Customer Reviews

Get Urban!: The Complete Guide to City Living (Capital Ideas)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading Kyle Ezell's "Get Urban", when I drive through a city, I'll never look at it in the same way. The urban energy, the blank canvas, the garden district, all ripe for redevelopment and I want to be a part of it! I've now gained a full understanding of city life and why it can be such an exciting adventure.

After driving through the decaying neighborhoods in D.C. today, I think every local politician and resident in the surrounding over-crowded suburbs should read this great book. Kyle Ezell tells you how to find the right neighborhood for your personality and teaches you the basic survival skills you will need to live in a city.

Going by the wonderful writing in "Get Urban!," I bet Kyle Ezell is going to be a superstar one day.

We were pleased when we passed the "Getting Urban 101" minicourse (chapter 3) with flying colors. We recently moved from the southern suburbs. We chose the "postindustrial urbs" and are living in Chicago's South Loop development called Central Station. Reading your book is full of good advice and is helping us get even more urban! And we're saving a load of money not paying high gas prices!

Get Urban is the perfect book for us older folks with empty nests who are thinking about "getting urban." Our kids are gone and we are actually considering "moving on up" to a condo in downtown Nashville. The books speaks to us because we really do have to transform ourselves into a different mindset to become city dwellers. We haven't gotten urban yet, but have determined that we are "Postindustrial" urbanites. That's South of Broad (SoBo) in Downtown Nashville. Off we go, anxious, but excited. This was a very worthwhile book for us, especially because we've lived in a subdivision for forty years!

Mr. Ezell's book "Get Urban" is a timely work that chronicles America's next big move: Back into the urban center. The book serves those interested or even curious of such a move a clear understanding of what they may want inside the city and where to find it.

What's most interesting is the book's focus on the "urb" and that you may be able to find what you want without having to relocate hundreds of miles to a large metropolis. In fact, he states that you can even find SoHo in Omaha, NE.

I found the book to be both informative and entertaining. It is certainly useful when searching for that place I'm looking for in an inner city.

From a professional standpoint, it's refreshing to read a book that states what true urban development should be: moving back into the city and not creating sanitized, mini-cities in the greenfield suburbs.

Kudos Mr. Ezell!

Walking is a radical idea in America. So is using public transportation, living in high density neighborhoods, and having everything you need just steps away from your front door. Get Urban! teaches people how to get themselves ready for what the book calls a "life transformation," and to become excited about the prospects of living in the city. I enjoyed this book tremendously.

For people like me who love cities and want to see them grow into energetic and fun places, Get Urban provides a remarkable self-help format for people who are thinking about moving to their 'hometown downtowns': Generartion Y and Baby Boomers. I've read just about every book about cities, and they all focus on what went wrong and why they are dying. Instead of concentrating on flawed public policy, this book seeks to create demand through a remedial education, helping people discover their urban personality, teaching them how to "schlepp", and the importance of "responsible urban integration." I especially enjoyed the section on blending into your neighborhood, warning new city dwellers that city living is not subdivision living, and to take responsibility for making your neighborhood as diverse and authentic as possible. Give this to your parents or college graduates who are thinking about intown life, but have never walked anywhere for anything or felt urban energy. Most of all, it is a fun read that provides a page-turning education about cities and urban issues.

This timely book has made me realize....why drive and pay 50 bucks to fill up your SUV when you can "schlepp?" Get Urban! shows people how to avoid high gas prices by "positioning yourself" around food, work, fun and friends. I've already "gotten urban" in Bella Vista, Philly and I laugh at all the folks who made the choice to put themselves so far away from everything out in the 'burbs. Perhaps they might choose to establish their own world in waiting neighborhoods in their city's downtown. After all, we all have choices. GET URBAN AND START SCHELPPING!

A good basic book and its arguement for saving cities is beyond reproach. But it lacked information on how to conduct research on where one might want to move, how to evaluate the direction an urban area is going or even how to tell if a city wants to have an urban core. And if he used the word "funky" once more I would have screamed; in fact he used it so much it almost made me put the book down. He should have stuck to the facts and tried not to draw verbal pictures of so many funky neighborhoods.