The Electric Typewriter

A Tetw reading list

Downtown is for People by Jane Jacobs - This classic 1958 article about the follies of large-scale urban planning reads like it was written yesterday.

A Physicist Solves the City by Jonah Lehrer - “We spend all this time thinking about cities in terms of their local details, their restaurants and museums and weather. I had this hunch that there was something more, that every city was also shaped by a set of hidden laws.”

Designs For Working by Malcolm Gladwell - A manifesto for the perfect workspace that has as much to say about urban geography as it does about laying out an office.

Long Live the Industrial City by Tom Vanderbilt - Why manufacturing remains central to the creative life of the city, even in the age of international outsourcing.

The City Solution by Robert Kunzig - Why cities are the best cure for our planet’s growing pains.

American Murder Mystery by Hanna Rosin - Why is crime rising in so many American cities? The answer implicates one of the most celebrated antipoverty programs of recent decades.

Burning Man and the Metropolis by Nate Berg (via Longform.org) - How to build a city in the middle of the desert, and then make it disappear.

Sardine Life by Justin Davidson (via Longform.org) - The ins and outs (and ups and downs) of vertical living.

The Social Life of Small Urban Places by William H. Whyte - Okay, Okay, it’s a film… but a really good one.