The recent publication of two books prompted me to ponder the future of cities and do a write-up of them together:Implementing Urban Design: Green, Civic, and Community Strategies by Jonathan Barnett, published by Routledge, June 2023 (Amazon / Bookshop)Renewing the Dream: The Mobility Revolution and the Future of Los Angeles edited by James Sanders, published by Rizzoli Electa, September 2023 (Amazon / Bookshop)Implementing Urban Design is the latest of many books about urban design and planning by Jonathan Barnett, whose career and CV span around fifty years. Over that time he has served as an architect, planner, educator, and an advisor to cities in and beyond the US, including Charleston, South Carolina, Omaha, and New York City, where he was Director of Urban Design in the Department of City Planning. When I received Implementing Urban Design, one of the first things I did was scour my bookshelves for other books by Barnett (something I do with most other reviews). There I found his first book, Urban Design as Public Policy: Practical Methods for Improving Cities, published in 1974. It, his first book, summarized his efforts in that role at NYC Planning, presenting the working methods behind the projects he worked on and doing it in ways that other urban designers in other places could learn from them. Just as Barnett's first book was "concerned with techniques of dealing with a number of significant urban and environme...