The book introduces us to the role better design of buildings and neighborhoods can play in solving the ongoing crisis of climate change, the obesity epidemic, and urban sprawl. The book correctly explains that the human condition has vastly improved around the world, but that these crises threaten our progress and wellbeing. It explains how construction and neighborhood/city planning can help solve these crises and it gives a number of excellent examples of beautiful carbon neutral (or nearly carbon neutral) neighborhoods and buildings from around the world, Canada, Australia, and a couple of examples from Sweden. The book stresses the importance of making buildings and communities carbon neutral, walkable, and enjoyable to residents. In general, the book paints an optimistic picture of the future while acknowledging the seriousness of climate change, the obesity epidemic, and urban sprawl.
The book is designed as a textbook featuring a very large number of references, diagrams and charts, lists of facts and colorful illustrations. This also makes the book more expensive. The second half of the book features 70 future oriented design patterns for buildings and neighborhoods. Most of these were well thought out and probably doable. There were a lot of good ideas laid out within these pages.
However, I was also disappointed by some entries that were more leftwing opinions than solutions, which is why I cannot give this book four or five stars. I would like to explain myself so bear with me. Chapter 7 feature a utopic burning man neighborhood / pattern, something I would stay away from by 1,000 miles. Chapter 8 features an opinion piece on gentrification as being a dangerous disease that needs to be eradicated. It is presented as fact. I remember so called white flight, and how bad that was, but when the same people return it is even worse, I guess. That’s confusing. Whether wealthier people moving into a neighborhood and thereby improving it and thus making it on average more expensive is good or bad is up for debate.
Chapter 11 includes entries opinionating that highways should be outlawed because of social justice, walkability, etc., and there is also other scary leftwing command and control language, which sounds like failure to me. Just because traffic is reduced when you remove local traffic and parking options does not mean that the problem is reduced. If you don’t provide incentives for carpooling or easy access to public transportation you will just move the problem somewhere else.
Chapter 12 features a misguided critique of market forces. Despite the opinion that service jobs and manufacturing is the backbone of the economy they pay less because of their lesser economic value compared to, for example, high tech jobs. This is not a market failure. Once upon a time manufacturing was the engine of American prosperity but now it is the “innovation industry”, product design, inventions, software engineering, high-tech entertainment, scientific R&D, biotech, internet, financial services, etc. According to the economist Enrico Moretti every job in the innovation industry creates at least five additional jobs in other sectors. This explains the difference in salaries. These examples plus some poorly explained or unreadable graphs make me recommend this book only with hesitation.
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