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Review: Landscape Urbanism and Its Discontents: Dissimulating the Sustainable City Edited by Andrés Duany and Emily Talen

At the end of chapter 1, the authors provide a bibliography of classic urban design readings and a shorter list of works that might be more accessible to practitioners, policy makers, and the public. This section also includes a description of five appendices that are available online. Each appendix comprises a comprehensive literature review pertaining to areas covered in the text. These include travel behavior, visual preference, hedonic pricing, traffic safety, and transit-oriented design. Providing this information at this point in the book seems a little bit awkward, but at the same time, it makes the reader aware of the large body of empirical evidence that exists before the material is introduced in subsequent chapters. In chapter 2 (Urban Design Qualities), the authors succinctly lay out eight characteristics of urban design related to walkability. These characteristics, identified through a literature review and input from an expert panel, form the basis for the recommendations that follow in the remainder of the book. These eight qualities are synthesized from classic urban design texts, such as Image of the City (Lynch, 1960) and A Pattern Language (Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein, 1977), along with the ideas of Allan Jacobs, William Whyte, and many others. In short, the authors state that good urban space has a distinct character, which is simultaneously complex and coherent. It provides a roomlike, human-scale environment that can be easily navigated by users. Though presented only briefly at the beginning of the chapter, the authors also lay out a conceptual framework that relates physical features (roadway cross-sectional dimensions, building height, landscaping), urban design, and individual perceptions of space (safety, comfort) to urban walkability and ultimately to individual walking behavior. This framework helps to tie the items included in walkability audits often used by planners to the theoretical constructs they attempt to measure. Though this introduction to urban design is brief, it provides sufficient information for the practitioner or student without a background in urban design to understand the fundamental elements of good urban design. The remainder of the book fleshes out the policy prescriptions that the authors recommend and that cities are using to achieve the goal of obtaining high-quality walkable urban space. Chapters 3, 4, and 5, which comprise the heart of the book, walk the reader through checklists of features that the authors deem important in pedestrianand transit-oriented urban spaces. The features are presented in order of importance, from essential, to highly desirable, to worthwhile additions. Chapter 3 (Checklist of Essential Features) begins with what planners will immediately recognize as the “D” variables associated with walking and transit use. These include density, diversity of land uses, design, destination accessibility, and distance to transit. Added to these are basic physical characteristics that facilitate pedestrian movement. These include continuous sidewalks, relatively short, safe street crossings, and protection from traffic. In addition to rough guidelines on the thresholds for walkable, transit-oriented development, the authors provide local code examples that are embedded within each section. These text boxes contain excerpts of codes from cities around the United States, along with a brief background paragraph about the development goals the code is designed to achieve. These examples, along with ample photographs and diagrams that show examples of good design, help the reader to connect theory and research findings directly to policy. Chapter 4 (Checklist of Highly Desirable Features) describes the functional characteristics that make a location an attractive destination for pedestrians. These features include commercial uses, shade, lively public space, and attractive transit stops that promote interaction between and among people. Again, visuals are used to effectively show both good and bad examples of these features. Chapter 5 (Checklist of Worthwhile Additions) is devoted to mainly aesthetic features that are designed to make a place memorable. These include significant landmarks, public art, water features, street furniture, and pavement textures, along with the absence of unsightly signs and above ground utilities. In the sixth and final chapter of the book (Conclusion), the authors state that “urban design is the part of the built environment most overlooked” (108) by the architects and planners responsible for urban space, and I agree with this statement. However, it is exactly these details that can make or break a place. By bridging the gap between the policyand larger-scale spatial orientation of planners and the field of urban design, Pedestrianand Transit-Oriented Design helps to fill an important gap. It combines a very accessible introduction to the urban planning literature with practical examples of municipal code designed to encourage high-quality urban space. Though it as a good stand-alone text, perhaps its most important contribution is as a starting point for the practitioner or student wanting to dig more deeply into the design literature and push the quality of urban space forward.