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Toward the Livable City

by Emilie Buchwald, editor

 

Commuters, Suburbanites, City Dwellers...Are you curious about making your life more livable and interested in knowing what that might mean? Combining firsthand accounts of the attractions and distractions of city life, Toward the Livable City introduces a range of perspectives about creating successful, livable cities, with examples from across America and around the world. The book conveys what leading thinkers say about such topics as smart growth, traffic calming, pedestrian rights, regional planning, riverfront redevelopment, and architecture-- as well as the pleasures of sauntering down tree-lined streets to restaurants, theaters, and shops. Encapsulating the growing movement that brings together planners and architects, environmentalists and seekers of the “good life,” Toward the Livable City is a lively book about the possibility of enjoying urban and suburban life.

 

 

  

 

published with support from

 


Contributors: Ken Avidor, Kristin BrennanTerrell Dixon, Emily Hiestand, Tony Hiss, Jane Holtz Kay, James H. Kunstler, Phillip Lopate, Judith Martin, Bill McKibben, Lynda Morgenroth, Myron Orfield, John A. Powell, Mary François Rockcastle, Sara St. Antoine, Jay Walljasper


Emilie Buchwald

Author's Bio:

Emilie Buchwald, publisher emeritus and cofounder of Milkweed Editions, has taught literature, poetry, and writing for children. Author of two award-winning children's books, Buchwald has edited or coedited more than 185 Milkweed titles. She lives in Edina, Minnesota.

Quotes:

"How do we rediscover the art of building good cities to accommodate our growing population over the next century, and in the process turn the rough draft of the suburban idea into a sustainable — and more endearing — model? This is the stated mission of Toward the Livable City, a surprisingly nonpolemical collection of essays on urban planning . . . Editor Emilie Buchwald asked [contributors] for “their definitions of livable cities and for strategies and tactics they believe might be useful in achieving one.' They deliver. (para) The first triumph of the book is that it intelligently discusses planning with barely a mention of yawners like zoning, tax policy, or unsewered subdivisions. It doesn't consciously hide from wonky details. It just knows how to describe a city without the insufferable language of official city builders. (para) . . . the book is a viable blueprint for a new century of city building.... Toward the Livable City largely avoids . . . faults by focusing on not just what makes suburbs unbearable but also on what makes cities so much more inviting.... The writers in this book detail a number of innovative ways to make cities more appealing to everyone, ideas that can be used not only to improve our Chicagos, Detroits, and Baltimores but also those suburban areas that have the potential to become more like the cities they surround.... what's most impressive here is an acknowledgement that people form strong attachments to the places where they live, even when those places are bad for them, and a recognition that bullying people into the new urbanism envisioned by these authors won't work. (para) “Changing the face of a city is a matter of blueprints, of dollars, of cubic feet of concrete, of cranes and bulldozers.' McKibben writes. “Changing the heart of a city is more difficult, and more important — there's no simple way to bulldoze attitudes, to pour old feeling into plywood forms and let them harden into better shapes.' . . . The writers here are true urban enthusiasts, convinced that by choice or necessity Americans will someday embrace cities again.” —One Earth, Anthony Jaffe

"In this vigorous collection of essays about the prospects for livable cities, editor Emilie Buchwald has put together a diverse crosscut of authors who present case studies, offer their theories, and discuss ways in which these environments can be improved. (para) One of the best things about this paperback is the high regard Buchwald has for the ideal of civility as one of the qualities that improves urban living. Check out Jane Holtz Kay's appreciation of 'the sharing of space with absentminded courtesy - the chance encounters between strangers and neighbors. 'Lynn Morgenroth left Boston for suburbia because of the increasing incivility in Boston. But another resident of Cambridge, Sara St. Antoine, makes the place seem eminently livable as she moves around the neighborhood. (para) Just try to imagine what cities would be like without so many automobiles. (para) This collection of essays is a must-read for all those interested in civility and cities” - Spirituality & Health, Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

“...The 17 individual essays and voices collected in Toward the Livable City are an illuminating and accessible resource to the policy wonk, as well as the concerned citizen. The book's editor, Emilie Buchwald, has gotten out of the way of her contributors, resisting all impulses to artificially theme or unify the diverse collection. While most books on city making and city life are of the evangelical/revelatory/call-to-arms variety, Buchwald's provocative menagerie of urban voices allows readers to sort it all out for themselves. Like a good town-hall meeting, every voice is heard, from the loud and dogmatic to the quietly articulate. (para) [Buchwald's] highly accessible collection succeeds in the diversity of approaches to the subject. (para) ...While the writers of Toward the Livable City share a common respect for and belief in the viability of the urban condition, like a true democracy, they each qualify what that means in highly varied and reliably divergent ways.” —Architecture Minnesota, Phillip Glenn Koski

