Progressive town planners Duany and coauthors share the fruits of their extensive experiences designing new neighborhoods and community revitalization projects in this cogent and illuminating investigation into the nature of sprawl and the failure of suburbs. They mince no words in condemning the soulless, "repetitive and forgettable" landscape of subdivisions, shopping malls, office parks, and congested roadways that ring our cities, and articulate with great precision exactly how and why such places are detrimental to social health. They contrast traditional neighborhoods--"mixed-used, pedestrian-friendly communities" --where people of diverse backgrounds and economic levels interact, with suburbia, where housing, work, shopping, and public facilities are segregated from one another, so people are forced to drive everywhere. Using numerous examples, the authors explain how and why sprawl has occurred, discuss why the quality of balkanized suburban life is so deplorably low, and offer suggestions for a more viable approach to planning in the immediate future. Place matters, and we can do so much better. --Donna Seaman

This book is a landmark in urban planning, and its first endorser does not exaggerate by ranking it with two modern classics: Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) and Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour's Learning from Las Vegas (CH, Mar'73; rev. ed., 1977). Duany and Plater-Zyberk are both the founders and leaders of the new urbanism movement and the designers of such cutting-edge communities as Florida's Seaside and Maryland's Kentlands. This book is the most comprehensive attempt to date to put their philosophy and methodology between the covers of a single volume. Profusely illustrated, it is presented as a critique of existing suburban design with a blueprint for an urban future in which the automobile-generated settlement patterns of the past 80 years are transformed into a mosaic of communities based on traditional planning principles. Very handsomely produced, the book is well referenced and indexed. Highly recommended for all planning collections. Public, academic, and professional libraries. ; University of Miami

Like "an architectural version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, our main streets and neighborhoods have been replaced by alien substitutes, similar but not the same," state Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck in this bold and damning critique. The authors, who lead a firm that has designed more than 200 new neighborhoods and community revitalization plans, challenge nearly half a century of widely accepted planning and building practices that have produced sprawling subdivisions, shopping centers and office parks connected by new highways. These practices, they contend, have not only destroyed the traditional concept of the neighborhood, but eroded such vital social values as equality, citizenship and personal safety. Further, they charge that current suburban developments are not only economically and environmentally "unsustainable," but "not functional" because they isolate and place undue burdens on at-home mothers, children, teens and the elderly. Adapting the precepts that famed urbanologist Jane Jacobs used to critique unhealthy city planning, Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck call for a revolution in suburban design that emphasizes neighborhoods in which homes, schools, commercial and municipal buildings would be integrated in pedestrian-accessible, safe and friendly settings. While occasionally presenting unsupported claims--such as that gated communities (of which there are now more than 20,000 in the U.S.) deprive children of gaining "a sense of empathy" in a diverse society--their visionary book holds out hope that we can create "places that are as valuable as the nature they displaced." (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved