Urban Design

Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, cities, and regional spaces, urban design considers 'bigger picture' issues of economic, social and environmental value and social design. The scope of a project can range from a local street or public space to an entire city and surrounding areas. Urban designers connect the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning to better organize physical space and community e ...more

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
The Image of the City
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)
Cities for People
Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life
The High Cost of Free Parking
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places

Andy Singer
Q: Why We Drive is a unique book, combining cartoons, text-form journalism, and photographs. How did it come about? After I did the book CARtoons in 2001, I got invitations to speak at various venues including The Village Building Convergence, bookstores and a few universities. Being a visual artist, I gradually developed a slide talk about the social, environmental, economic and political problems of transportation design in America. I used a mixture of cartoons, photographs and maps because I ...more
Andy Singer

True enough, we need an environment which is not simply well organized, but poetic and symbolic as well... By appearing as a remarkable and well-knit place, the city could provide a ground for the clustering and organization of these meanings and associations. Such a sense of place in itself enhances every human activity that occurs there, and encourages the deposit of a memory trace.
Kevin Lynch, The image of the city

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ThreadATL Books Books about urbanism (urban design, housing affordability, streets) with an Atlanta focus. Compi…more
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The Global Grid Reads Reading group of The Global Grid. Here we will share the books we review on The Global Grid, the…more
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