The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards [Paperback]

Allan B. Jacobs (Author), Elizabeth MacDonald (Author), Yodan Rofe (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262600587 | ISBN-13: 978-0262600583 | Publication Date: August 29, 2003

First built in Europe and grandly imported to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, the classic multiway boulevard has been in decline for many years, victim of a narrowly focused approach to street design that views unencumbered vehicular traffic flow as the highest priority. The American preoccupation with destination and speed has made multiway boulevards increasingly rare as artifacts of the urban landscape. This book reintroduces the boulevard, tree-lined and with separate realms for through traffic and for slow-paced vehicular-pedestrian movement, as an important and often crucial feature of both historic and contemporary cities. It presents more than fifty boulevards?-as varied as Avenue Montaigne, in Paris; C. G. Road, in Ahmedabad, India; and The Esplanade, in Chico, California -- celebrating their usefulness and beauty. It discusses their history and evolution, the misconceptions that led to their near-demise in the United States, and their potential as a modern street type.Based on wide research, The Boulevard Book examines the safety of these streets and offers design guidelines for professionals, scholars, and community decision makers. Extensive plans, cross sections, and perspective drawings permit visual comparisons. The book shows how multiway boulevards respond to many issues that are central to urban life, including livability, mobility, safety, interest, economic opportunity, mass transit, and open space.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The majestic, vital streets of European cities and world capitals are most often their grandest and largest in scale, like the Champs Elysaes. The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multi-Way Boulevards celebrates these thoroughfares, created in the 19th century and currently out of favor because of safety concerns and the devotion to vehicles-only roads. Yet urban studies professors Allan B. Jacobs and Elizabeth Macdonald, along with Jerusalem planner Yodan Rofe, argue that boulevards could play an important role in revitalizing blight by getting people back in the same places as other traffic. Barcelona's Passeig de Gracia, Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway, C.G. Road in Ahmedabad, India, and even the Esplanade in Chico, Calif., serve as important examples among the 200 b&w illustrations.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The immense amount of research, together with the authors' enthusiasm...makes The Boulevard Book an authoritative text." Ari Anderson Landscape Australia

"The Boulevard Book is an excellent follow-up to Alan Jacobs' Great Streets--it has the same precision in its measured sectional drawings and plans, but adds much more history to situate the type in time and place. Multi-way boulevards are an important tool for cities having to accomodate both pedestrian activity and high levels of traffic. This will be the classic text on this complex and capacious street typology."--David Grahame Shane, Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning, Columbia University

"The authors tackle America's most disfunctional roadways--the commercial strips that slash their way through our cities and suburbs. They show how the boulevards of the past successfully reconciled traffic flows, parking, deliveries, pedestrians, and commercial frontages, and can serve as a model for reconstructing urban arteries. The Boulevard Book is a volume that all planners, urban designers, and lovers of cities should have at their fingertips."--Gary Hack, Dean, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania

"This is an important book that even people who are not directly connected with street design should read carefully. It teaches an important lesson about the fallacy of superficial assumptions by traffic engineers about the nature and quality of a good street. The Boulevard Book also offers an important discussion of the effort to reintroduce in current civic urban design an element of beauty in the form of a boulevard. In their different forms, boulevards provide solutions for greening cities, create pleasant and livable spaces, and contribute to the creation of sustainable cities. We badly need the kinds of suggestions found in this book."--Paolo Ceccarelli, Professor of Urban Analysis and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, University of FerraraPlease note: Endorser gives permission to excerpt from quote.

"Henrik Reeh's *Ornaments of the Metropolis* uncovers the previously hidden history of Kracauer's intellectual development and provides an invaluable portrait of one of the key critics of 20th-century Weimar Germany. In this clear and very well written account, Reeh shows Kracauer in all his complexity and brilliance as he wrestles with the emergence of the modern metropolis and modern urban mass culture."--David Grahame Shane, Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning, Columbia University

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Product Details

• Paperback: 267 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (August 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262600587
• ISBN-13: 978-0262600583
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #695,058 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Nice Companion to <i>Great Streets</i>, March 1, 2002

By 

Adam Krom (Philadeplhia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards (Hardcover)

This book belongs in the library of people who enjoyed GREAT STREETS by Allan Jacobs, et al, or anyone who designs modern streets. The authors have researched boulevards extensively, including their safety and utility.

If you are interested in the topic, a video is available about the authors' research from the Institute of Urban and Regional Development of the University of California at Berkeley -- 510-642-5233. It believe it is called, "Boulevards: Great Streets for Great Cities."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars terrific source book for urban designers, July 11, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards (Hardcover)

This is such an interesting book. Boulevards have been neglected for several generations because they somehow didn't fit into the vocabulary used by traffic engineers. But thanks to Allan and Elizabeth, we know that they are extremely efficient ways of carrying traffic and creating safe pewdestrian environments and that they creat beautiful cities. Look at Paris, Barcelona, Melbourne and even Chico!
Really nice drawings. The book is a delight top behold.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Streets do more than just move cars, April 25, 2007

By 

R. John Anderson "R. John Anderson" (Chico, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards (Paperback)

Jacobs and Macdonald have created a great resource for people who recognize that streets can and must do more than convey cars. I get to see Chico's Esplanade everyday. Others will have to be satisfied with the book's wonderful treatment the Esplanade gets along side its big brothers in Barcelona and Paris.