Citizen Politics
- Edens Lost and Found, Harry Wiland, Dale Bell, Joseph D’Agnes’
City as Community
- The Small-Mart Revolution, Michael Schuman
- The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and the Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, Ray Oldenburg
- Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam
Cities in the Global Sphere:
- The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World, Jeff Goodell
Commerce
- Pedal to the Metal: The Work Lives of Truckers, Lawrence Ouelett
- Ninety Percent Of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate, Rose George
- The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger , Marc Levinson
- Call of the Mall, Paco Underhill
- The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket, Benjamin Lorr
Designing for Human Life
- Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, Robert Fogelson
- Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels, Paul Growth
- Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Kenneth Jackson
- Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, Jeff Speck
- Home From Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century, James H. Kunstler
- Thoughts on Building Strong Towns, Vol I, Chuck Marohn
- The Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability, David Owen
- Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck
- The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler
- Big Box Swindle, Stacy Mitchell
- Happy City: Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery
- Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places, Jeff Speck
- Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing, Diane Lind
- People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think About Greener, Healthier Cities, F. Kaid Benfield
Law Enforcement
Social Problems
- Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, Sudhir Venkatesh
- Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, Sudhir Venkatesh
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich
Transportation
- Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, Peter Norton
- Straphanger: Saving Our Cities from the Automobile, Taras Gresco
- Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities, Jeff Mapes
- Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, Jane Holtz Keay
- Waiting on a Train: the Embattled Future of Passenger Rail, James McCommons
- Taxi! A Social History of the NYC Cab Driver, Graham Russell Gao Hodges
- Getting There: The Epic Battle Between Road and Rail in the American Century, Stephen Goddard
- Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, Tom Vanderbilt
- Divided Highways: Building the Interstates, Transforming American Life. Tom Lewis
- The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure, Henry Petroski
- Romance of the Rails: Why the Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need, Randal O’Toole
- On Bikes: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture can Transform Your Life, Amy Walker
- In the City of Bikes, Pete Jordan
Urban Economics:
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
Utilities
- The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World, Phillip Schewe
- Oil on the Brain, Lisa Magonelli
- On the Grid: A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make Our World Work, Scott Huler
- Infrastructure: A Field Guide, Brian Hayes
- The Works: The Anatomy of the City, Kate Ascher
- A Walk Around the Block, Spike Carlsen
- Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, Andrew Blum
Waste Management
- Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City, Robin Nagle
- Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte
- Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, Heather Rogers
- Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization, W. Hodding Carter
- Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Susan Strasser
- The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, Rose George
The City Historic
- Horses at Work: Powering the Industrial Economy, Ann Norton Greene
- The Horse in the City, Clay McShane, Joel Tarr
- The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, James Howard Kunstler
- The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage
- Victorian London, Liza Picard
- Fares Please! A History of Trains, Trolleys, Busses, and Elevateds, John Anderson Miller
- Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, Brian Hayes
- The Network: The Battle for the Airwaves, Scott Woolley
Impressive list! I have a few city related books in various piles but (AFAIK) none of those listed.
Ooh! Any titles you know off hand? I have quite a few titles planned for this area of interest coming up this year, including a re-read for “Happy City” to review it.
The three I could lay my hands on easily where:
The City by Max Weber (1958)
Rebel Cities by David Harvey (2013)
Ground Control – Fear & Happiness in the 21st Century City by Anna Minton (2009)
The latter two remind me of a book I almost read — “Tearing down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy”, I think. A precis for Weber's book sounds interesting, if heady; strange I've never heard of it.
Wow! That is an impressive catalogue! I'm sure I'll find a few things to read among those you've listed. Thanks!
Enjoy what you find. 😀 I'll be adding more to this as the year progresses.