From the sidewalk to City Hall, in the corporate boardroom, and around the kitchen table, The Heart of Toronto traces the power dynamics and projects that have transformed downtown Toronto.

The first text of its kind in Canada, Evaluating Urban and Regional Plans provides both a theoretical foundation and pragmatic guidance for plan evaluation.

The first major study of its kind in Canada, Quietly Shrinking Cities examines the conceptual and empirical evolution of Canadian urban population loss.

Digital Lives in the Global City asks how digital technologies are remaking urban life around the world, from migrant work in Singapore to digital debt in Toronto, illegal buildings in Mumbai, and targeted policing in New York.

Changing Neighbourhoods offers revealing insights into the way that Canadian cities have grown increasingly unequal and polarized since 1980, identifying the causal factors driving neighbourhood change and their troubling implications.

Neighbourhood Houses documents how the neighbourhood house model, a century-old type of community organization, can help overcome isolation in urban neighbourhoods by creating welcoming places.

This is the remarkable story, told by a key insider, about Vancouver’s dramatic transformation from a typical mid-sized North American city into an inspiring world-class metropolis celebrated for its liveability, sustainability, and vibrancy.

Planning on the Edge explores the reality behind the rhetoric of Vancouver’s reputation as a sustainable city and paves the way for developing Vancouver and its region into a place that is both economically sustainable and socially just.

Making Healthy Places surveys the many intersections between health and the built environment, from the scale of buildings to the scale of metro areas, and across a range of outcomes, from cardiovascular health and infectious disease to social connectedness and happiness. This new edition is significantly updated, with a special emphasis on equity and sustainability, and takes a global perspective. It provides current evidence not only on how poorly designed places may threaten well-being, but also on solutions that have been found to be effective.Making Healthy Places is a must-read for students, academics, and professionals in health, architecture, urban planning, civil engineering, parks and recreation, and related fields.   

Innovation districts and anchor institutions—like hospitals and universities—drive economic growth. But the benefits often fail to reach the very neighborhoods they are built in. As CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC), Matt Enstice fosters a different, collaborative approach. City Forward explains how BNMC promotes a shared goal of equity among companies and institutions with diverse motivations. Offering a candid look at BNMC’s setbacks and successes, along with efforts from other institutions nationwide, Enstice shares twelve strategies that innovation districts can harness to weave equity into their core work. Institutional leadership, business owners, and professionals will find experienced direction here. City Forward is a refreshing look at the brighter futures that we can create through thoughtful collaboration—moving forward, together.  

In Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate, urban planning expert William Fulton takes an engaging look at the importance of connecting to place, how cities are engines of prosperity, and how these two ideas – place and prosperity – lie at the heart of what a city is and, by extension, what our society is all about. Fulton has been writing about cities over his forty-year career as a journalist, professor, mayor, planning director, and the director of an urban think tank in one of America’s great cities. Place and Prosperity is a curated collection of his writings with new and updated selections and framing material.              Fulton shows that at their best, cities not only inspire and uplift us, but they make our daily life more convenient, more fulfilling, and more prosperous.  

It’s time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city.Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life—where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up    

 In Build Beyond Zero, carbon pioneers Bruce King and Chris Magwood re-envision buildings as one of our most practical and affordable climate solutions instead of a leading driver of climate change. They make a case for a “carbon smart” built environment that absorbs more greenhouse gases than it emits. While the industry pursues net zero emissions focused on improving the energy efficiency of buildings, a carbon-smart approach also considers what we make all those buildings with, and the supply chains that deliver all those products and materials.Build Beyond Zero offers an exciting vision of climate-friendly architecture, along with practical advice for professionals working to address the carbon footprint of our built environment.  

Over half the world’s population lives in urban regions, and increasingly disasters are of great concern to city dwellers, policymakers, and builders. Risky Cities is a critical examination of global urban development, capitalism, and its relationship with environmental hazards. 

From roads to clean water systems, the built infrastructure sustaining urban populations is increasingly vulnerable to climate. Understanding the dilemma and identifying a path forward is particularly important as cities are significant agents of climate action. A follow-up to the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA), Climate Change and U.S. Cities documents the current and future climate risk for U.S. cities, urban systems, and their residents. It is an examination of research findings since early 2012, with a critical emphasis on the cross-cutting factors of economics, equity, and governance. Urban stakeholders and decision makers will gain an understanding of climate risks and a set of conclusions and recommendations for action. Climate Change and U.S. Cities boldly lays out the tools that cities must harness to effect decisive, meaningful change.  

People love their communities and want them to become safer, healthier, more prosperous places. But the standard approach to public meetings somehow makes everyone miserable. Conversations that should be inspiring can become shouting matches. So what would it look like to facilitate truly meaningful discussions? What if they could be fun? For twenty years, James Rojas and John Kamp have been using art, creative expression, and storytelling to shake up the classic community meeting. In Dream Play Build, they share their insights into building common ground and inviting active participation among diverse groups. Their approach, “Place It!,” draws on three methods: the interactive model-building workshop, the pop-up, and site exploration using our senses. Inspirational and fun, this book celebrates the value of engaging with the dreams we have for our communities.

In From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities, design expert Alison Sant focuses on the unique ways in which US cities are working to mitigate and adapt to climate change while creating equitable and livable communities. Sant presents 12 case studies, drawn from research and over 90 interviews with people who are working in these communities to make a difference. These efforts show how US cities are reclaiming their streets from cars, restoring watersheds, growing forests, and adapting shorelines to improve people’s lives while addressing our changing climate.From the Ground Up is a call to action. When we make the places we live more climate resilient, we need to acknowledge and address the history of social and racial injustice. Advocates, non-profit organizations, community-based groups, and government officials will find examples of how to build alliances to support and embolden this vision together.  

In cities around the world, planning and health experts are beginning to understand the role of social and environmental conditions that lead to trauma. By respecting the lived experience of those who were most impacted by harms, some cities have developed innovative solutions for urban trauma.               In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-makers in these cities over a ten-year period, as individuals and communities worked to heal from trauma—including from gun violence, housing and food insecurity, poverty, and other harms. Cities for Life is about a new way forward with urban communities that rebuilds our social institutions, practices, and policies to be more focused on healing and health.   

This volume offers a wealth of information and examples for those looking to help bring urban environments into harmony with the natural world and make cities more sustainable.

In Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving, historian Peter Norton argues that driverless cars cannot be the safe, sustainable, and inclusive “mobility solutions” that tech companies and automakers are promising us. The salesmanship behind the “driverless future” is distracting us from better ways to get around that we can implement now. Unlike autonomous vehicles, these alternatives are inexpensive, safe, sustainable, and inclusive. Norton takes the reader on an engaging ride—from the GM Futurama exhibit to “smart” highways and vehicles—to show how we are once again being sold car dependency in the guise of mobility.Autonorama is hopeful, advocating for wise, proven, humane mobility that we can invest in now, without waiting for technology that is forever just out of reach.