What Makes a Great City
344 pages
8 x 9
215 photos, 37 illustrations
One of Planetizen's Top Planning Books for 2017 • San Francisco Chronicle's 2016 Holiday Books Gift Guide Pick
What makes a great city? Not a good city or a functional city but a great city. A city that people admire, learn from, and replicate. City planner and architect Alexander Garvin set out to answer this question by observing cities, largely in North America and Europe, with special attention to Paris, London, New York, and Vienna.
For Garvin, greatness is not just about the most beautiful, convenient, or well-managed city; it isn’t even about any “city.” It is about what people who shape cities can do to make a city great. A great city is not an exquisite, completed artifact. It is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. While this book does discuss the history, demographic composition, politics, economy, topography, history, layout, architecture, and planning of great cities, it is not about these aspects alone. Most importantly, it is about the interplay between people and public realm, and how they have interacted throughout history to create great cities.
To open the book, Garvin explains that a great public realm attracts and retains the people who make a city great. He describes exactly what the term public realm means, its most important characteristics, as well as providing examples of when and how these characteristics work, or don’t. An entire chapter is devoted to a discussion of how particular components of the public realm (squares in London, parks in Minneapolis, and streets in Madrid) shape people’s daily lives. He concludes with a look at how twenty-first century initiatives in Paris, Houston, Atlanta, Brooklyn, and Toronto are making an already fine public realm even better—initiatives that demonstrate what other cities can do to improve.
What Makes a Great City will help readers understand that any city can be changed for the better and inspire entrepreneurs, public officials, and city residents to do it themselves.
"Imagine you're a renowned author, an adjunct member of the faculty at Yale University, and the president of AGA Public Realm Strategists. Would you be surprised if you found yourself unable to answer a question about the fundamental nature of cities? That was the dilemma facing Alexander Garvin as he pondered a question from a friend: "What makes a great city?" Given the resources afforded to someone with the aforementioned accomplishments, Garvin set out to answer the question by traveling the world and identifying the common traits of great cities. His conclusion: people make cities great, and only in cities with great public realms do people have the opportunity to make a great city."
Planetizen
"Garvin here explores the importance of public spaces to public life —and how a 'great' city, unlike a great painting or sculpture, is not an exquisite, completed artifact."
San Francisco Chronicle
"A well-researched and compelling treatise on how cities become and remain great, What Makes a Great City is something else as well: a love letter to the ideals of urban life at its best."
Civil Engineering
"For urbanists, planners, and architects who appreciate well-designed public spaces, Alexander Garvin’s latest publication delivers a carefully constructed tour of cities that accomplish this goal. He shows how they successfully created or enhanced parks, plazas, and squares or established a broader array of civic improvements to attract investment and enhance quality of life."
Architectural Record
"For those who dream of spending a few days talking with an experienced planner who combines a detailed knowledge of many cities with a structure of thought to place those details in...well, that might not happen. Luckily, we have Alexander Garvin's What Makes a Great City. It's somewhat more personal, but no less rigorous, than his earlier books."
Planning
"When I was the mayor of Miami, Alex Garvin inspired me to improve the city by enhancing its public realm--its streets, squares, and parks. Now, by reading What Makes a Great City, you, too, can be inspired to make the investments that will help your city prosper, compete in a globally competitive economy, and provide generations to come with a better future."
Manny Diaz, former Mayor of Miami and former President of the United States Conference of Mayors
"Hundreds of photo illustrations, good writing, and nice organization make What Makes a Great City a perfect volume to add to the libraries of city planners, architects, local politicans, and civic leaders."
Manhattan Book Review
"Garvin's previous books...are must-reads for all students of the city. In this latest book, he grabs the reader in the introduction by explaining how he came to write it: he was asked to name the cities he considers great and why. The result is a visual picnic, thanks to Garvin's gorgeous photographs...and an important addition to planning literature."
Yale Constructs
"Only a great urban raconteur and connoisseur like Alex Garvin can lead you, with his observant eye and erudite mind, through such an enlightening journey. This is an absolute must-read for students and lovers of cities worldwide."
Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science
"Garvin reveals the animating life force within cities from Barcelona to Brooklyn with the sharp eye of an architect, an anthropologist, and an economist, and with the ardent ability to distinguish great public places from mere space."
