Today’s urban resident is seeking a more flexible, sustainable environment — representing a unique, diverse, vibrant and responsible way of living — as an alternative to the typical development patterns of suburban and semi-urban sprawl.
Can urban design help create this type of sustainable urbanism?
Nathan Cherry’s Grid / Street / Place: Essential Elements Of Sustainble Urban Districts presents a unique approach to understnading urband design through scientific, empirical research.
The author examines more than 100 successful projects throughout North America to identify differences and commonalities, and they discovred universal elements that characterize sustainable urban districts.
By applying these essential elements, designers and developers can recreate and extend the experience of successful places to their communities.
Myriad plans, sections, diagrams and charts illustrate how each district works at an extremely detailed level.
The Huffington Post review of this book notes that Cherry, in effect, dedicates this book to Los Angeles:
“This project would not have been possible without metropolitan Los Angeles itself. It is both the dynamism and dysfunction of this city that calls forth the fundamental need to seek out, learn from, and implement progressive ideas that can capture the promise of the future.”
Concrete examples, as oppposed to generalities, make this work from the American Planning Association a must-read for anyone interested in the working strategies of urban design.