Product Description

First built in Europe and grandly imported to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, the classic multiway boulevard has been in decline for many years, victim of a narrowly focused approach to street design that views unencumbered vehicular traffic flow as the highest priority. The American preoccupation with destination and speed has made multiway boulevards increasingly rare as artifacts of the urban landscape. This book reintroduces the boulevard, tree-lined and with separate realms for through traffic and for slow-paced vehicular-pedestrian movement, as an important and often crucial feature of both historic and contemporary cities. It presents more than fifty boulevards—-as varied as Avenue Montaigne, in Paris; C. G. Road, in Ahmedabad, India; and The Esplanade, in Chico, California--celebrating their usefulness and beauty. It discusses their history and evolution, the misconceptions that led to their near-demise in the United States, and their potential as a modern street type. Based on wide research, The Boulevard Book examines the safety of these streets and offers design guidelines for professionals, scholars, and community decision makers. Extensive plans, cross sections, and perspective drawings permit visual comparisons. The book shows how multiway boulevards respond to many issues that are central to urban life, including livability, mobility, safety, interest, economic opportunity, mass transit, and open space.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180117 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 267 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The majestic, vital streets of European cities and world capitals are most often their grandest and largest in scale, like the Champs Elysaes. The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multi-Way Boulevards celebrates these thoroughfares, created in the 19th century and currently out of favor because of safety concerns and the devotion to vehicles-only roads. Yet urban studies professors Allan B. Jacobs and Elizabeth Macdonald, along with Jerusalem planner Yodan Rofe, argue that boulevards could play an important role in revitalizing blight by getting people back in the same places as other traffic. Barcelona's Passeig de Gracia, Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway, C.G. Road in Ahmedabad, India, and even the Esplanade in Chico, Calif., serve as important examples among the 200 b&w illustrations.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
"The immense amount of research, together with the authors' enthusiasm...makes The Boulevard Book an authoritative text."
— Ari Anderson, Landscape Australia

About the Author
Allan B. Jacobs is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley.

Elizabeth Macdonald is Assistant Professor in Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley.

Yodan Rofé is Head of the City Planning Section in the Chief Architects Office of the Ministry of Construction and Housing in Jerusalem.

Customer Reviews

A Nice Companion to Great Streets
This book belongs in the library of people who enjoyed GREAT STREETS by Allan Jacobs, et al, or anyone who designs modern streets. The authors have researched boulevards extensively, including their safety and utility.

If you are interested in the topic, a video is available about the authors' research from the Institute of Urban and Regional Development of the University of California at Berkeley -- 510-642-5233. It believe it is called, "Boulevards: Great Streets for Great Cities."

terrific source book for urban designers
This is such an interesting book. Boulevards have been neglected for several generations because they somehow didn't fit into the vocabulary used by traffic engineers. But thanks to Allan and Elizabeth, we know that they are extremely efficient ways of carrying traffic and creating safe pewdestrian environments and that they creat beautiful cities. Look at Paris, Barcelona, Melbourne and even Chico!
Really nice drawings. The book is a delight top behold.

Streets do more than just move cars
Jacobs and Macdonald have created a great resource for people who recognize that streets can and must do more than convey cars. I get to see Chico's Esplanade everyday. Others will have to be satisfied with the book's wonderful treatment the Esplanade gets along side its big brothers in Barcelona and Paris.