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?