Janette Sadik-Khan, Bloomberg Associates, former New York City Transportation Commissioner
"For cities and the public realm, Alexander Garvin is a modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville and Alexander von Humboldt wrapped together and tied up with a bow! His keen, wise observations, analysis, and insights in What Makes a Great City are a splendid gift to urbanites around the world."
Eugenie L. Birch, Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research, School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
Preface: What Makes a Great City
Chapter 1: The Importance of the Public Realm
Defining the Public Realm
Streets, Squares, and Parks
Beyond Streets, Squares, and Parks
Making Cities Great
Chapter 2: The Characteristics of the Public Realm
Open to Anybody
Something for Everybody
Attracting and Retaining Market Demand
Providing a Framework for Successful Urbanization
Sustaining a Habitable Environment
Nurturing and Supporting a Civil Society
Chapter 3: Open to Anybody
Overwhelmingly Identifiable, Accessible, and Easy to Use
Plaza Mayor, Salamanca, Spain
Creating an Identifiable, Accessible, and Easy-to-Use Public Realm
The Paris Metro
Federal Center, Chicago
Piazza del Campo, Siena, Italy
The Squares of Savannah
Sixteenth Street, Denver
Keeping the Public Realm Safe
Gran Via, Barcelona
Piet Heinkade, Amsterdam
The Streets of Paris
Feeling Comfortable
Jardin du Palais Royale, Paris
Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Kungstradgarten, Stockholm
Via dei Condotti, Rome
Via Aquilante, Gubbio, Italy
Worth Avenue, Palm Beach
Levittown, Long Island
Forever Welcoming
Chapter 4: Something for Everybody
A Reason to Return Again and Again
Boulevard des Italiens, Paris
Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris
Washington Park, Chicago
Having Fun
Playgrounds
Piazza Navona, Rome
Animating a Multifunctional Public Realm
Market Square and PPG Place, Pittsburgh
A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place
Central Park, New York City
Passeig de Gracia, Barcelona
Reclaiming Bits of the Public Realm for Public Use
Plenty of People
Chapter 5: Attracting and Retaining Market Demand
Using the Public Realm to Trigger Private Development
Place des Vosges, Paris
The Revival of the Place des Vosges
Regent’s Park, London
Avenue Foch, Paris
Enlarging the Public Realm to Accommodate a Growing Market
An Administrative Center for the Modern City of Paris
North Michigan Avenue, Chicago
Responding to Diminishing Market Demand by Repositioning the Public Realm
Kärntner Straße, Vienna
Bryant Park, New York City
Continuing Investment
Chapter 6: Providing a Framework for Successful Urbanization
Alternative Frameworks
Atlanta
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Rome
St. Petersburg, Russia
The Paris Street Network
Ringstrasse, Vienna
Radio-Concentric Moscow
Houston’s Highway Rings
The Manhattan Grid
Maintaining the Public Realm Framework
Thirty-Fourth Street, Manhattan
Determining the Location of Market Activity
Chapter 7: Sustaining a Habitable Environment
What Does It Take to Sustain a Habitable Environment?
Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
Using the Public Realm to Create a Habitable Environment
Boston’s Emerald Necklace
Long Island’s Network of Parks, Beaches, and Parkways
Reconfiguring the Public Realm to Improve Habitability
The Public Squares of Portland, Oregon
New York City’s Greenstreets Program
Transportation Alternatives that Improve Habitability
Union Square, San Francisco
Post Office Square, Boston
Congestion Pricing in London
Congestion Targets in Zurich
An Ever More Habitable Public Realm
The Chicago Lakeshore
Reviving the San Antonio River
Operating the Public Realm
Park Management in New York City
An Ever-Improving Public Realm
Chapter 8: Nurturing and Supporting a Civil Society
The Nurturing Role of the Public Realm
The Streets of Copenhagen
Palace Square (Dvortsovaya Ploshchad), St. Petersburg
Red Square, Moscow
Ensuring that the Public Realm Continues to Nurture a Civil Society
Times Square, Manhattan
The Public Realm as a Setting for Self-Expression
Chapter 9: Using the Public Realm to Shape Everyday Life
Whose Realm Is It?
