Reading List

Although you can find lots of interesting facts and data surfing the web, we think there’s nothing like sitting down with a good book. We’ve compiled a list of books that tell the story of why sustainable transportation options are vital to the health of our country. The books listed below are ones we have personally found interesting or have been recommended to us for future reading. We’r e happy to add to this list, let us know if you have a suggestion for our community reading list.

Transportation

• How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: Save money, breathe easier, and get more mileage out of life, by Chris Balish, 2006.
  The first practical, accessible, and sensible guide to living in North America without owning a car.- Exposes the true costs of car ownership and shows how getting rid of your car can simplify your life and put you on the road to financial freedom.- Packed with realistic, economical alternatives to owning a car, including chapters on carsharing, carpooling, and even car-free dating.- Includes more than 100 real-world tips, strategies, and success stories from people who are happily car-free or "car-lite," from cities to suburbs.- According to a 2004 American Automobile Association study, the average American spends $8,410 per year (roughly $700 per month) to own a vehicle.
  
• Bicycling Street Smarts, John Allen A comprehensive guide to bicycle safety.
  
• Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back, Jane Holtz Kay
  A comprehensive discussion of the economic, environmental and social costs of building an automobile-dependent landscape
  
• New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development
  Hank Dittmar, et.alTransportation, planning and finance experts discuss the first generation of transit-oriented developments and the emerging market for walkable, mixed-used communities where alternative transportation relieves residents of the congestion, pollution and expense of automobile dependency.

Environment

• Sustainable Communities: A New Design Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs and Towns, Peter Calthorpe and Sim Van der Ryn
  Although technically authored by Calthorpe and Van der Ryn, this book collects essays on sustainable, ecologically sound dwellings by various luminaries with expertise in transportation planning, design, and creating workable food systems. Plans are offered for older urban areas, post-war suburban homes, as well as cities in the early stages of growing.

Health

• Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities Lawrence Frank, Howard Frumkin, Richard Jackson - A broad guide to the public health problems associated with sprawling patterns of development.
• Health and Community Design: The Impact of the Built Environment on Physical Activity, Larry Frank, Peter Engelke, Thomas Schmid - An excellent look at the connection between physical health and community design.

Urban Planning

• Repairing the American Metropolis, Douglas Kelbaugh
  Repairing the American Metropolis is based on Douglas Kelbaugh's Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design, first published in 1997. It is more timely and significant than ever, with new text, charts, and images on architecture, sprawl, and New Urbanism, a movement that he helped pioneer. Theory and policies have been revised, refined, updated, and developed as compelling ways to plan design the built environment. This is an indispensable book for architects, urban designers and planners, landscape architects, architecture and urban planning students and scholars, government officials, developers, environmentalists, and citizens interested in understanding and shaping the American metropolis.
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
  One of the most complete and incisive critiques of bad urbanism, with prescriptions for change. A half-century later, we're just starting to get it.

Suburban Sprawl

• The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, James Howard Kunstler
  An aggressive criticism of suburbia with humor.
• Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
  A concise and highly readable exploration of sprawl: its causes and manifestations. The authors are experts at illuminating the key details which support New Urbanist philosophy, and draw from a wealth of historical examples.