'The Well-Tempered City': An Epic Book, and Why

In a Huffington Post review, Chuck Wolfe describes how Jonathan F.P. Rose's new book, The Well-Tempered City, captures a life’s worth of experience and thinking of the prominent New York developer and philanthropist, and how Rose's seven years of applied work on the book is readily apparent. 

Rose’s inspirational theme is Johann Sebastian Bach’s then-novel, 18th century system of tuning musical instruments in The Well-Tempered Clavier.  He takes Bach’s premise of aligning human ideals with natural harmony, and applies it to urban progress and potential such as greening cities today. 

Wolfe describes Rose's reliance on a Portland Sustainability Institute (now “Ecodistrict‘)  graphic to show such ideals and harmony, and to explain Portland residents’ aspirations for a green, accessible and safe city, with places where people will want to spend their time:

But here’s a pleasant caveat: Rose’s points stem not from a developer’s “green-washing,” but from well-studied explanations in the book about humans, and how they are wired, dating from our common ancestors who evolved millions of years ago...  After reading The Well-Tempered City, and speaking at length with Rose, I emerged with excitement and optimism, because with simple attention to his humanistic base, and concepts of vision, coherence and compassion, I saw how idealism and implementation merged. As a developer, Rose applied “the developer’s test” to his book’s ideas and found them workable—-and so do I.

With a volume full of implementation examples, he continues, it is easy to understand why, citing a key paragraph from the book's Introduction: