The Human City rave review in Wall Street Journal

In this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal books section, Shlomo Angel reviewed Joel Kotkin’s new book, THE HUMAN CITY: Urbanism for the Rest of Us. The headline in the print edition reads, “In Praise of Urban Sprawl: Suburbs provide not only the majority of American residences but also of jobs.” For those of you who wish to read it, you can follow the link here


The Human City

Internationally recognized urbanist Joel Kotkin challenges the conventional urban-planning wisdom that favors high-density, “pack-and-stack” strategies. Instead, Kotkin advocates for “smart suburbs” that take advantage of new technologies, family-friendly policies, and sustainable planning to build dynamic small cities, redeveloped neighborhoods, and a human-scale urban environment.

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Joel Kotkin


Should you not have a subscription to the Journal, here are a few select excerpts from Angel’s piece that describe Mr. Kotkin’s views:

“Joel Kotkin in ‘The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us,’ presents the most cogent, evidence-based and clear-headed exposition of the pro-suburban argument. In Mr. Kotkin’s view, there is a war against suburbia, an unjust war launched by intellectuals, environmentalists and central-city enthusiasts. In pithy, readable sections, each addressing a single issue, he debunks one attack on the suburbs after another.”

“[Mr. Kotkin] weaves an impressive array of original observations about cities into his arguments, enriching our understanding of what cities are about and what they can and must become, with sections reflecting on such topics as ‘housing inflation,’ ‘the rise of the home-based economy,’ ‘the organic expansion of cities’ and ‘forces undermining the middle class in global cities.’”

“[Mr. Kotkin] argues that central-city living is largely unaffordable by the middle class, let alone the poor; that central cities are becoming the abodes of the global rich, encouraging glamorous consumption rather than providing middle-class jobs; and that dense urban living in small, expensive quarters discourages child rearing, a critical concern for policy makers in many industrialized countries today. (There are 80,000 more dogs than children in San Francisco.)”

“Mr. Kotkin, in his unabashed defense of the essential role that suburbs play in cities the world over, is clearly on the offensive. . . . All the same, and much to my delight, the book does not read as a diatribe or an anti-urban manifesto. Mr. Kotkin comes across as a relaxed, confident and experienced litigator standing in front of a jury of readers and making his case; and ‘The Human City’ does provide a vision for a legitimate and pragmatic urbanism that could and should become mainstream.”

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