Customer Reviews

How Cities Work : Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Many recently published books have been devoted to the plight of Urban sprawl. How Cities Work is a recommended addition. Clear, concise and to the point it establishes a solid perspective from which to view the choices that we have made in how we choose to live.

The book begins by asserting that the factors that shape any city are a combination of its Transportation, Economics and Politics. After creating a framework for understanding these factors the book presents a critique of the so-called "New Urbanism". Marshall chooses none other than Disney's Celebration in Orlando Florida as his case study for the New Urbanism movement. Contrasting the Potemkin-like Celebration with neighboring Kissimmee, Marshall examines the forces that shaped each. The history of Kissimmee, complete with its ups and downs, demonstrates the workings of an authentic city. Celebration, in comparison, shows itself to be all style and little substance.

Cities don't "just happen". It wasn't the simply the car or modern technology that shaped how we live today. Rather, it was the integration of the three forces of Transportation, Economics and Politics. The car is only as good as the roads that get built through government funding and a city's growth is shaped by the politics of zoning boards. The history of the last 50 years has shown that we have chosen a centrifugal direction for these forces. From general neglect of mass transportation to the emergence of restrictive covenants, we've chosen a path that has lead us to the creation of communities that serve to segment and isolate rather than bring together.

While Marshall's remedies, especially his penchant for generally left-wing approaches to social policy, may sometimes miss the mark, his book offers an excellent framework from which to approach the task of remaking our cities into much more livable places.

A previous reviewer faulted the author for poor analysis. I don't think we read the same book.

Throughout the book, the author repeatedly explains issues of economy, transportation, and the power of governmental choice in the formation of cities. He points out, as few new urbanists do, that cities exist for the economic advantage of its citizens, that government makes real decisions about what kind of transportation system is to be utilized, and that it is the transportation system that ultimately determines the form of regions.

He effectively articulates that the functions of a city are innate and independent of the forms that city might take. To the author's credit, he clearly identifies his personal preferences for a developmental form that is transit oriented and dominated by urbanist forms.

The book is easy to read, and its theories are clearly and repeatedly stated. Is the book correct? Who knows. The author, very ambitiously, attempts to get at the very basics of the existence of the city form, and I think he proffers thoughtful and compelling arguments.

I have been interested in the New Urbanism philosophy for a while now. Living in a walkable community is important to me. In this book, Alex Marshall opened my eyes to different factors involved in maintaining a "traditional city". It challenged my assumptions and changed my opinions. In some ways, Alex is against New Urbanism, saying that usually New Urbanism simply results in buidling new suburban developments. It is not as simple as building houses with front porches within walking distance of a small commercial street. Maintaining a community and a healthy urban core involves transportation, regional government, and politics. Interestingly, Alex challenges that increasing parking and freeway access to a downtown area can kill a City rather than help it. Some people do not like WalMart's because they take business away from smaller community stores. The problems is, this started with the advent of the automobile. If you have a car, you can't blame WalMart. Many people would rather drive to a large box-retail-store to save money than try to find parking at a local small store and pay higher prices. Granted, you might get to know the owner of the local store and meet some neighbors. Gas is cheap and freeways are plentiful. Sadly, there are few alternatives to the car anymore. The minority that would rather live in a "community" and shop at local stores have limited options. As soon as you say "growth restrictions" someone else says you are taking away their right to a new home on 1/2 an acre close to the new freeway paid for and maintained by your tax dollars. What about your right to enjoy a local neighborhood? But, once that person buys their 1/2 acre house, you bet they will fight for growth restrictions to keep that empty stretch of land farther out free from further development. Of course, the developers would have something to say about that. Alex also talks about how suburban developments often seperate housing from retail which makes cars a requirement, and use pods and culdesacs along with feeder streets. This really puts the damper on any ideas of trying to walk or use public transit. It appears that Alex is not a Liberatarian. He supports that governments should not be considered as evil. The entire capitalistic system would not work without the government to enforce the laws, create the transportation systems, print money, form the SEC, etc. Strong and wealthy nations usually have strong governments with a healthy tax base. On a local level, governments used to layout cities, but they don't anymore. Really, state transportation departments build freeways which preceed growth. Now big developers lay out "communities" and turn them over to the city to maintain. Alex does come up with some suggested solutions, but they are not trivial. Overall, the book is an interesting read.

This is a fine read, with humor and deep feeling, showing the plight of the modern city and therefore the modern soul.

Marshall argues convincingly that the unmittigated promotion of the automobile has robbed us of both community and even the convenience it was ostensibly designed to promote, turning our cities into isolated cul-de-sacs and sad little strip malls, with the "city" itself often either blighted or turned into a theme park for tourists.

This loss of place, he argues, is not ammended by most of the "new urbanism" that's in vogue, which he claims is simply the same old suburb dressed up in a sentimental veneer. Neither is simply building more roads a viable solution.

