Charles Montgomery
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014

In reading books about urban design, it’s easy to get bored or feel that you are reading an academic text. This book by Charles Montgomery is the antithesis of all those books and in fact an “easy read.”

Montgomery vividly describes riding a bike through the streets of Bogota with its visionary Mayor Penalosa as he explains his motivation and methods for improving the health and happiness of his citizenry. There are plenty of other great examples of transformative placemaking from urbanologists like Jan Gehl — the premier placemaker from Denmark (amazing how such a tiny nation could export such radically simple ideas about our built environment — it’s no wonder that the Danes are some of the happiest people on the planet). This book will inspire the pedestrian urbanite as well as die-hard professionals.