“All in all, this is a stimulating an intelligent collection, one that ranges from big policy questions to intensely personal reflections” —The New Urban News

"Contributions celebrate pedestrian scale, savred places, regionalism, infrastructure, and the reclamation of urban space for food production.... Lovely evocations of place . . . Highly recommended” —Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries

“This is an engrossing book worth the time of anyone who cares about their environment” -Netsurfer Books (online: www.netsurf.com/nsb/sub/v06/nsb.06.05.html)

“Instead of lecturing us, these writers gently nudge us from car-dependent sprawl toward compact neighborhoods where kids can play kickball and grown-ups can stroll to the store” -Jodi Peterson, High Country News

"Just when I think I'd better pack up my utopia and hit the interstate, along comes Emilie Buchwald's Toward the Livable City … it kicks off with a couple of tributes to gourmet pizza, yoga classes, and, oh, the cacophonous congeniality of the city. Thankfully, the book sobers up … By the end, I'm learning from the experts what it takes to truly love and change a city. (para) These writers tell it like it is. (para) Buchwald's essayists build a livable city of their own with lively, diverse reflections that manage to mix feet-on-the-ground with a little pie-in-the-sky” —Sojourners, April 2004

Toward the Livable City doesn't pretend that bike lanes and community gardens will make it all better, but it does contend that structural change —from affordable housing to zoning laws —goes a long way toward social change. Wherever my chickens and I eventually decide to roost, here is a book to keep close at hand” -Bethany Spicher, Sojourners Magazine

"Toward the Livable City delivers what its title implies: it focuses not on what has made cities livable in the past, but rather, on what will make them livable in the future. Editor and publisher emeritus Emilie Buchwald's selection of writers is purposefully broad … a decision that broadens her audience from the experienced urban policy practitioner to include the concerned, or merely interested, citizen. (para) A variety of viewpoints and writing styles makes for both a refreshingly eclectic and intermittently jarring reading experience; from the close of one essay to the opening of the next, the writing can move from poetic lyricism to policy-laden manifesto. (para) … Buchwald's book communicates hope, not despair. (para) Buchwald's choice of contributors skews conspicuously to the Left--there are no free market manifestos here--but the cogency of the essays around a shared vision of the livable city works to create energy and a sense of forward movement” —The Common Review, Heather Dewar

"Ah, The City. A vibrant concoction of art and culture, walkways and subways, parks and people - sights, smells, and sounds that are familiar and foreign all at once. But what is it that makes a city truly livable? That's the questions explored in local Milkweed Editions' Toward the Livable City, a collection of thoughtful - and thought-provoking - essays. Through the eyes of these authors we view urban life: what we love, what we hate, what chases us to the suburbs, what brings us back. (para) Through the authors' pithy, poignant contemplation, we see and celebrate the livable city - and maybe even gain the tools to push our own cities in that direction. The events includes readings, an art exhibit, and information from local organizations on sustainable cities” —City Pages, Leyla Kokmen

"Even a detail as small as a designer manhole cover can start to make the difference between a city that drives its residents out and one that invites them to stay. Such features big and small - from traffic-calming devices to putting pedestrians on a par with cars and reinventing waterfronts - are the focus of“Romancing the City,”a discussion and publication celebration of Toward the Livable City (Milkweed, $18/95) Tuesday night at Open Book in Minneapolis. (para) The evening will also feature art - paintings, manhole covers and mobiles - and displays from organizations (list of orgs, date and time of event)” —Star Tribune, Sarah T. Williams

"Livable City does offer some good ideas---such as gardening abandoned city lots---that nonetheless wear the reader down with their preachiness. But the book also holds many surprises, revealing the complex, little-noticed forces shaping our landscape” —City Paper, Joab Jackson

"Contributors to Milkweed Press's Toward the Livable City would rather talk about heartening aspects of the city than issues like urban sprawl or pollution. Even more so, these forward thinkers contemplate ways to maintain the characteristics they love” —Skyway News, Anna Pratt

Toward the Livable City
Price: $ 18.95
Binding: Paper


Availability
In Stock: 179

Immediately
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2003
Size: 6 x 9
Genre: Nonfiction/Environment
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9781571312716