall and explains what’s needed in ways that will inspire us all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Urbanism, Design, Urban

320 pages, Hardcover

Published October 23, 2018

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the worst books I've had the displeasure of reading. I’m sorry. It’s 400 pages, yet nothing of substance.

I normally takes notes when I read non-fiction, but this time I only wrote down two lines.

Nearly every article starts along the lines of “These young creative architects/entrepreneurs/etc. are breathing new life into this run-down/forgotten/etc. neighborhood/building/etc. …”.

Even with the pictures, which are quite good, there is a problem: most of them lack captions or descriptions to let the reader know what they’re looking at.

[Alex Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some decent short essays.