The City Reader

Rating:
Summary: The Best Intro to Urban Planning I've Ever Read
Review: As a first year Urban Planner, this book was on the required readings list for our course. This book gave me the edge to all my fellow students because it provided a detailed sample through a historical and progressive manner. It provides the fundamentals of the great thinkers in Urban Planning. It also covered and introduced me to further research on areas such as design and sociology, promoting further personal research.

As a second year student, this book can always be seen in my bibliography, and is always the first thing I head towards for a brief history on any concepts that are raised in my lecturers.

This book can be seen as THE general summary of Urban Planning.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: Legates and Stout do an excellent job of compiling and briefly explaining many seminal writings on cities. There is a lot to read here and I'm not yet finished. But this heavy book is full of informative, interesting and fun writings and provides an excellent introduction to the study of cities. This is essential reading for students of Urban Form, Architecture, and the Social Sciences. Includes Le Corbusier, Patrick Geddes, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, J.B. Jackson, Witold Rybczynski and many others.