The Best Books About Living In The City
“What are the best books about city living?” We looked at 14 articles and found 220 of the best books about living in the city.
The range of city living books we found is wide, consisting of both fiction and non-fiction. The books focus on individual stories within a city, specific cities around the world, economies that sprout from and sustain cities, and so much more. Several of the books focus on a specific aspect of city living like green or sustainable design, while other books give the history of how cities came about and why so many people gravitate towards them.
19 of the 220 books appeared on multiple lists, so we ranked them with images, descriptions, and links below. You can view the additional 201 titles as well as the sources we used at the bottom of the page.
And if the urban lifestyle isn’t your thing, make sure to check out our country living article!
Happy Scrolling!
The Top 19 City Living Books
19 .) Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
Lists It Appears On:
- Brain Pickings
- io9
“This brilliant and eye-opening look at the new phenomenon called the aerotropolis gives us a glimpse of the way we will live in the near future―and the way we will do business too.
Not so long ago, airports were built near cities, and roads connected one to the other. This pattern―the city in the center, the airport on the periphery―shaped life in the twentieth century, from the central city to exurban sprawl. Today, the ubiquity of jet travel, round-the-clock workdays, overnight shipping, and global business networks has turned the pattern inside out. Soon the airport will be at the center and the city will be built around it, the better to keep workers, suppliers, executives, and goods in touch with the global market. This is the aerotropolis: a combination of giant airport, planned city, shipping facility, and business hub. The aerotropolis approach to urban living is now reshaping life in Seoul and Amsterdam, in China and India, in Dallas and Washington, D.C. The aerotropolis is the frontier of the next phase of globalization, whether we like it or not.”
18 .) Cairo: Histories of a City by Nezar AlSayyad
Lists It Appears On:
- io9
- Next City (Again)
In twelve vignettes, accompanied by drawings, photographs, and maps, AlSayyad details the shifts in Cairo’s built environment through stories of important figures who marked the cityscape with their personal ambitions and their political ideologies. The city is visually reconstructed and brought to life not only as a physical fabric but also as a social and political order―a city built within, upon, and over, resulting in a present-day richly layered urban environment. Each chapter attempts to capture a defining moment in the life trajectory of a city loved for all of its evocations and contradictions. Throughout, AlSayyad illuminates not only the spaces that make up Cairo but also the figures that shaped them, including its chroniclers, from Herodotus to Mahfouz, who recorded the deeds of great and ordinary Cairenes alike. He pays particular attention to how the imperatives of Egypt’s various rulers and regimes―from the pharaohs to Sadat and beyond―have inscribed themselves in the city that residents navigate today.
17 .) Ecocities by Richard Register
Lists It Appears On:
- New Urbanism
- Planetizen
Ecocities describes the place of the city in evolution, nature and history. It pays special attention to the key question of accessibility and transportation, and outlines design principles for the ecocity. The reader is encouraged to plunge in to its economics and politics: the kinds of businesses, planning and leadership required. The book then outlines the tools by which a gradual transition to the ecocity could be accomplished. Throughout, this new edition is generously illustrated with the author’s own inspired visions of what such rebuilt cities might actually look like.
16 .) Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change by Reid Ewing, Keith Bartholomew, Steve Winkelman, Jerry Walters, and Don Chen
Lists It Appears On:
- New Urbanism
- Planetizen
Based on a comprehensive study review by leading urban planning researchers, this investigative document demonstrates how urban development is both a key contributor to climate change and an essential factor in combating it—by reducing vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.
15 .) Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino; translated by William Weaver
Lists It Appears On:
- Planetizen
- Next City
In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo — Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.
14 .) Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon
Lists It Appears On:
- io9
- Five Books
In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America’s most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterland, Mr. Cronon opens a new window onto our national past. This is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture. The world that emerged is our own.
13 .) NW by Zadie Smith
Lists It Appears On:
- Next City
- The Guardian (Again)
Set in northwest London, Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragicomic novel follows four locals—Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan—as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. In private houses and public parks, at work and at play, these Londoners inhabit a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end. Depicting the modern urban zone—familiar to city-dwellers everywhere—NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.
