Overview
Writings of a well-known urban planner in the US and UK, collected in book form for the first time
Includes previously unpublished material from the author
Visionary writings on cities, streets, and buildings around the world
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Table of contents (51 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The Cavaliers vs. the Roundheads
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Front Matter
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Continuity and Context
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Front Matter
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Bouquets and Brickbats
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Front Matter
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Keywords
About this book
In My Kind of City, Dittmar has organized his selected writings into ten sections with original introductions. His observations range on scale from local (“My Favorite Street: Seven Dials, Covent Garden, London”) to national (“Post Truth Architecture in the Age of Trump”) and global (“Architects are Critical to Adapting our Cities to Climate Change”).
Andrés Duany writes of Hank in the book foreword, “He has continued to search for ways to engage place, community and history in order to avoid the tempting formalism of plans.”
The range of topics covered in My Kind of City reflects the breadth of Dittmar’s experience in working for better cities for people. Common themes emerge in the engaging prose including Dittmar’s belief that improving our cities should not be left to the “experts”; his appreciation for the beautiful and the messy; and his rare combination of deep expertise and modesty. As Lynn Richards, CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism expresses in the preface, “Hank’s writing is smart without being elitist, witty and poetic, succinct and often surprising.”
My Kind of City captures a visionary planner’s spirit, eye for beauty, and love for the places where we live.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dittmar also served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism, the founding president and CEO of Reconnecting America, and executive director of the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership. He was appointed by President Clinton to the White House Advisory Committee on Transportation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the President’s Council on Sustainable Development’s Metropolitan Working Group and provided expert testimony to the United States Congress, the OECD, and the Australian government on numerous occasions.
His long, varied career included service as a regional planner, airport director, policy advisor, and outreach worker with street gangs in Chicago. He published extensively on planning, urban design, and architecture, including the 2003 Island Press book The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: My Kind of City
Book Subtitle: Collected Essays of Hank Dittmar
Authors: Hank Dittmar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-64283-037-8
Publisher: Island Press Washington, DC
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental Science, Earth and Environmental Science (R0)
Copyright Information: Henry Eric Dittmar 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-1-64283-037-8Published: 13 February 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 227
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Urban Geography / Urbanism (inc. megacities, cities, towns), Landscape Architecture, Urbanism