Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World
Robert Neuwirth, Routledge, 2006, 331 pages, $18.95 (paperback). taylorandfrancisgroup.com

In almost every country of the developing world, the most active builders are squatters, who create complex local economies with high rises, shopping sites, banks and self-government. Robert Neuwirth argues that, as they invent new social structures, squatters are at the forefront of the worldwide movement to develop new visions of what constitutes property and community, a movement that may be a preview of the world’s urban future.

Planet of Slums
Mike Davis, Verso, 2006, 228 pages, $24 (hardcover). www.versobooks.com

From the sprawling barricadas of Lima, Peru, to the garbage hills of Manila, Philippines, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, and even economic growth. Mike Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neo-liberal theory.

Sprawl and Suburbia
William S. Saunders, Editor, A Harvard Design Magazine Reader, University of Minnesota Press, 132 pages, $22.95 (paperback). www.upress.umn.edu

Sprawl and Suburbia brings together key thinkers who present in-depth diagnosis and critical analysis of the physical and social realities of exurban sprawl. The essays address the need for architects, urban planners and landscape designers to work at mitigating the effects of sprawl on land and other resources and at improving the residentially and commercially built environment as a whole.

Urban Planning Today
William S. Saunders, Editor, A Harvard Design Magazine Reader, University of Minnesota Press, 151 pages, $22.95 (paperback). www.upress.umn.edu

American cities’ penchants for single-use zoning and free-market development in pursuit of economic growth have produced problems that have long been recognized: grueling commutes and dependency on automobiles; social isolation; expensive public infrastructure and the needless destruction of countryside. The contributors to Urban Planning Today bring varying, and sometimes divergent, perspectives from backgrounds in urban design and development, city and regional planning to address these issues.

Americans and Their Land: The House Built on Abundance
Anne Mackin, The University of Michigan Press, 2006, 251 pages, $29.95 (hardcover). www.press.umich.edu

Anne Mackin tells us the story, from frontier history to the present, of how land has shaped the American political landscape. She shows how evolving traditions of apportioning resources have allowed diminished supplies to create our present, increasingly unequal society, and she asks how 300 million Americans living in the new American landscape of growing competition can better share those resources.