Imagine the best place you know. A place that made you feel alive— like all was well. A place that felt completely comfortable. It could be somewhere you’ve visited, or if you’re lucky somewhere you lived. Maybe it’s an imaginary place. It could be a neighborhood or a chair by a nice window. Maybe it was a street where people waved hello, or busy waterfront walk in the evening, or a quiet porch in the afternoon. Close your eyes and try to feel what it was like to be there.
What made that place so good? How can the places you live, work, or hang out be like that?
Here are some books I’ve found about making wonderful, live-enhancing places.
These books are generally about lively, humble places where everyday life happens. Well beyond design and decoration, these books focus on how physical characteristics, life activities, communities, and the natural environment can interact and work together to create healthy places. They also tend to highlight grass-roots approaches to placemaking, rather than processes driven by developers, governments, or architects, though each of those groups can help or hinder the work.
From this list, the books by Christopher Alexander are my favorites. One of these books is always on my active reading pile and the bookmarks make their way from beginning to end, then loop right back to the beginning. I love his vision of a living and lively world of human habitation and his methods are both immediately applicable and endlessly profound.
Book list
Alexander, Christopher. 1977. A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction. New York: Oxford University Press. Cite
Alexander, Christopher. 1979. The timeless way of building. New York: Oxford University Press. Cite
Alexander, Christopher. 2002. The nature of order: an essay on the art of building and the nature of the universe. Center for Environmental Structure Series ; v. 9-12. Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Environmental Structure. Cite
Bloom, Jessi, and Dave Boehnlein. 2015. Practical Permaculture: for Home Landscapes, Your Community, and the Whole Earth. Illustrated edition. Portland, Oregon: Timber Press. Cite
Borrup, Tom, and Robert McNulty. 2006. The Creative Community Builder’s Handbook: How to Transform Communities Using Local Assets, Arts, and Culture. Illustrated edition. Saint Paul, Minn: Fieldstone Alliance. Cite
Courage, Cara, and Anita McKeown, eds. 2020. Creative Placemaking. 1st edition. S.l.: Routledge. Cite
“Essential Guide to Transition – Transition Network.” n.d. Accessed January 7, 2022. Cite
Hemenway, Toby. 2009. Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition. 2nd edition. White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green Publishing. Cite
Hopkins, Rob. 2013. The Power of Just Doing Stuff: How Local Action Can Change the World. Totnes: UIT Cambridge Ltd. Cite
Hopkins, Rob. 2014. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Place of publication not identified: Green Books. Cite
Jacobs, Jane. 1993. The death and life of great American cities. Modern Library ed. New York: Modern Library. Cite
Jha, Sandhya Rani. 2017. Transforming Communities: How People Like You are Healing Their Neighborhoods. Chalice Press. Cite
Madden, Kathy. 2021. How to Turn a Place Around: A Placemaking Handbook. New York, NY: Project for Public Spaces, Inc. Cite
Walljasper, Jay. 2007. The great neighborhood book: a do-it-yourself guide to placemaking. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers. Cite
“What is Transition? | Circular Model & Reconomy.” 2016. July 28, 2016. Cite
What are your favorite places? What makes them so special? What can you do to improve your own places?