Cities across the globe have been designed with a primary goal of moving people around quickly-and the costs are becoming ever more apparent. The consequences are measured in smoggy air basins, sprawling suburbs, unsafe pedestrian environments, and despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investments, a failure to stem traffic congestion. Every year our current transportation paradigm generates more than 1.25 million fatalities directly through...

"In The Human City, internationally recognized urbanist Joel Kotkin challenges the conventional urban-planning wisdom that favors high-density, "pack-and-stack" strategies. By exploring the economic, social, and environmental benefits of decentralized, family-friendly alternatives, Kotkin concludes that while the word "suburbs" may be outdated, the concept is certainly not dead. Aside from those wealthy enough to own spacious urban homes, people forced...

The buildings grow. And the city expands. And the people of the land are starting to behave abnormally. Or perhaps they've always behaved that way, and it's normality that's at fault. And the king of the land confers with his best friend, who happens to be his closest advisor, who also happens to be a talking cat. But that's all perfectly natural and not at all weird. Iona, close to retirement, finds that the world she has always known is nothing...

Argues for including empathy for humans and the natural world in design, exploring the strengths and weaknesses in architects' approach to the design of communities, regions, and buildings and suggesting ways to create a better world that focuses on the people who use and are affected by the infrastructure, as well as the need to reconnect design to human and natural elements.

"A visionary in responsible urban development and renewal presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the development of cities from the beginning of civilization to the present, revealing the conditions that gave rise to the happiest communities, and the qualities that define them,"--NoveList.