Marshall looks to government, in its best sense, as a public institution as the beginning to working with this dilema. The easy answer of a market driven laizze-faire approach is no answer at all. Instead he argues that we need to first understand how cities function and how good design can be both practical and pleasing. Individuals shouldn't be the ones driving growth around their own short term benefit- communities should be looking towards the long term good. We all need to get involved, and make some tough choices.

I was taken on an interesting ride by this book, with intimate, street level looks at some of the most soulful and souless communities around- Copanhagen, Silicon Valley, Jackson Heights among others. I speak of soul here, because even though the book is crisp and articulate, I could sense that the author had a real relationship with these places and invites us to deepen our own, looking at the quality of our lives, and how that relates to the cities, towns, and burbs we live in.

Not only an important book, but also an enjoyable one.

Alex Marshall has written an entertaining description of his frustration with the current choices of many Americans to live in low density housing relying upon the freeway and arterial road systems. He describes his interaction with selected citizens of Portland, the Silicon Valley, Jackson Heights and Celebration and attempts from this "base" to extract the ultimate truths that underly what, to him, is a thoroughly unsatisfactory way of life. In many ways, his frustration is amusing, predictable, and entirely understandable: Americans do not agree, in general, that there is something inherently wrong with a single-family home in a nice location. It can be argued - although almost never is - that the genius of the post-industrial economic world is the flexibility of the highway system, which allows one and two job families to maintain their residential base, while tapping into changing economic opportunities. Marshall argues that tolerating the present situation - he admits that politicians support it - is the result of the "confusion" of those of us who do not see things his way. Indeed, he expresses surprise that people he iterviews in Celebration, a "New Urbanist" development that, curiously, he spends much of the book criticizing, like where they live and how it works. After reading the book, however, it is clear that the confusion is Marshall's. Only in a very few places in the book does he acknowledge the importance of the ebb and flow of the economy; at no point does the massive shifts in types and locations of jobs come into play. From his point of view, each city should build (without bothering to explain where the funds come from) fixed transportation systems which would allow the elimination of the freeways, thus putting "pressure" on the downtowns, thus forcing higher density. His interpretation of the success of the Portland area totally ignores the effects of the chip-making, lumber processing, or other economic issues, as well as the effects of geography and the remoteness of the location. Instead, he cites as the sole reason for Portland's favorable status the use of a Growth Boundry. Anyone who takes the time to drive around Portland quickly notices, however, that the same characteristics that he condemns elsewhere are evident in that area. Indeed, while many debate the issue, if there has been any effect of the Urban Growth Boundry, it can be argued to have artificially increased housing prices, a result Marshall correctly criticizes as unhealthy in the Silicon Valley. When all is said, however, I strongly recommend this book because of Marshall's candor and insight. He acknowledges - as no book I have seen does - that the same trends are evident in the European cities where the heavy hand of government is much more involved in laying out urban transit and placing barriers to home ownership. I have noted this, for example, in the Mannheim, Germany area where despite a truly outstanding wheel and spoke system(and cross urban rail system)it is obvious that the city is losing its middle class to suburban living.

This book gets 5 stars because Marshall has understood someting that other writers on this subject have missed entirely. The form of our cities is not a result of free-market forces, it is a result of political choices and in a democratic society voters can control those choices. I am so tired of hearing misguided free-market libertarian types insist that traffic jams, strip malls, suburban blandness, endless freeway expansion and social isolation are what people would choose to buy if they actually knew how to make other choices. Marshall realizes that building a good city requires citizens to acknowledge themselves as citizens. The impulse towards suburban living and car-dominated transport is not a step towards individual liberty. To have these things, people must abandon the kind of public life necessary for democracy and give up some degree of political participation for the supposed security of a gated community or a planned community. I appreciated this book as much for its heartfelt support for the democratic ideal of citizenship as for its insightful critique of the flaws in the New Urbanist movement.

How do cities work? According to Alex Marshall, the three factors that determine city form are transportation, economics, and politics. Whether or not you end up convinced, I think he gives a good argument.

Marshall believes that cities serve primarily economic functions. They are builders of wealth. But transportation is the crucial element that determines whether a city gets dense and communal, or turns into suburban sprawl. Economics determines how the city grows, but only after the infrastructure is laid out. This infrastructure then, is not laid out through market processes. Because they are public goods, it is politics that determines what kind of transportation network is built, whether roads and freeways, or rails and subways. The latter set, Marshall argues, is necessary for healthy cities, and we should be aware that politics is the force driving transportation, because this means that we choose what kind of city we want through what kind of infrastructure we decide to build.

Much of the book is devoted to studies of specific urban areas that have approached sprawl in different ways. It is also a critique of the New Urbanism movement, as Marshall argues it deals with superficial details while neglecting the underlying issues that form cities. He goes so far as to say that New Urbanism actually creates sprawl.

