Winter Reading

Winter break has given me the free time to actually read for fun, so obviously I decided to read these two books.

I read Your City is Sick by Jeff Siegler in just one day. It gives a primer for what is wrong with our cities and ways to fix the problems. Importantly he discusses the idea of civic pride and confidence. In order for a city to thrive, it needs to be loved. In order for it to be loved, it has to love the residents. Many urban revitalization efforts are focused on courting big businesses or tourism, but fail to do anything for the residents already living there. Having citizen-led beautification projects, connecting neighborhoods to amenities by walking and biking, and taking pride in hugh standards of building use is key.

I also highly recommend Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Strong Towns founder, Chuck Marohn. In it, he details the inner workings of the civil engineering profession and why it is so hard to get them to change streets for the better: the embedded values of the profession make it that way. Traffic engineers value design speed and traffic volume over all else. What these do is kill communities by rendering anyone outside of a car unsafe and uncomfortable. Marohn goes on to state possible fixes like delineating streets and roads and treating them differently. City streets need to have slow traffic in order to build wealth, whereas roads need to be clear of entries and exits in order to get people from point A to B faster.

With 2024 approaching, look forward to educational opportunities like book clubs! What are your favorite urbanist books?