Determining the Daily Life of a City
The Squares of London
The Minneapolis Park System
The Madrid Miracle
The Key to Greatness
Chapter 10: Creating a Public Realm for the Twenty-First Century
The Patient Search for a Better Tomorrow
Place de la République, Paris
Post Oak Boulevard in the Uptown District of Houston
Brooklyn Bridge Park
Atlanta’s BeltLine Emerald Necklace
Waterfront Toronto
What Makes a City Great
Wednesday, September 21 at 6:00 pm.
Join Alex Garvin, Regina Myer, and Dan Biederman, for a discussion with The New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman about the attributes of great cities and what other cities can learn and replicate. A great city is not an exquisite, completed artifact but a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. The panelists discuss what people who shape cities can do to make a city great.
With What Makes a Great City, Alex Garvin discusses the history, demographic composition, politics, economy, topography, history, layout, architecture, and planning of great cities, but argues it is not about these aspects alone. Most importantly, it is about the interplay between people and public realm, and how they have interacted throughout history to create great cities.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing at the end of event.
More details here.
Alex Garvin at New Towns Conference, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Public Panel, Thursday, September 22, 2016, 6:30-8:00 PM ET
Piper Auditorium, Harvard Graduate School of Design
The New Towns Initiative at Harvard University researches historical and contemporary new town developments in an international context. It is based at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Through its efforts, the Initiative is working to establish the relevance and future directions of the New Towns idea in the 21st Century.
On September 22, Join Alex Garvin, author of What Makes a Great City, and other preeminent new town scholars, development managers, and other key figures from major new towns around the world.
More information http://research.gsd.harvard.edu/new-towns/conference/
What makes a great city? Not a good city, or a functional city, but a great city that people admire, learn from, and replicate. Planner and architect Alexander Garvin sets out to answer this question by closely observing successful cities such as Paris, London, New York, and Vienna. He argues that a great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Most importantly, it is the interplay between people and public realm that creates great cities.
Garvin analyzes how particular components of the public realm (squares in London, parks in Minneapolis, and streets in Madrid) have shaped people’s daily lives, and he shows how 21st- century initiatives in Paris, Houston, Atlanta, Brooklyn, and Toronto are making an already fine public realm even better.
Alexander Garvin is a noted architect and urban planner. He is an adjunct professor of urban planning and management at Yale University. He heads a planning and design firm and lives in New York. Some of his previous books include The Planning Game: Lessons for Great Cities, Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communitie, and The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t.
All book talks are free and open to the public. The gallery opens at 6:00pm.
All guests must RSVP to programs@skyscraper.org to assure admittance.
The Kinder Institute for Urban Research and Uptown Houston present celebrated urban planner and author Alexander Garvin.
What makes a great city? Not a good city, or a functional city, but a great city that people admire, learn from, and replicate. Planner and architect Alexander Garvin sets out to answer this question by closely observing successful cities such as Paris, London, New York, and Vienna. He argues that a great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Most importantly, it is the interplay between people and public realm that creates great cities.
In his new book, What Makes a Great City, Garvin analyzes how particular components of the public realm (squares in London, parks in Minneapolis, and streets in Madrid) have shaped people’s daily lives, and he shows how 21st- century initiatives in Paris, Houston, Atlanta, Brooklyn, and Toronto are making an already fine public realm even better.
Acclaimed urban planner Alexander Garvin sits with the celebrated architecture critic Paul Goldberger to tackle this question. For Garvin, a city’s greatness is that of the people who shape it. It is its ability to change, to challenge, to satisfy. Garvin and Goldberger discuss the city’s nature, and how that nature is the product — and the potential — of interplay between people and the public realm. Garvin is the author of What Makes a Great City. More details here.
BOOK PARTY: WHAT MAKES A GREAT CITY
September 12, 6:30 – 8:30PM
Yale Club of New York – Library
50 Vanderbilt Avenue
RSVP: rsvp@urbandesignforum.org
Join the Urban Design Forum for cocktails and celebration of city planner and Forum Vice President Alexander Garvin’s book, What Makes a Great City.
For Garvin, a great city is a dynamic, constantly changing place that residents and their leaders can reshape to satisfy their demands. Looking at several North American and European cities, from New York to Seattle and Paris to Madrid, What Makes a Great City examines how these cities have adapted and transformed over time. Garvin analyzes the history, demographics, politics, economy, topography, history, architecture and planning of great cities, but the heart of the book lies with the public realm and its influence on the actions of the people.
