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Smart Cities
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Nearly every US city would like to be more walkable - for reasons of health, wealth, and the environment - yet few are taking the proper steps to get there. The goals are often clear, but the path is seldom easy. Jeff Speck’s follow-up to his best-selling Walkable City is the resource that cities and citizens need to usher in an era of renewed street life. Walkable City Rules is a doer’s guide to making change in cities, and making it now.
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After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and tower dwelling improvements on the car dependence of sprawl?
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 405
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Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that’s easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Biased author?
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Jane Jacobs, Jason Epstein (introduction)
- Narrated by: Donna Rawlins
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 364
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 315
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 310
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4 out of 5 stars
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- By Meghan on 02-13-15
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- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Cities are birthplaces of civilization; centers of culture, trade, and progress; cauldrons of opportunity - and the home of 80 percent of the world's population by 2050. As the 21st century progresses, metropolitan areas will bear the brunt of global megatrends such as climate change, natural resource depletion, population growth, income inequality, mass migrations, and education and health disparities, among many others.
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- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story5 out of 5 stars 8
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5 out of 5 stars
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The New Urban Crisis
- How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class - and What We Can Do About It
- By: Richard Florida
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
In recent years the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing challenges: gentrification, unaffordability, segregation, and inequality.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Audiobook review: Maps, figures, charts, etc?
- By on vacation on 06-18-17
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Palaces for the People
- How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
- By: Eric Klinenberg
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. These are places where people gather, making friends across group lines and strengthening the entire community. Klinenberg calls this the “social infrastructure”: When it is strong, neighborhoods flourish; when it is neglected, as it has been in recent years, families and individuals must fend for themselves.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved this.
- By Anonymous User on 02-05-19
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Triumph of the City
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- Narrated by: Lloyd James
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 313
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 259
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 257
America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the three percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly. Or are they? As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Urbanophile Brain Candy
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The City of Tomorrow
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- By: Carlo Ratti, Matthew Claudel
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- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story4 out of 5 stars 8
Since cities emerged 10,000 years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear - cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their very essence. In this book a renowned architect and urban planner who studies the intersection of cities and technology argues that we are in such a moment. The authors explain some of the forces behind urban change and offer new visions.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wonderfully optimistic bordering on utopian
- By Blackwyrd on 04-16-18
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A History of Future Cities
- By: Daniel Brook
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4 out of 5 stars 44
A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Engaging and Memorable
- By Marcus Vorwaller on 04-15-14
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The High Cost of Free Parking, Updated Edition
- By: Donald Shoup
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 23 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 12
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 10
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Story5 out of 5 stars 10
In this no-holds-barred treatise, Donald Shoup argues that free parking has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people. But it doesn't have to be this way.
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How to Kill a City
- Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood
- By: Peter Moskowitz
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 92
The term gentrification has become a buzzword to describe the changes in urban neighborhoods across the country, but we don't realize just how threatening it is. It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much-maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance. How to Kill a City takes listeners from the kitchen tables of hurting families who can no longer afford their homes to the corporate boardrooms and political backrooms where destructive housing policies are devised.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Snobby Socialist New Yorker Gets Hyperbolic
- By Marie on 04-12-18
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Door to Door
- The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation
- By: Edward Humes
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Story4 out of 5 stars 107
Using interviews, data, and deep exploration of the hidden world of ports, traffic control centers, and the research labs defining our transportation future, acclaimed journalist Edward Humes breaks down the complex movements of humans, goods, and machines as never before, from increasingly car-less citizens to the distance UPS goes to deliver a leopard-printed phone case.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting, but...
- By PatCos on 05-23-16
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Big Data: How Data Analytics Is Transforming the World
- By: Tim Chartier, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Tim Chartier
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
In our age of accelerating progress in so many fields, it’s easy to lose sight of the underlying innovation that makes the data analytics revolution possible. These 24 lectures introduce you to the key concepts, methods, and accomplishments of this versatile approach to problem solving. You need no expertise in mathematics to follow this exciting story. Tim Chartier, professor of mathematics and computer science, explains the basic computational techniques used in data analytics, but his focus is on how these ideas are applied and the amazing results they achieve.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Huge disappointment as "audio book"
- By Paananen Marko H S on 02-07-19
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Building the Cycling City
- The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality
- By: Melissa Bruntlett, Chris Bruntlett
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Story5 out of 5 stars 7
As the world's foremost cycling nation, the Netherlands is the only country where the number of bikes exceeds the number of people, primarily because the Dutch have built a cycling culture accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ability, or economic means. Building the Cycling City examines the triumphs and challenges of the Dutch while also presenting stories of North American cities already implementing lessons from across the Atlantic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Simply Fantastic!
