cover image Urban Code: 100 Lessons for Understanding the City

Urban Code: 100 Lessons for Understanding the City

Anne Mikoleit and Moritz P%C3%BCrckhauer. MIT, $18.95 trade paper (112p) ISBN 978-0-262-01641-4

Sometimes an outside eye picks out things a local one takes for granted or doesn't register at all. Such is partly the case with this urban planning case study, a taxonomy of 100 succinct features ("lessons") describing the ebb and flow of pedestrian life in the shop-lined streets of New York's upscale SoHo district that aims at general truths in urban design and experience. The illustrated, sober, and surprisingly bland pocket volume co-written by two architectural researchers in the Urban Synergy Group at ETH Zurich university employs a user-perception model of urban design in understanding the psychological logic of this formerly manufacturing, now fashionable area characterized by galleries, boutique stores, street vendors, and varying local and tourist foot traffic. But while buttressed by short passages from classic user-oriented urban planning texts by such trailblazers as Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, and Christopher Alexander, the treatment is as concerned with the value and pricing of real estate as it is with the lived experience of people, emphasizing how businesses in particular cultivate a socially diverse pedestrian traffic. Students of business and urban planning will find the bite-size lessons apt if basic. Those average foot travelers seeking inspiration for, and insight into, city living would likely get more from livelier case studies already out there in an array of travel literature and practical travel guides. (Oct.)