Marshall, Alex. How Cities Work

[adult, nonfiction]

I spent much of my adolescence in North Raleigh, North Carolina, one of the most benighted suburban wastelands in the country. Coming from a small town in Canada at the edge of a big city, with a dépanneur and a fabulous kid's bookstore* in walking distance, it was rather painful to be unable to even walk far enough for a chocolate bar, and to have no mass transit at all. I was so outraged at suburban car culture that I declined to try to get a driver's license--I am 23, and will probably get one in a couple of weeks. Doing potential-relocation-related research, I happened upon Alex Marshall's weblog, and by way of it, his book.

It fits into a niche in pop-sociology, pop-economics, and pop-urban planning, where Marshall tries to come to terms with the urban sprawl we have in this country: why did it happen, and how can it be undone?

My rather strident opinions about urban planning had until now not been based on much besides adolescent discontent and a vague uncertainty as to why we built our cities to require driving around expensive death traps. Marshall agrees with me all the way in political and sociological terms, but brings in things that I'd never considered: the idea that cities can't depend on service industries alone, that they need to export something to be viable cities, the idea that urban storefronts need 10,000 families within walking distance to generate enough income to stay afloat, the idea that the government ends up subsidising transportation whether it subsidizes retail or mass transit. The idea that cars require so much storage space that if we want walkable cities, we have to get rid of our cars. And at the end, Marshall ties it all together: we relentlessly want to pay less and get more, we want individual prosperity at the expense of community health, and we pay for it not just in our cities but in our quality of life as a whole.

For me, this is preaching to the choir--I don't know how persuasive it would be to those who like things fine the way they are. But it's not just polemic; it's very savvy journalism that explains tradeoffs, compromises, advantages and disadvantages, and Marshall goes out of his way to make this a book that says more than "Ugh, suburbs." You probably don't care as much about urban planning as I do, but the 8th chapter, on the idea of community, is fantastic and well worth reading for anyone.

*As of right now, the server's down, but one hopes it'll come back.