It is a brave new world. As of this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned our world upside down. People are losing their jobs, children are not attending schools, 150,000 (and counting, as of April 2020) lives have been lost worldwide, and our cities and towns are no longer spaces of exchange and mutual social interaction. One looks at the images coming out of Venice (Italy) and sees how drastically our society has changed. Last summer (2019), the Association of European Schools of Planning conducted their international academic conference in Venice. At that time, the city was teeming with tourists, customers filled restaurants, and the public squares such as the Piazza San Marco were inundated with people taking selfies in front of eminent architectural structures. Today, Venice’s streets are eerily empty; restaurants are closed and gondola services no longer have clients. These signs of a city come to a standstill are an eerie reminder of how sensitive our social links are and how easily turned around our society has become. Important, this crisis is also an acknowledgment of how globalization has made us all strongly dependent on each other, and it is a stark reminder of how vital our urban planning field is for sustaining our fragile way of life.
Planners will serve a critical role in bringing our cities back to life. Planning practitioners’ knowledge of neighborhood dynamics, sustainable transportation and green infrastructure, and providing access to affordable housing will all be critical to helping rebuild our cities and communities. Maintaining a keen understanding of current social inequalities will also help avoid replicating and increasing these inequalities during this health crisis. These are the critical issues covered in this book review section. These issues are at the core of our planning discipline and again remind us, during this time of peril, that urban planning practitioners and academics play a significant role in protecting our livelihoods.
First in the book review section is a fascinating review by Sanjeev Vidyarthi of the University of Illinois, Chicago, of Emily Talen’s book Neighborhood. Vidyarthi, an urban designer, sees Talen’s book as a critical contribution toward the re-emergence of the neighborhood spatial unit in the planning field. This contribution is crucial as our contemporary cities suffer from fragmented sociospatial places. The neighborhood unit promises something different: a return to creating diverse, livable communities. According to Vidyarthi, Talen appropriately reviews how neighborhoods have also been used as a form of spatial racial segregation. Nevertheless, she goes beyond a design critique and provides specific recommendations that can break these historical discriminatory spatial patterns.
Next is a substantive review by Deirdre Pfeiffer of Arizona State University of Manturuk, Lindblad, and Quercia’s A Place Called Home: The Social Dimensions of Homeownership. Pfeiffer, a prominent housing scholar, praises the book’s research approach and appreciates how it tackles a long-standing housing debate—the social benefits of homeownership—via a new research angle with relevant, fresh data and perspectives. A Place Called Home demonstrates the links between homeownership and better health and local civic engagement. However, Pfeiffer wanted to see more emphasis placed on various outcomes of homeownership between different demographic groups.
Next, Patrick M. Condon of the University of British Columbia reviews Doug Kelbaugh’s new important book The Urban Fix: Resilient Cities in the War Against Climate Change, Heat Islands and Overpopulation. Kelbaugh, former dean of the University of Michigan’s Taubman College, addresses the wicked problems of climate change, population growth, and rapid urbanization.
Condon agrees with Kelbaugh’s assertion that these problems stem from all factors coming together in the way cities are designed and operate. Presenting detailed case studies from around the world, Kelbaugh draws on approaches cities are implementing that are concretely tackling climate change and creating more livable and cooler cities. According to Condon, Kelbaugh answers a critical question that planners and urban designers need to answer: How can cities help save our planet, instead of further contributing to climate change? This question might be the most important one of our time. Furthermore, Kelbaugh stays away from providing easy answers.
The next three reviews are from up-and-coming PhD students in our planning field. Steven M. Richter of the University of Texas, Austin, continues the theme of addressing climate change in his review of Sandra L. Albro’s book Vacant to Vibrant: Creating Successful Green Infrastructure Networks. Vacant to Vibrant is geared toward planning practitioners who want to transform their cities via green infrastructure projects. Critical in this regard is the book’s description of transforming vacant land by simultaneously addressing stormwater management and community revitalization through green infrastructure and access to recreation. Best of all, the projects described in the book are innovative and affordable ideas. For example, nine projects demonstrated in the book cost less than $18,000 and were completed across three different cities.
Our second PhD student, Dave Amos from the University of California, Berkeley, discusses issues of sustainable transportation in his review of David Prytherch’s Law, Engineering, and the American Right-of-Way: Imagining a More Just Street. Prytherch addresses sustainable transportation in an innovative and technical manner by meticulously identifying how street codes and policies have benefited the automobile over more active modes of transportation such as bicycling and walking. He also identifies key initiatives and social movements that are working to create more balance between transportation modes, such as the Complete Streets movement and Vision Zero city programs. Amos was impressed by Prytherch’s framing of the “right-of-way” as both a place and a physical right to space.
John Parcel, a doctoral student at Michigan State University, turns to issues of inequality in cities in his review of Alan Mallach’s The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America. According to Parcel, a vital claim of the book is that cities are no longer spaces of opportunity but instead are struggling with increased social and economic inequalities. The book provides detailed examples that demonstrate how important it is to pay attention to context in efforts to ameliorate inequalities within crucial local government initiatives that have improved peoples’ lives. One crucial factor is how cities need to maintain and increase their middle-class population.
Our final review comes from Dennis E. Gale of Rutgers University, who looks at Richard Florida’s book The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It. In previous writing, Florida’s ideas on the creative class made a significant impact on planning practice, and he now turns his attention toward issues of inequality. Interesting, his ideas on middle class involvement in solutions to poverty are similar to Mallach’s. According to Gale, Florida’s book cites gentrification as a primary reason for increased inequality in cities, especially for racial and ethnic minority populations. Gale is impressed by the high level and extensive analyses of data Florida uses to track inequality and economic segregation. In summary, Florida demonstrates the growing disparities among Americans in terms of wealth and poverty in cities and the suburbs.
The emergence of the COVID-19 health crises in our cities threatens to create more havoc and make it harder for planners to tackle crucial city issues. However, as the work of these authors demonstrates, our field is at the cutting edge of creating innovative approaches to fundamental problems. Urban planners are professionals who are not afraid of addressing wicked problems and creating innovative approaches to addressing existential societal crises.
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Notes on contributors
Gerardo Francisco Sandoval
Gerardo Francisco Sandoval is an associate professor in the School of Planning, Public Policy, & Management at the University of Oregon.