Here is a selection of our favourite books. We have found them inspiring and hope you will too. Click on the cover image to get hold of your copy.
![]() | ‘Salutogenic City Sketchbook’ Marcus Wilshere, Liz Loughran and Richard Mazuch 2021 – A sketchbook of design ideas to put principles of healthy places into practice. This is the first of a series ultimately creating an open-source library of ideas. |
![]() | ‘General Theory of Urbanisation’ Ildefons Cerda 2018 – Cerda’s groundbreaking and encylopaedic work has been overlooked for too long. Now in English translation, his work is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how cities grow and function |
![]() | ‘The Structure of the Ordinary , Form and Control in the Built Environment’ N.J.Habraken / Jonathan Teicher, Editor 1998 – Habraken’s insights were always ahead of his time. This book is the ideal introduction to his work. |
![]() | ‘Space is the Machine’ Bill Hillier 2015 – Personally I found Space is the Machine to be a more accessible and focussed work than Hillier and Hanson’s better-known ‘Social Logic of Space’. |
![]() | ‘Making Massive Small Change’ Kelvin Campbell 2018 – Campbell, my one-time colleague at Urban Initiatives, challenges received wisdom by demonstrating how the accumulated impact of many small decisions can make massive change to urban environments and quality of life. |
![]() | ‘Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing’ Jenny Roe & Layla McCay 2021 – Roe and McCay’s excellent contribution to the growing debate on how place quality contributes to health and wellbeing. |
![]() | ‘The Image of the City’ Kevin Lynch 19xx – Another classic text, essential to understand how we experience and navigate cities. |
![]() | ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ Jane Jacobs 19xx – Another essential for any library. Jacob’s learnt by observing first-hand how people live in cities. As a result, she saw many things that professional architects and planners missed. |
![]() | ‘Triumph of the City’ Edward Glaeser 2012 – Just why do cities become more productive, creative drivers of economies? |
![]() | ‘A pattern Language’ Christopher Alexander 1978 – With so much recent debate around design codes, it’s helpful to see how Alexander took systems theory further, suggesting that urban places could be assembled from carefully selected patterns. |
![]() | ‘Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life’ Colin Ellard 2015 – Ellard looks at cities as a neuroscientist but his insights are invaluable to designers wanting to understand how we experience our world. |
![]() | ‘Non-Standard Architectural Productions: Between Aesthetic Experience and Social Action’ Sandra Löschke 2018 |
![]() | ‘A City is not a Computer’ Shannon Mattern 2021 |