12 .) Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of New Architecture by Justin McGuirk
Lists It Appears On:
- The Guardian
- Planetizen (Again)
“Ever since the mid twentieth century, when the dream of modernist utopia went to Latin America to die, the continent has been a testing ground for exciting new conceptions of the city. An architect in Chile has designed a form of social housing where only half of the house is built, allowing the owners to adapt the rest; Medellín, formerly the world’s murder capital, has been transformed with innovative public architecture; squatters in Caracas have taken over the forty-five-story Torre David skyscraper; and Rio is on a mission to incorporate its favelas into the rest of the city.
Here, in the most urbanised continent on the planet, extreme cities have bred extreme conditions, from vast housing estates to sprawling slums. But after decades of social and political failure, a new generation has revitalised architecture and urban design in order to address persistent poverty and inequality. Together, these activists, pragmatists and social idealists are performing bold experiments that the rest of the world may learn from.”
11 .) Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones & June Williamson
Lists It Appears On:
- New Urbanism
- Planetizen
Updated with a new Introduction by the authors and a foreword by Richard Florida, this book is a comprehensive guide book for urban designers, planners, architects, developers, environmentalists, and community leaders that illustrates how existing suburban developments can be redesigned into more urban and more sustainable places. While there has been considerable attention by practitioners and academics to development in urban cores and new neighborhoods on the periphery of cities, there has been little attention to the redesign and redevelopment of existing suburbs. The authors, both architects and noted experts on the subject, show how development in existing suburbs can absorb new growth and evolve in relation to changed demographic, technological, and economic conditions.
10 .) Suburban Nation by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, & Jeff Speck
Lists It Appears On:
- New Urbanism
- Planetizen
For a decade, Suburban Nation has given voice to a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and replace the last century’s automobile-based settlement patterns with a return to more traditional planning.
9 .) Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature by Douglas Farr
Lists It Appears On:
- New Urbanism
- Planetizen
Providing a historic perspective on the standards and regulations that got us to where we are today in terms of urban lifestyle and attempts at reform, Douglas Farr makes a powerful case for sustainable urbanism, showing where we went wrong, and where we need to go. He then explains how to implement sustainable urbanism through leadership and communication in cities, communities, and neighborhoods.
8 .) The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History by Spiro Kostof
Lists It Appears On:
- Planetizen
- io9
Spanning the ages and the globe, Spiro Kostof explores the city as a “repository of cultural meaning” and an embodiment of the community it shelters. Widely used by both architects and students of architecture, The City Shaped won the AIA’s prestigious book award in Architecture and Urbanism. With hundreds of photographs and drawings that illustrate Professor Kostof’s innovative ideas, this has become one of the most important works on urbanization.
7 .) The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development by Hank Dittmar & Gloria Ohland
Lists It Appears On:
- New Urbanism
- Planetizen
“Transit-oriented development (TOD) seeks to maximize access to mass transit and nonmotorized transportation with centrally located rail or bus stations surrounded by relatively high-density commercial and residential development. New Urbanists and smart growth proponents have embraced the concept and interest in TOD is growing, both in the United States and around the world.
New Transit Town brings together leading experts in planning, transportation, and sustainable design—including Scott Bernstein, Peter Calthorpe, Jim Daisa, Sharon Feigon, Ellen Greenberg, David Hoyt, Dennis Leach, and Shelley Poticha—to examine the first generation of TOD projects and derive lessons for the next generation. It offers topic chapters that provide detailed discussion of key issues along with case studies that present an in-depth look at specific projects. “
6 .) Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser
Lists It Appears On:
- Planetizen
- Brain Pickings
America is an urban nation, yet cities get a bad rap: they’re dirty, poor, unhealthy, environmentally unfriendly . . . or are they? In this revelatory book, Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist, declares that cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in both cultural and economic terms) places to live. He travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and cogent argument, Glaeser makes an urgent, eloquent case for the city’s importance and splendor, offering inspiring proof that the city is humanity’s greatest creation and our best hope for the future.
5 .) Ulysses by James Joyce
Lists It Appears On:
- Flavorwire
- The Guardian (Again)
James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Ulysses has had a profound influence on modern fiction. Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce’s first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle). The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer’s poem and Joyce’s novel (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus).
