italianHow to Make Cities Livable

4stars

 

 

By Ivor De Wolfe
Artifice, 280 pages, $39.95

The battle over how towns should look, feel, and function is a debate that has engulfed communities for many decades. Since the birth of the Industrial Revolution, and the aftermath of the two World Wars; the concept of regular town planning has come to the forefront of modern life. Town planners and other civic officials often times struggle with making a town work. From making roads work, to placing parks in the right spot, and the concept of NIMBY, all make like difficult for town planners. This work is a reprint from the 1960’s. The author is not a true architect and he does not look at individual buildings. Instead, he looks at the “townscape” as a whole. How the city itself functions as an organic whole. The author focuses on the country of Italy with its old historic towns and how they have at times incorporated modern life into those historic places.

This is a book for those people who want to know more about how towns should look, not just for the practitioner. With towns becoming larger and larger, livability will become a major issue soon.

Reviewed by Kevin Winter

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