 | There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America by Alex Kotlowitz
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $1.95 This is a great narrative about two children growing up in one of the hardest housing projects in Chicago. Chicago is famous in housing history(Gatreaux). The first Mayor Daley set up a system of "projects" that warehoused the poor. They were inspired by architectural theory of the time (Le Corbusier).
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 | The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series) by Jane Jacobs
Buy new: $14.93 / Used from: $13.92 This is a book that got people started on thinking about how city planning could reintroduce humanity to our urban spaces. The inspiration for her writing was Greenwich Village, although Jacobs was from Canada and lived there for the last few decades of her life.
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 | Our kind of people: American groups and rituals by Bill Owens
Buy used from: $49.50 This is a book of photographs. It is about what drives people to go and live in a suburb. Bill Owens is not like anyone else. These are pictures of people who are retreating into like-minded groups. It came out at a point in time when that is just what a lot of country was doing, in reaction to the turbulence of the 60s.
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 | How the other half lives; studies among the tenements of New York, by Jacob A. Riis; with illustrations chiefly from photographs taken by the author. by Michigan Historical Reprint Series
Buy new: $21.59 / Used from: $15.59 When Jacob Riis' photographs were first published, they rallied New York to do something about the quality of housing for its workers. Tenements in NYC were home to disease and vice. Subsequent housing policy focused on improving the quality of housing. Now, we worry about the affordability of our homes.
There was a time when things were different.
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 | Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World by Robert Neuwirth
Buy new: $30.54 / Used from: $24.39 The problem of housing in the third world is so dramatic. People are lucky to secure a home with a tin roof. Then, they have to worry about finding access to water, to protection from street thugs, and other basic needs.
I like that Robert Neuwirth goes right into these cities and lives with the people. This is not a distant analysis. He is right there, in the world's worst megaslums.
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 | City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis
Buy used from: $0.44 This is a book about living in an era of social insecurity. How do our communities and our buildings reflect our profound fear about the world?
Mike Davis examines the geography of fear in Los Angeles. One of my favorite sections discusses the walls and security equipment set up to protect the public library.
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 | Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States by Kenneth T. Jackson
This is a short history of how we got all of these suburbs. The author talks about what came before -- things like the streetcar suburb -- and what it is now like to live in these places.
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 | Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau
Buy new: $12.21 / Used from: $1.17 This book is written by a reporter for the Washington Post(not a houser). He was amazed at how different life was between downtown Washington and the new breed of exurban 'burbs around DC (Tyson's Corner, Potomac Mills). Nothing in this book is academic. It will validate any of the frustration you have ever felt when trying to shop at a Galleria on the day after Thanksgiving.
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