- By John Simmerman on 10-01-18
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution
- By: Klaus Schwab
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 295
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 267
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Story4 out of 5 stars 267
World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolution, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good, not great
- By R. Toth on 01-24-17
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The Color of Law
- A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- By: Richard Rothstein
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,064
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 952
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Story5 out of 5 stars 945
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, he incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Better suited to print than audio
- By ProfGolf on 02-04-18
Publisher's Summary
An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile, connected future.
We live in a world defined by urbanization and digital ubiquity, where mobile broadband connections outnumber fixed ones, machines dominate a new "internet of things," and more people live in cities than in the countryside.
In Smart Cities, urbanist and technology expert Anthony Townsend takes a broad historical look at the forces that have shaped the planning and design of cities and information technologies from the rise of the great industrial cities of the nineteenth century to the present. A century ago, the telegraph and the mechanical tabulator were used to tame cities of millions. Today, cellular networks and cloud computing tie together the complex choreography of mega-regions of tens of millions of people.
In response, cities worldwide are deploying technology to address both the timeless challenges of government and the mounting problems posed by human settlements of previously unimaginable size and complexity. In Chicago, GPS sensors on snow plows feed a real-time "plow tracker" map that everyone can access. In Zaragoza, Spain, a "citizen card" can get you on the free city-wide Wi-Fi network, unlock a bike share, check a book out of the library, and pay for your bus ride home. In New York, a guerrilla group of citizen-scientists installed sensors in local sewers to alert you when storm water runoff overwhelms the system, dumping waste into local waterways.
As technology barons, entrepreneurs, mayors, and an emerging vanguard of civic hackers are trying to shape this new frontier, Smart Cities considers the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of them all while offering a new civics to guide our efforts as we build the future together, one click at a time.
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- Adam J. Hecktman
- Chicago, IL
- 11-17-15
A must read for city enthusiasts
If there is one book that people interested in urban development and urban issues must read, it is this. It goes beyond a discussion of the promise of smart cities and discusses the import an basis in it's past, the players who have studied it over the decades, and the organizations thinking about how to make it work for everyone. I loved this book.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- G.
- 02-19-17
Exhaustuve
Everything that has happened in the Smart City eco-system since the coining of the phrase (even earlier) can be found commented. Needs and update. May be I have to read (not listen - as the Audible Edition does not have it - Epilogue.
Commendable work both by the Author and Narrator.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Jeremy Allen
- Colorado
- 01-06-17
Informative and intriguing
Most informative for me was chapter 3's overview of urban models' failures and minor successes since WWII.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- James
- burleson, TX, United States
- 03-31-14
Look around and see the future
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Less man is destroying the world and golly keepers we can all work together
How could the performance have been better?
It's basically a documentary. The narrator doesn't need to do anything but talk with one voice
Did Smart Cities inspire you to do anything?
Yes..I will use it for restarting civilization after the zombies have attacked !!!!
Any additional comments?
Overall it was a very interesting book. It showed the blue prints that are all around us everyday to make our modern world better. They show how cities have used new wireless tech to create needed subsystems for city services. They comment how one city was planned to be high tech and didn't work,but another that grew more organically and wasn't per planned ,becomes a great tech city. It's a very good book, like all documentary style it does bog down in places.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Matthew
- 01-08-16
I Tried Really Hard
The contents of this book are excellent, but the way in which it was presented was remarkably painful. The language by Townsend is flowery and disengaging. The use of metaphors, descriptors and many other unnecessary words makes the interesting content fall on deaf ears. I really wanted to love this book and I am still fascinated with the topics, but I just couldn't get through this one. Next!
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
