THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES - JANE JACOBS
Recommended to me by urban design and sociology professors alike, this book is exactly what it claims to be: "An attack on current city building and replanning." I've had to return to the first page of the book several times while reading it to review the quote Jacobs opens with:
“Until lately the best thing that I was able to think in favor of civilization, apart from blind acceptance of the order of the universe, was that it made possible the artist, the poet, the philosopher, and the man of science. But I think that is not the greatest thing. Now I believe that the greatest thing is a matter that comes directly home to us all. When it is said that we are too much occupied with the means of living to live, I answer that the chief worth of civilization is just that it makes the means of living more complex; that it calls for great and combined intellectual efforts, instead of simple, uncoordinated ones, in order that the crowd may be fed and clothed and houses and moved from place to place. Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life. They mean more life. Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
twenty minutes in manhattan - MICHAEL SORKIN
Easy to read for its anecdotal qualities, Sorkin speaks from his own experiences living in an "Old Law" building in the heart of New York. He weaves history, code, and his architectural and urban philosophies seamlessly.
The New jim crowe - michelle alexander
A seminal work for anybody who wants to consider themselves aware of the current state of race relations in the United States. This book is a powerful view into the issues with the prison industrial complex and the systems that support it as a new face of oppression.
