[audiobook] What Makes a Great City by Alexander Garvin in Arts-Photography

Review

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Great read!By Sandra SteeleI am a Planning Commissioner and I heard the author speak. I immediately came home and ordered the book. It has changed my view on how public spaces should be designed. I usually struggle with the academic type books but I read this one like a novel.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Review of What Makes a Great City by Alexander Garvin John FBy John M.Review of What Makes a Great City by Alexander GarvinJohn F. Meigs. ReviewerAlexander Garvins new book. "What Makes a Great City" is an admirable addition to his impressive array of urbanism scholarship. Garvin. a life-long denizen of New York except for college years at Yale. has cities in his blood and. after a few years working as an architect. has for decades taught a college course on cities. their problems and solutions. served on city planning commissions. worked as a real estate developer and in a variety of other urban roles. On top of that. he has continuously roamed the cities of the world with his camera and inquiring eye. This book is the latest distillation of his observations.Garvin has a strong belief in appropriate government and civic action intertwined with a private market response as the formula for reviving or building the livable city. This book focuses on what he calls the "Public Realm" which he defines as not only streets. squares. parks. but everything that is accessible to the public. The core of the book is the history of the development of various spaces and places in certain cities and how that happened. He points out the mistaken notions of Le Corbusier. with his antiseptic plans in which people are either confined to their apartment or going someplace in automobiles. Robert Moses. responsible for much of New York citys great public resources and a hero of Garvinrsquo;s is appropriately taken to task for his plan to put an elevated highway through Greenwich Village.Garvins book is really. to a large extent. about reclaiming the city for people on foot or bicycle and the like from domination by the automobile and other vehicles. though he never comes out and says so directly. What is lurking beneath Garvins fluid text is the transformation of his subject cities in several stages. First. they were. for the most part. places of heavy industry or horse-drawn trade where many people lived in relative squalor within walking distance of smoke-spewing noisy industry or crowded markets filthy with horse dung. Next. the automobile and truck appeared and. for a while. made the city work better without overly impinging on urban life. After that. gradually the core of the city became overrun with these vehicles and many people with means retreated to the quieter. cleaner suburbs.Garvins book is focused on the next happy stage where the cities he describes are repurposed as places where people want to live as well as work. He describes in detail the strategies that smart city leaders. working with the various constituencies of residents. investors and business owners. have adopted to remake their city into a comfortable. exciting and resource-rich place for people. whether or not they work there. These strategies mainly involve the Public Realm and its interaction with private businesses and investors. More specifically. a large part of the solution generally involves limiting car traffic in the core so that people can reacquire space formerly devoted to vehicular traffic and thereby support businesses and multiple amenities. In that regard. the future looks promising as we benefit from general disenchantment with the automobile among younger people and experience pooled riding with Uber and Lyft.As with any book. a reader has minor quibbles. How. for instance. do the private squares of London enhance the Public Realm if the public canrsquo;t get into them? And why does a park have to have something for everybody? Cant it just be really good at a few things?Overall. however. "What makes a Great City" offers a well-conceived and well-described formula for making our good cities great and our great cities even better. And the photographs are wonderful.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Great book for those aspiring to be city planners or mayors. Emphasizes public spacesBy JAMES FIORENTINII love this book! The writer reviews.with hundreds of photographs. parks. walkways. streets.boulevards and other public places that make a city great with the message. you can do it and become a great city! As the mayor of a city of 62.000 it is inspiring. My only problems (questions) really with the book are -- does he adequately emphathize the basics. and to what degree does a great and visionary leader make a great city?On the basics. before a city can be a great city. it must be a safe city and must have a transportation network that will allow everyone to get to and around the city.But these things aside. the book is an inspiring look at public areas in the US and Europe and gives some great ideas to city planners and mayorrs. Highly recommended.