The other day on Facebook someone asked what books I would recommend in the fields of housing, economics, and urban planning. I came up with a quick answer that I decided to turn into a blog post. I picked one book in each category, except for economics where I picked two. This is edited from the original post in City Builders. The post has been edited from the actual comment on Facebook.

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You asked for book recommendations about housing, economics, urban planning. I highly recommend avoiding urban planning. What you don’t know CAN hurt you (when derisively asked “Do you have a planning degree?” by Department of Planning and Development counsel during an appeal, I answered, “No. Thank God!” Everyone laughed. Point scored).

However, how about one book in each area?

Housing
Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction (1981)
By David Macaulay,

Some people talk about housing, some people build it (the talkers are “urbanists”), and this story told in pictures beautifully illustrates the construction of a medieval cathedral. But it might was well be four town houses in Ballard. I have a copy of all of Macaulay’s books somewhere. What was compelling about the book for me growing up was the detail of all the work that went into planning and building a cathedral including the politics and lack of resources. I was amazed by how long it took to build a project. Macaulay has similarly insightful books on the pyramids of Egypt, cities, and other structures.

Economics

The Marx Engels Reader
Edited by Robert Tucker

The Road to Serfdom
By F.A. Hayek

Two books you have to read here. I have a copy of the Marx Engels Reader but you can’t have it. It sits on by bedside table because I often read it and it also makes me feel better. It was the copy I used for my college Marxism class. If you want to understand capitalism (not be a cry baby about it) Marx has the best description of it in Das Kapital or Capital, the English title. Unfortunately capitalism is the state of affairs of human nature, not a system. Marx is a hero of mine and a great writer. While I reject his prescription for solving the “problem” of capitalism, his descriptions of capitalism and labor are brilliant if you can factor out his moral outrage and indigence about how the world works.

You also have to read the Road to Serfdom as the narrative version on the other side of Marx.  In it Hayek makes a VERY compelling case that planning leads to loss of freedom and totalitarianism. He is not a libertarian, but rather, I’d argue, an profound optimist in the human ability to naturally and intuitively solve problems if allowed, in a structured system of laws, to be themselves.

It’s called spontaneous order. And you see it in this video clip; it FREAKS planners out.

Urban Planning

The Image of the City
By Kevin Lynch,

The book and writer that made me fall for planning. It was a long romance that faded over time. But Lynch beautifully described cities as legible; cities are like books, they can be read. And more than that,

A vivid and integrated physical setting, capable of producing a sharp image, plays a social role as well. It can furnish the raw material for the symbols and collective memories of group com- munication. A striking landscape is the skeleton upon which many primitive races erect their socially important myths. Common memories of the “home town” were often the first and easiest point of contact between lonely soldiers during the war.

The wrong message, and I think Lynch and I would argue about this, is that those myths ought to be “saved” at all costs, as if the myth was the building or street. It’s not. The myth, the narrative to be read, is us, the people. So whether it’s Cathedral Sanctae Mariae Floris or a discarded can of Olde English, WE, not the damn buildings are the myth and the story.

Check out my post about Lynch’s day with a cab driver.