4 .) Visualizing Density by Julie Campoli and Alex MacLean
Lists It Appears On:
- New Urbanism
- Planetizen
The American Dream of a single-family home on its own expanse of yard still captures the imagination. But with a growing population —100 million more people expected in the United States by 2050—rising energy and transportation costs, disappearing farmland and open space, and the clear need for greater energy efficiency and a reduction in global warming emissions, the future built environment must include more density. Landscape architect and land planner Julie Campoli and aerial photographer Alex S. MacLean have joined forces to create a full-color, richly illustrated book to help planners, designers, public officials, and citizens better understand, and better communicate to others, the concept of density as it applies to the residential environment.
3 .) Who’s Your City by Richard Florida
Lists It Appears On:
- Planetizen
- Brain Pickings
“In the age of globalization, some claim that where you live doesn’t matter: Alaska, Idaho, and Alabama are interchangeable. The world is, after all, flat.
Not so fast. Place, argues the great urbanist Richard Florida, is not only important, it’s more important than ever. In fact, choosing a place to live is as important to your happiness as choosing a spouse or career. And some regions, recent surveys show, really are happier than others. In Who’s Your City, Creative Class guru Richard Florida reports on this growing body of research that tells us what qualities of cities and towns actually make people happy—and he explains how to use these ideas to make your own choices. This indispensable guide to how people can choose where to live and what those choices mean to their lives and their communities is essential reading for everyone from urban planners and mayors to recent graduates.”
2 .) The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects by Lewis Mumford
Lists It Appears On:
- Planetizen
- Brain Pickings
- io9
The city’s development from ancient times to the modern age.
1 .) The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Lists It Appears On:
- Five Books
- io9
- Planetizen
- Brain Pickings
A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured. In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves. She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity. Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs’s monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.
#20-220 Books About Living In The City
(Appear on 1 List Each)
| A Country of Cities: a Manifesto for an Urban America | Vishaan Chakrabarti | Planetizen |
| A Fine Balance | Rohinton Mistry | The Guardian (Again) |
| A Pattern Language | Christopher Alexander et al (& his whole series, including A New Theory of Urban Design; The Timeless Way of Building, etc | Planetizen |
| Agricultural Urbanism | Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland | Planetizen |
| All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes | Maya Angelou | Next City (Again) |
| Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century | Steve Conn | Planetizen (Again) |
| Atlas of Cities | Paul Knox | Planetizen (Again) |
| Aya | Marguerite Abouet; illustrated by Clément Oubrerie | Next City |
| Berlin: City of Stones | Jason Lutes | Next City |
| Bleak House | Charles Dickens | The Guardian (Again) |
| Blink | Malcolm Gladwell | Planetizen |
| Block Party Today! | Marilyn Singer | Read That Again |
| Bonfire of the Vanities | Tom Wolfe | The Guardian (Again) |
| Building Barcelona | Peter Rowe | Planetizen |
| Capital | John Lanchester | The Guardian (Again) |
| CAR FREE CITIES | J.H. Crawford | New Urbanism |
| Cerdà and the Barcelona of the Future: Reality versus Project | Ajuntament de Barcelona | Planetizen |
| Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup | Andrew Zimbalist | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| Cities and Natural Process | Michael Hough | Planetizen |
| Cities and the Wealth of Nations | Jane Jacobs | Planetizen |
| Cities are Good for You: the Genius of the Metropolis | Leo Hollis | Planetizen |
| Cities Back from the Edge: New Life For Downtown | Roberta Brandes Gratz and Norman Mintz | Planetizen |
| Cities for People | Jan Gehl | Planetizen |
| Cities of Tomorrow | Peter Hall | Planetizen |
| City Comforts: How to Build and Urban Village | David Sucher | Planetizen |
| City Cycling | Pucher & Buehler | Planetizen |
| City Making in Paradise: Nine Decisions that Saved Vancouver | Mike Harcourt and Ken Cameron | Planetizen |
