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Shlomo Angel has written a fascinating and timely book about cities. It is full of interesting facts and wisdom. The book gives a sense of the enormous variety of challenges facing the world's cities and the folly of trying to handle every one of these urban challenges with a one-size-fits-all policy. -- Edward L. Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics; Director, Taubman Center for State and Local Government and Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Harvard University Students and others looking for a place to start often ask, If I could read just one book about xxxx, which would you suggest? When it comes to cities, I have a new favorite. It is Shlomo Angel's Planet of Cities. -- Peter Gordon, Emeritus Professor, University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy Committed environmentalists and other defenders of urban containment are sure to reject at what Mr Angel calls the making room paradigm . But he makes a solid argument that this is a much more realistic way of dealing with urbanisation than building new city walls, particularly in developing countries. As heroic and justified as it may be, he writes, containing the oncoming global urban expansion is much the same as holding back the tide. -- Appeared in The Economist Cities are our engines of creativity, wealth creation, and economic growth, yet they also pose threats to our climate, our natural environment, and our food, energy, and water supplies. To resolve these complex issues there is an urgent need to develop a deeper understanding of their dynamics and organization. Shlomo Angel's wonderful book, Planet of Cities, has begun to do just that. He has brought his unique perspective as a distinguished urban planner and geographer with a depth of experience in addressing real-world problems to produce a deeply insightful book that can be used equally by researchers, from economists to physicists, and by practitioners, from urban planners and architects to politicians. It contains a wealth of knowledge, information, and insights interspersed with a delightful historical perspective that I will be returning to again and again. This timely and important book will inform critical thinking about what I consider to be our planet's greatest challenge. -- Geoffrey B. West, Distinguished Professor and Past President, Santa Fe Institute; Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory In Planet of Cities, Shlomo Angel has produced a landmark study, one that combines an ambitious new history of global urban growth with a surprisingly simple and convincing set of policy recommendations. The book suggests that some planning policies that are widely accepted in the United States and Europe are likely to be counterproductive in the developing world. However, the implications of this study are much larger. This is a book that will upset some readers, particularly those with fixed ideas of how cities should look and work, but for others the sweeping scope and sometimes startling new conclusions will be exhilarating. -- Robert Bruegmann, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture, and Urban Planning, University of Illinois at Chicago

Shlomo Angel has written a fascinating and timely book about cities. It is full of interesting facts and wisdom. The book gives a sense of the enormous variety of challenges facing the world's cities and the folly of trying to handle every one of these urban challenges with a one-size-fits-all policy. -- Edward L. Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics; Director, Taubman Center for State and Local Government and Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Harvard University Cities are our engines of creativity, wealth creation, and economic growth, yet they also pose threats to our climate, our natural environment, and our food, energy, and water supplies. To resolve these complex issues there is an urgent need to develop a deeper understanding of their dynamics and organization. Shlomo Angel's wonderful book, Planet of Cities, has begun to do just that. He has brought his unique perspective as a distinguished urban planner and geographer with a depth of experience in addressing real-world problems to produce a deeply insightful book that can be used equally by researchers, from economists to physicists, and by practitioners, from urban planners and architects to politicians. It contains a wealth of knowledge, information, and insights interspersed with a delightful historical perspective that I will be returning to again and again. This timely and important book will inform critical thinking about what I consider to be our planet's greatest challenge. -- Geoffrey B. West, Distinguished Professor and Past President, Santa Fe Institute; Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory Replete with scores of color photographs, maps, graphs, and other images, this volume brings new life to the tried and true ecological view of cities. Angel (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy) presents propositions about optimal urban development, asserting that cities must plan for housing, transportation, and public works in order to cope with inevitable urban growth, but he also suggests that there is such a thing as too much planning as well as too little. After summarizing the history of world urbanization and the emergence of a global hierarchy of cities, Angel presents ecological patterns accompanying urban expansion in a comprehensive sample of over 3,000 cities around the world, with more intensive study of smaller sub samples. He explores classical concepts and measures of urban ecological research, including the size/rank rule for city distributions, central place theory, and the like, with new insights provided by the global scale of the data analysis. The author spends a good deal of time analyzing patterns of population density but does not include the recent innovation of population weighted density calculations, which would have offered yet another angle of vision on the world's cities. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. -- E. Carlson, Florida State University, CHOICE magazine Students and others looking for a place to start often ask, If I could read just one book about xxxx, which would you suggest? When it comes to cities, I have a new favorite. It is Shlomo Angel's Planet of Cities. -- Peter Gordon, University of Southern California, Sol Price School of Public Policy Committed environmentalists and other defenders of urban containment are sure to reject at what Mr Angel calls the making room paradigm . But he makes a solid argument that this is a much more realistic way of dealing with urbanisation than building new city walls, particularly in developing countries. As heroic and justified as it may be, he writes, containing the oncoming global urban expansion is much the same as holding back the tide. -- The Economist In Planet of Cities, Shlomo Angel has produced a landmark study, one that combines an ambitious new history of global urban growth with a surprisingly simple and convincing set of policy recommendations. The book suggests that some planning policies that are widely accepted in the United States and Europe are likely to be counterproductive in the developing world. However, the implications of this study are much larger. This is a book that will upset some readers, particularly those with fixed ideas of how cities should look and work, but for others the sweeping scope and sometimes startling new conclusions will be exhilarating. -- Robert Bruegmann, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture, and Urban Planning, University of Illinois at Chicago

