Book Review: Dream Cities

What’s a book about urban planning doing in a travel blog? When I travel, I like to observe people’s way of life: their culture, their transportation, houses, markets. When you see what people do on a daily basis and where they do it, you get to know them. This book helps me understand people better, which is one of my joys of travel.

I love this book! I love it so much I took it to Disneyland when I chaperoned my son’s eighth grade band trip there. Roller coasters are on one of my many ships-that-have-sailed, but I can sit reading happily for hours. In Disneyland, I read with a coffee and pastry at Jolly Holiday Bakery, with a fancy cocktail at Carthay Circle, on a park bench (looking up to watch the parade), and in the first aid station with the feverish kid. I love this book so much that when it had a run-in with the banana in my backpack, I decided to buy the library a new copy and keep the banana-encrusted one for myself.

However, I can’t give this book the usual literary compliment, “I couldn’t put it down.” In fact, it was easy to put down because it was so thought-provoking that I put it down often to reflect on things I had seen. For example, in the chapter which discusses the trend of building houses in various historical styles, I thought about the Victorian I lived in in Ypsilanti, Michigan, the boxy stucco apartment in Abilene, Texas, the dime-a-dozen ranch in Fountain Valley, California, and the tiny Tudor in San Jose, California. Now, instead of existing in my memory as random houses, I see them as part of a larger societal longing for personal space and expression, facilitated by architects, developers, and city planners who identified this longing and capitalized on it.

Imagine my joy when I read about Disneyland in Dream Cities while sitting in Disneyland! Walt Disney knew what people liked, and he built it. Disneyland was a model for many kinds of malls and housing developments. Just read the book.

Dream Cities is a well-organized, readable book. Each of the seven chapters details a trend that started at least a couple of centuries ago, and Graham follows those trends up through their modern-day outgrowths. The writing is clear and concise, and each chapter contains photographs and lists of current examples which really bring the information home.

Graham even has a name for people like me who look at buildings and cities and wonder about them: armchair urbanist.

If you’ve ever wondered why we have to shop in malls instead of cozy, thriving downtowns, this book is for you. If you’ve ever wondered why we stack poor families in high-rise “projects” on the edge of town, this book is for you. If you’ve ever wondered why all the state capitals look the same, this book is for you.

Armchair urbanist. That’s what I am. And you might be, too.