Michael Dudley

Planetizen is pleased to release its tenth annual list of the ten best books of the year in urban planning, design and development. This year's assortment ranges from an crowdsourced compendium of ideas for upgrading New York City's built environment to a personal report from the streets of Karachi.

Urban designer and architect Ken Greenberg writes "an eloquent, personal, compelling and persuasive argument for more enlightened city-building," says Michael Dudley in this review of Greenberg's new book, Walking Home: The Life and Lessons of a City Builder.

In his new book Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World, Jeb Brugmann proposes a new way of thinking about citybuilding. Planetizen Correspondent Michael Dudley has this review.

Smart growth isn't an attack on the middle class, and those who argue as such are simply misrepresenting facts to distract from the real issues that planners are trying to mitigate.

Libertarian biases and assumptions keep Reason Magazine authors stuck in traffic.

The events of 9/11 have had a dramatic effect on our cities, from authorities surrounding hundreds of public buildings with Jersey barriers, to continued suburbanization away from more "threatened" downtowns. Yet as the chorus of those questioning the assumptions of 9/11 grows, Michael Dudley argues that planners too must examine the attacks that so profoundly impacted their profession.

The sprawling 1950's postwar urban pattern, once believed to provide a measure of security in the atomic age, has made us extremely vulnerable in an age of international terrorism.