Urban Mobility Books

Transforming Urban Living: Must-Read Books for Creating Livable, Walkable, Cyclable, and Transit-Friendly Cities 

I've curated a selection of captivating books that one can read to understand how renowned transportation professionals and city planners bring the changes to make cities more livable and enjoyable. This list is dynamic. If I come across additional books in the future, I will include or update them in the current list.

• A History of Street Networks: from Grids to Sprawl and Beyond (Laurence Aurbach)

• Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving (Peter Norton)

• Back on My Bike: How Cycling Transformed My Life after Sixty (Tom Eastham)

• Better Busies Better Cities (Steven Higashide) 

• Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance (Adonia E. Lugo)

• Bike Nation (Peter Walker)

• Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality (Melissa Bruntlett, and Chris Bruntlett)

• Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life (Jane Jacobs)

• Cities for People (Jan Gehl (Author), Lord Richard Rogers (Foreword))

• Confession of a Recovering Engineer (Charles L. Marohn, Jr.)

• Crossings - How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet (Ben Goldfarb)

• Curbing Traffic (Chris Bruntlett, and Melissa Bruntlett)

• Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World (Wade Graham)

• Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City (Jorge Almazán)

• Every Inch of the Way; My Bike Ride Around the World (Tom Bruce)

• Fighting Traffic (Peter D. Norton)

• From Mobility to Accessibility: Transforming Urban Transportation and Land-Use Planning (Jonathan Levin, Joe Grengs, and Louis A. Merlin)

• Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability (David Owen)

• Happy City (Charles Montgomery)

• How to Save the City: A Guide for Emergency Action (Urban Worlds) (Professor Paul Chatterton)

• Human Speed: A City Planner’s Evolution From A Daily Driver To A Multimodal Traveler (Mark Brown)

• Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives (Jarrett Walker)

• Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World (Jennifer S. Vey, and Nate Storring)

• Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities (Veronica Davis, and Tamika L Butler)

• Invisible Women (Caroline Criado Perez)

• It's All About the Bike (Robert Penn)

• Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System (Wes Marshall)

• Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis (Daniel G. Parolek)

• Mobility 2040: Exploring the Emerging Trends Radically Transforming Transportation Systems in the US (Galo Bowen)

• Movement: How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives (Thalia Verkade, and Marco te Brömmelstroet)

• One Man and His Bike: A Life-Changing Journey All the Way Around the Coast of Britain (Mike Carter)

• Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities (Alain Bertaud)

• Parking and the City (Donald Shoup)

• Parking Reform Made Easy (Richard W. Willson, and Donald C. Shoup)

• Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World (Henry Grabar)

• Pocket Neighborhoods (Ross Chapin)

• Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One (Majora Carter)

• Restorative Cities (Jenny Roe, and Layla McCay)

• Roadways for People: Rethinking Transportation Planning and Engineering (Lynn Peterson, Elizabeth Doerr, and Janette Sadik-Khan)

• Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation (Paris Marx)

• Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age (Lizabeth Cohen)

• Soft City (David Sim)

• Strong Towns (Charles L. Marohn, Jr.)

• Street Smart (Samuel I Schwartz)

• Suburban Nation (Andres Duany, ‎Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and ‎Jeff Speck)

• Strap Hanger (Taras Grescoe)

• Street Design (Victor Dover, ‎John Massengale)

• Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution (Janette Sadik-Khan, and Seth Solomonow)

• Sustainable Nation (Douglas Farr)

• Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature (Douglas Farr)

• Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term (Mike Lydon, Anthony Garcia, and Andres Duany)

• The 15-minute City: A Solution for Saving Our Time and Our Planet (Carlos Moreno, and Jan Gehl)

• The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jane Jacobs)

• The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There) (Shane Phillips)

• The Art of Classic Planning – Building Beautiful and Enduring Communities (Nir H. Buras)

• The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards (Allan B. Jacobs, Elizabeth MacDonald, and Yodan Rofe)

• The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning (Le Corbusier)

• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Richard Rothstein)

• The Economy of Cities (Jane Jacobs)

• The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight (Historical Studies of Urban America) (Nicholas Dagen Bloom)

• Great Good Place (Ray Oldenburg)

• The Gendered City: How Cities Keep Failing Women (Nourhan Bassam)

• The Heart of Our Cities: The Urban Crisis, Diagnosis and Cure (Victor Gruen)

• The High Cost of Free Parking (Donald Shoup)

• The Image of the City (Kevin Lynch)

• The New Mobility Handbook: Rethinking How We Get Around Cities (Michele Kyrouz)

• The Smart Growth Manual (Andres Duany, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon)

• There Are No Accidents (Jessie Singer)

• Traffic (Tom Vanderbilt)

• Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age (Paul Mees)

• Triumph of the City: How Urban Spaces Make Us Human (Edward Glaeser)

• Urban Grids: Handbook for Regular City Design (Joan Busquets, Dingliang Yang, and Michael Keller)

• Urban Playground: How Child-Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities (Tim Gill)

• Urban Playground: What Kids Say About Living in San Francisco (Katie Burke)

• Urban Street Design Guide (National Association of City Transport Officials)

• Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Jeff Speck)

• Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places (Jeff Speck)

• What if Women Designed the City?: 33 leverage points to make your city work better for women and girls (May East)

• When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency (Anna Zivarts (Author), Dani Simons (Foreword))

• Works: Anatomy of a City (Kate Ascher)

• X and the City (John A. Adam)