In February 2023 we discussed a book about how cities turned the tide on violence in the 1990s, only to face an upsurge before and during the pandemic. Crime is down once again, thanks in part to a set of programs that were inspired by Uneasy Peace. Many of the programs involve “violence interruptors.” In…

In May 2026 we discussed Urban Jungle, a book that argued we should pay much greater attention to nature in cities. A recent PBS documentary series called Shared Planet, shows how people around the world live side by side with plants, insects and wildlife. The first episode is about how cities are bringing nature to…

In January 2026, we discussed a book about the importance of neighborhoods in building connections, resilience and economic mobility, Fragile Neighborhoods by Seth D. Kaplan. One of the places Kaplan wrote about was Atlanta’s East Lake neighborhood, where a crime-ridden public housing project was turned into a safe, prosperous, mixed-income neighborhood. But does growing up…

In September 2025, we discussed a classic urbanist book, Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities. We considered what this book, written nearly 65 years ago, says that can guide cities like Atlanta today. We aren’t the only ones asking that question. In 2016, the New Yorker magazine looked back on Death…

Our August 2025 book, The 15-Minute City, argued that cities would be happier and more resilient places if they changed how neighborhoods worked. The change: Bring nearly everything people need for daily life within a 15-minute walk, bike ride or bus ride of home. The happiness comes, the author says, from neighbors seeing one another…

In October 2024, we discussed A Kind of Genius, a book about a remarkable reformer who created important changes in New York in the 1960s and 1970s using persuasion, people skills, political awareness and good processes. Are there people like Herb Sturz around today? In Philadelphia, a public official is completing a monumental effort to…

More than a quarter of downtown Atlanta is given over to a single land use, the parking of idle cars. If this “sea of parking” were put to better uses, as housing, retail, offices or green space, downtown would benefit, as we learned from our January 2024 book Paving Paradise. So is the city preventing…

Our June 2024 book, Ghosting the News, is about the decline of local journalism and how this hurts democracy and good government. Others are focused on this issue, including the Pew Research Center. In a new study, Pew researchers found Americans worry about the decline of local news media but pay less attention to what…

Love Our Cities was our March 2024 book about how citizens who volunteer for community improvement projects can change a city. It’s also the name of the organization founded by the book’s authors to spread the idea nationally. One of the authors, Eric Jung, talked about the idea, the organization and the movement it inspired…

Streetfight was the subject of our November 2022 discussion. It’s a book about how New York reclaimed some of its streets for pedestrians, cyclists, transit and other uses. The author was the city’s crusading transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan. In a 2018 interview, Sadik-Khan talks about one of her efforts, building protected bike lanes. And she…