Not all his analyses are always keen (some of his economic discussions are overly simple), and not all of his proposals may sound sensible. But his core argument is well worth thinking about. Marshall wants what I want: cities that are active and lively, dense and convenient, democratic and diverse. He brings attention to government and its role, the price we must pay for having community, and his pleas are intelligent and genuine. HOW CITIES WORK is part journalism, part instruction manual. It's a way to understand that perhaps we can still do something to change the landscape of suburban America.

Written in a lively and well-researched journalistic style, this book essentially lays down the pieces of a much larger puzzle that the reader must solve for him/herself. As other reviewers have mentioned, it does not offer many concrete solutions and it does not pretend to have easy answers. Instead, it is a far-reaching look at urban spaces, ranging from the new town of Celebration, Florida to the progressive and inspiring city of Portland, Oregon. Marshall also presents an intelligent and logical criticism of New Urbanism, which offers less satisfying and holistic solutions than its descendant, the SmartGrowth movement. Overall, this is an eye-opening, passionate, and highly readable book on the nuances of urban life and planning in contemporary America.

I bought this book because I wanted an introduction to urban studies without having to slog through a dry, academic textbook. What I got was not really an introduction to the subject, but rather a polemic against the current trends of urban planning, and the ever-growing dominance of suburban sprawl and the personal automobile. This is not to say that Marshall doesn't describe the basics of planning, he does, but this serves mainly as the backbone of his argument; that being that the car and the massive freeway systems that accompany them, have basically destroyed the city and the notion of community. We live in an aimless, rootless society, he argues, with no sense of place or meaning.

He starts by explaining that cities are founded on three basic components; transportation, politics, and economics. What type of city you will have depends on the type of transportation system you have, and the type of transportation you have depends on political decisions. And economics are the whole reason cities exist in the first place argues Marshall, "cities exist because they create wealth."

Marshall spends a good portion of the book criticizing "New Urbanism" which basically embraces suburban sprawl and artificial communities like Celebration, Florida. These communities, argue Marshall are trying to build new urban communities without the transportation systems that are needed to support them, and thus are bound to fail. Marshall supports things like growth boundaries to help revitalize inner cities instead of just continuing to spread outward, eating up more precious land and resources while leaving the center city areas to decay. He supports more government involvement in such matters and thus will make no friends out of the free trader types. Overall, I think Marshall makes a compelling case, although I think he tends to blame too many of societies problems on suburban sprawl. I am a lifelong suburbanite myself and I have a love/hate relationship with the burbs. I like the privacy and convenience it affords me, but I can't help but emphatically agree with this statement by Marshall:

"I believe...that the generally fragmented lives so many of us lead break up marriages, disturb childhoods, isolate people when they most need help, and make life not as much fun. We live, to speak frankly, in one of the loneliest societies on earth."

Can all this be blamed on the car and suburban sprawl? Probably not, but I would whole-heartedly recommend this compelling read anyway. Four stars.

Any movement needs to be discussed and his points are well taken. I live in the Portland metro area and am planning on purchasing in a New Urbanist community, but as planning takes a new turn in this century, I wonder at some of the assumptions made. Portland is an extremely low-priced metro area compared to other cities on the West Coast. I lived in the Silicon Valley and there is no comparision. The Silicon Valley is unlivable. Traffic night and day. Even when you'd think there'd be no traffic at 10:30 am or 2:30 pm there is, what would be regarded in other cities (like Chicago or Portland, where I have lived) as rush hour traffic. The only time I could drive to the store in the San Jose area and not be fuming at 24 lane intersections every one minute of drive time was at 2 am in the morning. No kidding. It was horrible and housing was all over a half a million dollars. Not mansions or mcmansions even, but old run-down ranchers. In Portland, it's like living in a dream. House prices are escalating, but are still only 60% the cost of Seattle and less than half that of San Jose. I believe, also this is more the function of a poor economy and the flow of capital to real estate and low interest rates and older Baby-boomers and the "greatest generation" folks cashing out on their GI-bill tract homes for a half a million or more and pushing the price of housing up for us younger people. And most of Portland housing, due to the Urban Growth Boundary is close-in stuff. Stuff that in Lincoln Park or cute neighborhoods in Chicago would cost you a million. Also, recent studies have found that the urban growth boundary has NOT increased the price of housing here. When the Realtor's association was doing the calculations they failed to increase the income of Portlanders from the 1990 census to the 2000 census until 2003. Portland has had an extremely low increase in value of homes until the last year. In fact, Portland homes lost a big chunk of their value in the 1980's and only regained it over the 90's. San Jose is trying to rebuild their downtown, but it was a ghost town when we lived there. More comparable to a small midwestern town than a major city. It was sad. Portland is vibrant and pretty amazing. Anyway, I am originally from the Pacific Northwest and grew up going to the big cities of Seattle, Vancouver, BC and Portland. They set my standards high for what a city should be. A font of creativity, beauty and socialization. San Jose/Silicon Valley was a pit of badly managed growth and nowhere to go, but to San Francisco (which is 40 miles away, sometimes 3-4 hours drive time on a busy Friday night).