| City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, | Mike Davis | io9 |
| City on a Grid: How New York Became New York | Gerard Koeppel | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age | P | Planetizen |
| City: Rediscovering The Center | William H | Planetizen |
| Civilizing American Cities | Frederick Law Olmsted | Planetizen |
| Collected Essays | James Baldwin | Next City (Again) |
| Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future | Matt Hern | Planetizen |
| Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things | McDonough and Braungart | Planetizen |
| Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class | Scott Timberg | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| Delirious New York | Rem Koolhaas | Planetizen |
| Dept. of Speculation | Public Books | |
| Design for Ecological Democracy | Randolph Hester | Planetizen |
| Design with Nature | Ian McHarg | Planetizen |
| Designed for the Future: 80 Practical Ideas for a Sustainable World | Jared Green | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| Designing Community: Charrettes,Master Plans and Form-Based Codes | David Walters | Planetizen |
| Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination | Lance Berelowitz | Planetizen |
| E-Topia: “Urban Life, Jim – But Not As We Know It” | William Mitchell (& City of Bits) | Planetizen |
| ECO-ECONOMY | Lester Brown | New Urbanism |
| Eco-Urbanity: Towards Well Mannered Built Environments | Darko Radovic | Planetizen |
| Fantastic Cities: A Coloring Book of Places Real and Imagined | Steve McDonald | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| Fat City | Leonard Gardner | Next City |
| Fortress of Solitude | Jonathan Lethem | Flavorwire |
| Global City Blues | Daniel Solomon | Planetizen |
| Good City Form | Kevin Lynch | Planetizen |
| Gorrion Del Metro | Leyla Torres | Read That Again |
| Grand Urban Rules | Alex Lehnerer | Planetizen |
| Great Streets | Allan Jacobs | Planetizen |
| Green Metropolis | David Owen | Planetizen |
| GREEN URBANISM | Timothy Beatley | New Urbanism |
| Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design | Charles Montgomery | Planetizen |
| Highline: the Inside Story of New York City’s Park In The Sky | David and Hammond | Planetizen |
| Home | Jeannie Baker | Read That Again |
| HOME FROM NOWHERE | James Howard Kunstler | New Urbanism |
| How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City | Joan DeJean | Planetizen (Again) |
| Human Transit | Jarrett Walker | Planetizen |
| I Sailed With Magellan | Stuart Dybek | Next City |
| If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities | Benjamin R. Barber | Planetizen (Again) |
| In Case of Emergency | Public Books | |
| INFRASTRUCTURE 2008 – A Competitive Advantage | ULI | New Urbanism |
| Istanbul | Orhan Pamuk | Next City (Again) |
| Jethro Byrd, Fairy Child | Bob Graham | Read That Again |
| Jonathan And His Mommy | Irene Smalls-Hector | Read That Again |
| Le Pieton Dans la Ville/Walking in the City: Sharing Public Space | Jean-Jacques Terrin | Planetizen |
| Learning from Las Vegas | Robert Venturi et al | Planetizen |
| Life Between Buildings | Jan Gehl | Planetizen |
| Livable Streets | Donald Appleyard | Planetizen |
| Living Archtecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives | Rachel Armstrong | io9 |
| London: The Information Capital | James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti | The Guardian |
| Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture | Witold Rybczynski | Planetizen |
| Lost in the City | Edward P. Jones | Next City |
| Lush Life | Richard Price | Flavorwire |
| MAKESHIFT METROPOLIS | Witold Rybczynski | Brain Pickings |
| Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being and Sustainability | Dannenberg et al | Planetizen |
| Max Found Two Sticks | Brian Pinkney | Read That Again |
| Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | Flavorwire |
| Modern Civic Art, or The City Made Beautiful | Charles Mulford Robinson | Planetizen |
| Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow | Anthony Flint | Planetizen (Again) |
| My Brilliant Friend | Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein | Next City |
| My Steps | Sally Derby | Read That Again |
| NEW AMERICAN URBANISM | John A. Dutton | New Urbanism |
| NEW CIVIC ART | Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, & Robert Alminana | New Urbanism |
| NEW DEPARTURES | Anthony Perl | New Urbanism |
| New Design Cities | Commerce Design Montreal | Planetizen |
