Customer Reviews

The Urban and Regional Planning Reader (Routledge Urban Readers series)

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I have long been searching for a textbook/reader in urban and regional planning. After surveying several, I have finally found the one! It is the Urban and Regional Planning Reader by Penn professor Eugenie L. Birch. Not only are her selections timely and perfectly on target but also her tailored introductions to each of its seven sections and 46 essays are extraordinary. Fact-filled and well-written, they provide deep context and intelligent analysis for each section or article. Capturing the full sweep of the field, the Reader has the following sections: The World of Urban and Regional Planning, History and Theory, Classic Readings, The Plan: Its Origins and Contemporary Issues, Planning Practice and Methods, Key Topics and Emerging Issues). Each section has six or seven well-chosen essays, mainly selected from recent writings. A special treat are the section dividers that track the development of a hypothetical city over time. A rich bibliography of supplementary readings for each article rounds out the book. Taken together, the readings, the editor's narrative, the illustrations and the bibliography, make this book the most comprehensive (and interesting) collection of urban and regional planning available.

I use this book, along with The City Reader, in one of my classes. It provides a decent foundation with pieces by many of the classic urbanists and early planners, and that's important. However, many of the articles I find repeating each other in general theme, so when one is assigned multiple readings using this text the readings can feel tedious. Also, none of the articles (as far as I know) are complete versions of the author's original piece, making the selected portions feel weaker and often out of context. Hopefully a revised edition will find the editors including more of the original pieces. Overall, the book is a decent one if all you want is something to lay a basic foundation for urban planning. Anything more than that, and you may find it beneficial to find the original writings featured in the book. The City Reader is a better reader with many of the same authors, so I would recommend picking that up over this one.