What Colors Are the Crabgrass?
New books chronicle US suburbs' divergence from their mythical origin scenes of verdant lawns and white picket fences — and detail how social struggles have always been part of their story.
Second Chances
Recent books explore the potential in underused and overdetermined spaces, from mid-century American city centers and suburban shopping malls to the current glut of vacant retail storefronts and offices.
Unreality Check
As New York reckons with a pandemic and police violence, truth can seem stranger than fiction. But a new work of urban fantasy bends the uncanny contours of crisis towards a vision of the city transformed through solidarity.
Driving Opportunity
Three recent books on how we circulate through the city show how transportation structures our daily lives, and our life trajectories.
Pattern Recognition
From Manhattan to the banks of the Yangtze River, photographers index both the ordinary and uncanny effects of urbanization.
Waterfront Views
With so much of value under threat from rising seas and flooding rains, recent books reconsider our relation to the water’s edge.
If These Walls Could Talk
Whither housing? Ask the houses. In four recent books, home is where the histories of housing policy and politics makes themselves known.
Public Space Arms Race
Battles for inclusion and exclusion in the life of the city more often end in stand-offs than in skirmishes.
Little Black Boxes
For the Circulation Desk, five books explore the stuff that binds us together in infrastructure networks public and private, old and new.
Planning for the Worst
Four tales of the cities that arise from moral and environmental disaster. Can we ever really start anew?
Power Lines
Three graphic novels dramatize the forces that shape the city, recasting old stories of good versus evil onto high-rises and streetscapes.
If Developers Ruled the World ...
Introducing the Circulation Desk, a bimonthly snapshot of the urbanist titles that turn our gears. On Inauguration Eve, could four recent biographies of real estate giants deliver insight into the years ahead?