| NEW URBANISM AND BEYOND | New Urbanism | |
| number9dream, | David Mitchell | Flavorwire |
| Oh, the Places You’ll Go! | Dr. Seuss | Planetizen |
| On the Run | Alice Goffman | The Guardian |
| Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story | David Maraniss | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| One Day I Will Write About This Place | Binyavanga Wainaina | Next City (Again) |
| One Of Three | Angela Johnson | Read That Again |
| Open City | Teju Cole | Flavorwire |
| Oscar’s Half Birthday | Bob Graham | Read That Again |
| Oxford Street, Accra | Ato Quayson | The Guardian |
| Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City | Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove | Planetizen (Again) |
| Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down | Rosecrans Baldwin | Flavorwire |
| People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space | Cooper Marcus & Francis | Planetizen |
| Perverse Cities | Pamela Blais | Planetizen |
| Petersburg, | Andrei Bely | Flavorwire |
| PLACE MAKING | Charles Bohl | New Urbanism |
| Plunkitt of Tammany Hall | William Riordon | Five Books |
| Public Places Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design | Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Taner Oc, Steve Tiesdell | Planetizen |
| Public Sydney: Drawing the City | Thalis and Cantrill | Planetizen |
| REDESIGNING CITIES | Jonathan Barnett | New Urbanism |
| Redevelopment and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit | June Manning Thomas | Next City (Again) |
| San Juan: Memoir of a City | Edgardo Rodriguez Juliá; translated by Peter Grandbois | Next City (Again) |
| Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities | Patrick Condon | Planetizen |
| Shanghai Homes | Jie Li | The Guardian |
| Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City | Annette Miae Kim | Next City (Again) |
| Sister Carrie | Theodore Dreiser | The Guardian (Again) |
| Smart Cities | Anthony Townsend (it’s this high because I haven’t finished reading it!) | Planetizen |
| Sprawl Repair Manual | Galina Tachieva | Planetizen |
| STATE OF THE WORLD | The Worldwatch Institute | New Urbanism |
| Straphanger: Saving our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile | Taras Grescoe | Planetizen |
| Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities | Southworth and Ben-Joseph | Planetizen |
| Subway Sparrow | Leyla Torres | Read That Again |
| Sunrise-to-High-Rise | Lucy Dalzell | The Guardian |
| SUSTAINABILITY AND CITIES | Newman & Kenworthy | New Urbanism |
| Sustainable Communities | Sim Van der Ryn and Peter Calthorpe | Planetizen |
| SUSTAINABLE PLANET | Juliet B. Schor and Betsy Taylor | New Urbanism |
| Sustainable Transportation Planning | Jeffrey Tumlin | Planetizen |
| SUSTAINABLE URBANISM AND BEYOND | Tigran Haas | New Urbanism |
| Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action for Long-Term Change | Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| Ten Cities that Made an Empire | Tristam Hunt | Planetizen (Again) |
| The American Vitruvius: An Architects Handbook of Civic Art | Hegemann and Peets | Planetizen |
| The Art of Building Cities | Camillo Sitte | Planetizen |
| The Art of City Making | Charles Landry | Planetizen |
| The Art of Stillness | Pico Iyer | The Guardian |
| The City and the City | China Mieville | Planetizen |
| The Creative City | Charles Landry | Planetizen |
| The Cutting Room | Louise Welsh | Flavorwire |
| The Devil in the White City | Erik Larson | Planetizen |
| The Dog | Joseph O’Neill | The Guardian (Again) |
| The Dollmaker | Harriette Arnow | Next City |
| THE EUROPEAN DREAM | Jeremy Rifkin | New Urbanism |
| The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand | Planetizen |
| The Fractured Metropolis | Jonathan Barnett | Planetizen |
| The Geography of Hope | Chris Turner | Planetizen |
| The Geography of Nowhere | James Howard Kunstler | Planetizen |
| The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo | Saskia Sassen | io9 |
| The Great Good Place | Ray Oldenburg | Planetizen |
| The Great Reset | Richard Florida | Planetizen |
| The High Cost of Free Parking | Donald Shoup | Planetizen |
| The Image of the City | Kevin Lynch | Planetizen |
| The Interior Circuit | Francisco Goldman | The Guardian |
| The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World | Andrea Wulf | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| The Language of Towns and Cities: A Visual Dictionary | Dhiru Thadani | Planetizen |
