The Planning Game
Lessons from Great Cities
Alexander Garvin (Author)
Can planners—or anyone—improve a neighborhood, city, suburb, or region? Planning does work: this book explains how.
The Planning Game: Lessons from Great Cities provides a focused, thorough, and sophisticated overview of how planning works, generously illustrated with 200 colorful photographs, diagrams, and maps created expressly for the book. It presents the public realm approach to planning—an approach that emphasizes the importance of public investments in what we own: streets, squares, parks, infrastructure, and public buildings. They are the fundamental elements in any community and are the way to determine our future. The book covers planning at every level, explaining the activities that go into successfully transforming a community as exemplified by four cities and their colorful motive forces: Paris (Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann), New York (Robert Moses), Chicago (Daniel Burnham), and Philadelphia (Edmund Bacon). The Planning Game is an invaluable resource for planners, students, community leaders, and everybody involved with making better places to live.
Book Details
- Hardcover
- March 2013
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ISBN 978-0-393-73344-0
- 8.4 × 11.3 in
/ 224 pages
- Territory Rights: Worldwide
Endorsements & Reviews
“Mr. Garvin writes in an accessible and engaging style, and the lay reader interested in the economic and social health of tomorrow's cities will benefit from his discussion of yesterday's majestic plans. ” — Wall Street Journal
“Author Alexander Garvin, an urban planner and academic, brings a down-to-earth practicality leavened with just enough starry-eyed idealism to his exploration of how to build better cities. . . . The colorful personalities of the planners behind the transformations and the colorful maps and photos make for easy reading or grazing.” — The New York Observer
“This extremely beautiful, large-size, superior-quality hardcover book is very illuminating, informative, and insightful. It contains 202 full-color diagrams, maps, and photographs – created especially for this book – that add tremendous value to this one-of-a-kind treasure.” — Bizindia
“Alex Garvin’s The Planning Game delivers a most articulate and compelling reminder that the fundamental rules of effective city planning are timeless. Here, lessons from the greats and their cities—from Haussmann, Burnham, Moses, and Bacon—serve as a wonderfully practical guide for current players in the game. The Planning Game is a total pleasure to read.” — Daniel Doctoroff, CEO of Bloomberg L.P. and former deputy mayor of the city of New York
“The insights Alex Garvin brings to The Planning Game are the product of hands-on experience dealing with real cities, and he supports them with absolutely fascinating historical material. I found this book to be a practical and indispensable road map for communities wishing to achieve excellence.” — Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., City of Charlestown, South Carolina
“No one writes about the modern city with more knowledge, insight, and imagination than Alexander Garvin. The Planning Game is about hope and possibility. The color illustrations alone are enough reason to spend precious hours alone with this book.” — Kenneth T. Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University and former president of the New-York Historical Society
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