Shlomo Angel has written a fascinating and timely book about cities. It is full of interesting facts and wisdom. The book gives a sense of the enormous variety of challenges facing the world's cities and the folly of trying to handle every one of these urban challenges with a one-size-fits-all policy.--Edward L. Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics; Director, Taubman Center for State and Local Government and Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Harvard University Committed environmentalists and other defenders of urban containment are sure to reject at what Mr Angel calls 'the making room paradigm.' But he makes a solid argument that this is a much more realistic way of dealing with urbanisation than building new city walls, particularly in developing countries. 'As heroic and justified as it may be, ' he writes, 'containing the oncoming global urban expansion is much the same as holding back the tide.'--The Economist Cities are our engines of creativity, wealth creation, and economic growth, yet they also pose threats to our climate, our natural environment, and our food, energy, and water supplies. To resolve these complex issues there is an urgent need to develop a deeper understanding of their dynamics and organization. Shlomo Angel's wonderful book, Planet of Cities, has begun to do just that. He has brought his unique perspective as a distinguished urban planner and geographer with a depth of experience in addressing real-world problems to produce a deeply insightful book that can be used equally by researchers, from economists to physicists, and by practitioners, from urban planners and architects to politicians. It contains a wealth of knowledge, information, and insights interspersed with a delightful historical perspective that I will be returning to again and again. This timely and important book will inform critical thinking about what I consider to be our planet's greatest challenge.--Geoffrey B. West, Distinguished Professor and Past President, Santa Fe Institute; Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory In Planet of Cities, Shlomo Angel has produced a landmark study, one that combines an ambitious new history of global urban growth with a surprisingly simple and convincing set of policy recommendations. The book suggests that some planning policies that are widely accepted in the United States and Europe are likely to be counterproductive in the developing world. However, the implications of this study are much larger. This is a book that will upset some readers, particularly those with fixed ideas of how cities should look and work, but for others the sweeping scope and sometimes startling new conclusions will be exhilarating.--Robert Bruegmann, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture, and Urban Planning, University of Illinois at Chicago Students and others looking for a place to start often ask, 'If I could read just one book about xxxx, which would you suggest?' When it comes to cities, I have a new favorite. It is Shlomo Angel's Planet of Cities.--Peter Gordon, Emeritus Professor, University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy

Committed environmentalists and other defenders of urban containment are sure to reject at what Mr Angel calls 'the making room paradigm.' But he makes a solid argument that this is a much more realistic way of dealing with urbanisation than building new city walls, particularly in developing countries. 'As heroic and justified as it may be, ' he writes, 'containing the oncoming global urban expansion is much the same as holding back the tide.'--The Economist Shlomo Angel has written a fascinating and timely book about cities. It is full of interesting facts and wisdom. The book gives a sense of the enormous variety of challenges facing the world's cities and the folly of trying to handle every one of these urban challenges with a one-size-fits-all policy.--Edward L. Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics; Director, Taubman Center for State and Local Government and Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Harvard University Students and others looking for a place to start often ask, 'If I could read just one book about xxxx, which would you suggest?' When it comes to cities, I have a new favorite. It is Shlomo Angel's Planet of Cities.--Peter Gordon, Emeritus Professor, University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy In Planet of Cities, Shlomo Angel has produced a landmark study, one that combines an ambitious new history of global urban growth with a surprisingly simple and convincing set of policy recommendations. The book suggests that some planning policies that are widely accepted in the United States and Europe are likely to be counterproductive in the developing world. However, the implications of this study are much larger. This is a book that will upset some readers, particularly those with fixed ideas of how cities should look and work, but for others the sweeping scope and sometimes startling new conclusions will be exhilarating.--Robert Bruegmann, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture, and Urban Planning, University of Illinois at Chicago Cities are our engines of creativity, wealth creation, and economic growth, yet they also pose threats to our climate, our natural environment, and our food, energy, and water supplies. To resolve these complex issues there is an urgent need to develop a deeper understanding of their dynamics and organization. Shlomo Angel's wonderful book, Planet of Cities, has begun to do just that. He has brought his unique perspective as a distinguished urban planner and geographer with a depth of experience in addressing real-world problems to produce a deeply insightful book that can be used equally by researchers, from economists to physicists, and by practitioners, from urban planners and architects to politicians. It contains a wealth of knowledge, information, and insights interspersed with a delightful historical perspective that I will be returning to again and again. This timely and important book will inform critical thinking about what I consider to be our planet's greatest challenge.--Geoffrey B. West, Distinguished Professor and Past President, Santa Fe Institute; Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Author Information

Shlomo (Solly) Angel is a professor of city planning at New York University's Marron Institute and leads both NYU's Urban Expansion program and Stern Urbanization Project.

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