| The Little House | Virginia Lee Burton | Read That Again |
| THE LONG EMERGENCY | James Howard Kunstler | New Urbanism |
| The Master and Margarita | Mikhail Bulgakov | The Guardian (Again) |
| The New City | John Lorinc | Planetizen |
| The New Civic Art | Duany, Plater-Zyberk & Alminana | Planetizen |
| The Next American Metropolis | Peter Calthorpe | Planetizen |
| The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century | Grace Lee Boggs and Scott Kurashige | Next City (Again) |
| The Old Way of Seeing | Jonathan Hale | Planetizen |
| The Option of Urbanism | Christopher Leinberger | Planetizen |
| The Pedestrian Pocketbook: a New Suburban Design Strategy | Doug Kelbaugh | Planetizen |
| The Philadelphia Negro | WEB DuBois | Five Books |
| The Power Broker – Robert Moses and the Fall of New York | Robert A | Planetizen |
| The Principles of Green Urbanism: Transforming the City for Sustainability | Steffen Lehmann | Planetizen |
| The Public Face of Architecture: Civic Culture and Public Spaces | Nathan Glazer and Mark Lilla | Planetizen |
| The Responsive City | Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford | The Guardian |
| The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space | Don Mitchell | Planetizen |
| The Shape of the City: Toronto Struggles with Modern Planning | John Sewell | Planetizen |
| THE SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT READER | Stephen Wheeler and Timothy Beatley | New Urbanism |
| The Tipping Point | Malcolm Gladwell | Planetizen |
| THE TRANSIT METROPOLIS | Robert Cervero | New Urbanism |
| The Urban Transportation Problem | John Meyer | Five Books |
| The Vancouver Achievement | John Punter | Planetizen |
| The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration | Isabel Wilkerson | Next City (Again) |
| The Wealth of Cities | John Norquist | Planetizen |
| The Works: Anatomy of a City | Kate Ascher | io9 |
| them | Joyce Carol Oates | Next City |
| TIME SAVER STANDARDS FOR URBAN DESIGN | Donald Watson | New Urbanism |
| Town Planning in Practice | Raymond Unwin | Planetizen |
| Town Spaces | Rob Krier | Planetizen |
| Townscape | Gordon Cullen | Planetizen |
| Unruly Places: Los Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies | Alastair Bonnett | Planetizen (Again) |
| Urban Code: 100 Lessons for Understanding the City | Mikoleit & Purckhauer | Planetizen |
| Urban Design and the Bottom Line: Optimizing the Return on Perception | Dennis Jerke, Douglas Porter, Terry Lassar | Planetizen |
| Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form | Loukaitou-Sideris & Banerjee | Planetizen |
| Urban Smellscapes | Victoria Henshaw | The Guardian |
| URBAN TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS | Sigurd Grava | New Urbanism |
| Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change | Peter Calthorpe | Planetizen |
| Wake Up, City | Susan Verlander | Read That Again |
| Wake Up, City! | Alvin Tresselt | Read That Again |
| Walkable City | Jeff Speck | Planetizen |
| Walking Home: the Life and Lessons of a City Builder | Ken Greenberg | Planetizen |
| War for the Oaks | Emma Bull | Flavorwire |
| We Are Not Ourselves | Public Books | |
| Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America | Edited by Wilfred McClay and Ted V. McAllister | Planetizen (Again) |
| Wrestling with Moses | Anthony Flint | Planetizen |
| ZINESTER’S GUIDE TO NYC | Brain Pickings | |
| Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation | Sonja Hirt | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
| Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation | William A. Fischel | Planetizen (A Third Time) |
Living In The City Book Sources
| Source | Article |
| Brain Pickings | Understanding Urbanity: 7 Must-Read Books About Cities |
| Five Books | Edward L Glaeser recommends the best books on Urban Economics |
| Flavorwire | Paris, I Love You: 10 Books Starring Cities |
| io9 | 10 Books That Could Change the Way You Understand Modern Cities |
| New Urbanism | Featured Books |
| Next City | 10 Great Novels Every Urbanist Should Read |
| Next City (Again) | 10 Must-Read Books for Urbanists on Cities, Race and Public Space |
| Planetizen | The 100 “Best” Books on City-Making Ever Written? |
| Planetizen (A Third Time) | Top 10 Books – 2016 |
| Planetizen (Again) | Top 10 Books – 2015 |
| Public Books | LIVING JUST ENOUGH: NEW NOVELS OF THE CITY |
| Read That Again | Books About Cities & City Life |
| The Guardian | The 10 best city books of 2014 |
| The Guardian (Again) | The 10 best city novels |