What makes a great city? Not a good city or a functional city but a great city. A city that people admire, learn from, and replicate. City planner and architect Alexander Garvin set out to answer this question by observing cities, largely in North America and Europe, with special attention to Paris, London, New York, and Vienna.
Join noted planner, educator, and author Alex Garvin at the UCLA Luskin Center for a discussion about his new book What Makes a Great City with a panel of local experts.
Moderator: Cecilia Estolano, Member, Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors LLC
Panelists: Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Associate Dean at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and UCLA Professor of Urban Planning; Rick Cole, City Manager, City of Santa Monica; and Vince Bertoni, Director of Planning, City of Los Angeles
A Panel Discussion with Ryan Gravel, Alexander Garvin, and Mark Pendergrast, Moderated by Jim Langford
The Atlanta BeltLine is helping to transform our city. Originating as “belt line” railroads built over a century ago to expand the industrial base of the city, the corridors were largely abandoned by the late 20th century, but are now being repurposed as a planned 22-mile trail and transit loop that will connect new and old parks. Already, the completed trail sections are helping to revitalize neighborhoods, but not without controversy and concern over economic and cultural displacement.
Ryan Gravel is founder of Sixpitch, and is the architect and city planner whose 1999 Georgia Tech master’s thesis first proposed the BeltLine project. He is currently heading the Atlanta City Design Project and speaks all over the world. He is the author of Where We Want to Live: Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities.
Alexander Garvin, CEO of AGA Public Realm Strategists and Yale professor, is the architect and city planner who in 2004 created the “Emerald Necklace” plan of connected parks along the BeltLine. During a helicopter tour, he spotted the quarry that will become the reservoir at the center of the Westside Park. He is the author of What Makes a Great City and other books.
Mark Pendergrast, independent scholar and writer, is an Atlanta native with many books to his credit. He lives in Vermont, but over the past six years, he conducted intensive research for his comprehensive book, City on the Verge: Atlanta and the Fight for America’s Urban Future, which uses the BeltLine story as a narrative thread for the first major book about Atlanta since 1996.
Jim Langford served as Georgia State Director of the Trust for Public Land during 2004-07. He envisioned the BeltLine as the backbone of a “connected park system” that would create hundreds of acres of new Atlanta parkland and link those to existing parks with bicycle and pedestrian pathways. Jim currently serves as the head of multiple non-profit organizations, including MillionMile Greenway, Coosawattee Foundation, and Georgia Prevention Project.
Admission is $10 for general public, $5 for members, and free to AHC Insiders.
Planetizen's Top Planning Books for 2017
San Francisco Chronicle's 2016 Holiday Books Gift Guide
In his latest book, esteemed architect and city planner Alexander Garvin explores the question What Makes a Great City. As Garvin visited great cities to answer this question, he found that a city’s greatness has little to do with beauty or function, but rather depends on its relationship with the people who inhabit it. It is about what citizens can do to make a city great.
Looking at several North American and European cities, from New York to Seattle and Paris to Madrid, Garvin examines how these cities have adapted and transformed over time. He analyzes the history, demographics, politics, economy, topography, history, architecture, and planning of great cities, but the heart of the book lies with the public realm and its influence on the actions of the people. The result is an inspiring look at how any city can become a great city. Check out Chapter 2 from the book below.
Founded in 1996, The Skyscraper Museum is a private, not-for-profit, educational corporation devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. Located in New York City, the world's first and foremost vertical metropolis, the museum celebrates the city's rich architectural heritage and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines.
Alexander Garvin, author of What Makes a Great City, went to the museum last week to discuss the themes of his book with an audience. You can watch the video of the talk below.
Alexander Garvin, the author of two Island Press books, died at the close of 2021. His love of cities and optimism about what they could be, did not seem to be diminished by working on some of the most complex urban projects. What Makes a Great City developed from his two-year expedition to answer that question after he was asked by a friend. He took an answer as basic as “people are what make a city great” and turned it into a beautiful, interesting exploration of the value of an inviting, vibrant public realm. After publication, he cheerfully (for the most part) defended his choices of great cities. Alex wrote that the work reinforced what he already believed: “that a great city, unlike a great painting or sculpture, is not an exquisite, completed artifact.” He will be missed.
Read the preface to What Makes a Great City here or below.