This year?s election made clear that, perhaps more than at any other time in American history, where we live determines much about what we know. As people who write about cities, we realized this presented a remarkable opportunity. We wanted to find examples of how reading stories about where people live could change the way we think about the world. We asked our editors to choose a story that helped them to understand a place. We tapped a handful of authors, many of whom have works included on this list, to pass along their recommendations as well. And even though there?s so much to read on these topics at each tap of a finger, we specifically chose books as our medium because they are forged from heavily reported and researched facts, stuff that?s frankly much harder to come across in a post-truth era. This isn?t necessarily the same-old list of famous urbanism books, although plenty of them are represented here. These are books about making cities, but also books about how cities have made us, whether it?s our own hometown or somewhere on the other side of the planet. These are books that examine how cities change, and sometimes end up alienating the people who built them. There are plenty of brand-new books on this list because they reflect what people are thinking about today, which, in light of current events, may be very different from what they were thinking about just two weeks ago.
We hope that by exploring this list, and sharing these titles with others,&nb...