Customer Reviews

The Great Neighborhood Book: A Do-it-Yourself Guide to Placemaking

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The Great Neighborhood Book is full of examples and ideas for
down to earth you and me kinds of action that inspire and energize
to make things happen in our neighborhoods. It includes getting to know
neighbors, putting benches out at natural pausing places, greening and
gardening ideas, and simple suggestions. Recommend it for community
organizations, individuals and planning groups.

Written by Jay Walljasper, a Senior Fellow of the Project for Public Spaces, The Great Neighborhood Book: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Placemaking is a how-to guide for local communities to improve the quality of life for their residents through building shared bonds. From creating great places to hang out (a park with few hidden spaces and scattered vendors selling refreshments is more likely to deter homeless people and drug dealers from using it), to reducing crime (ordinary people's eyes and physical presence on the street are much more likely to deter crime than iron bars on windows), foster economic vitality (promoting locally grown/cooked/made food is kind to the environment as well as the local economy), and much more. Drawing heavily upon real-life examples in communities that made a measurable positive difference, The Great Neighborhood book blends practicality and inspiration into an uplifting whole and is enthusiastically recommended reading for concerned citizens, neighborhood watch groups, and municipal boards, among many others.

Very helpful resource. One can pick it up and start from anywhere. Very pertinent to a variety of projects and neighborhoods/towns/cities large or small.

Great neighborhoods are built by the neighbors living in them: working there, buying there, fixing it up, loving it. Jay's book is a wonderful tool for anyone who loves their neighborhood. It's full of practical ideas and persuasive philosophies for helping a neighborhood wake up to itself. What are the things that make people want to stop and explore? What makes residents of a great neighborhood want to settle down and never leave? A must-have for anyone who's interested in what makes neighborhoods more livable.

My professional work involves partnering with neighbors to create and sustain vital neighborhoods. This is an invaluable, easy to read book that spurs ideas and reminds us that great neighborhoods are not created by those just sitting on the sidelines.

A very cursory, basic overview about socializing with neighbors. Frankly, a waste of 175 "acid-free... post-consumer recycled" pages. Anybody with a half ounce of common sense already knows and/or practices Walljasper's suggestions. I have lived in a few of the rougher (Wicker Park, Southport and Humboldt Park -- PRE-yuppification) as well as nicer (Gladstone Park and Mount Greenwood) parts of Chicago. Many of my neighbors and I went far beyond the author's tenets in policing our blocks -- without any books to show us how.

If Walljasper is so damned concerned about "global deforestation and climate change," then he shouldn't have published a book of the obvious.